Horological Meandering

georgeszaslavsky
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a very good, thorough and accurate post reflecting where the watch industry was before. However some important things to add

During the 90's, there were still independent brands like Louis Leroy, Hublot, Ikepod, Union Glasshütte, Glasshütte Original Girard Perregaux, Fortis, Dubey & Schaldenbrand, Frédérique Constant, Urban Jürgensen & Sönner, Chronoswiss,Corum, Eterna, Breitling, Ulysse Nardin, Bulgari, Patek Philippe, Universal Genève and Eberhardt who relied for the most of them (except Parmigiani Fleurier, Louis Leroy, Patek (except for the ch 27-70q), Union Glasshütte and Glasshütte Original) either on ETA, Frédéric Piguet and Lemania movements. For the independant watchmakers, Alain Silberstein, Vincent Calabrese, Golay Spierer, Jacques Etoile and Roger Dubuis were at their start back then. You will rarely get any infor from Rolex perhaps except from Mr Hess or Mr Dowling themselves, if one wants any kind of information from Rolex it is as staunch as Fort Knox and as fussy about procedure as the CIA Langley's main office.Maybe Baron has connections in the underground Rolex world that could help but the Rolex personnel is as secretive as it gets

In the past from the 30's to the early 70's Omega was far more dominant and successful than Rolex whether it came to chronometric competitions and number of chronometers made annually, it changed in the mid late 70's when Omega was mismanaged and it went went worse back in the mid 80's when the firm lost its manufacture status and started to case just another ETA movements. So to make it short, since 1977 since Rolex introduced the 3035 and in 1988 when they introduced the 3135, Rolex strenghtened even more their dominance, as I said in another thread Rolex dominates mercilessly the luxury watch market being closely followed by Omega since 1999 and since the 8500 introduction Omega is in a second strong position not far from Rolex. Breitling is in the third position with more than 150000chronometers being produced annually far from Omega but still a very respectable score for a familial owned firm.

Also brands like Audemars Piguet, Vacheron were never really total manufactures because some of their high end movements came from JLC, Lemania and Frederic Piguet until very recently.Same Blancpain who uses modified Frederic Piguet movements in all of their watches, kinda like Breguet does with Lemania. There are very very few manufactures nowadays but let's list them: Patek Philippe, Seiko, IWC, Roger Dubuis, Hublot, Parmigiani Fleurier,JLC, Jacquet Droz, Chopard, Audemars Piguet (with the purchase of Renaud & Papi and the 2120 patent from JLC), Vacheron, Breitling, A Lange & Söhne, Glasshütte Original, Rolex, Tudor, Frédérique Constant, Zenith and Ulysse Nardin.Some of the very last independant brands like Breitling and Ulysse Nardin were bought not necessarily by watchmaking luxury group, is that a good option? Time will tell but I am a skeptical person,but when a financial firm (CVC) or a food group (Kering) with no knowledge of watchmaking buys an instititution in the watchmaking world, it rarely succeeds. There are plenty of choice in brands and eras when you buy a watch after it is a matter of tastes, to "ETA" or "not to ETA" (my collection is ETA free and will remain as such) and of course financial means (not everybody is John D Rockfeller with a 6062 and 6236 and has for instance three cars like a brabus 600sel, a koenig testarossa and an Alpina 750il)

Just my two very modest cents with a grain of salt

Best regards

Georges