Patek Philippe

jimjenkins
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Is there any hope to be able to order a customized Patek??

As forum members I do not know how much our collective voices mean to PP. Probably not much but I have to bring this subject up. 

We are all spending anywhere from $10,000 - $150,000 on our Pateks (I am excluding the minute repeaters here), yet we have no saying on how our watch looks like. For no sensible reason, we are at the mercy of the taste and wishes of 3-4 individuals at Patek HQ regarding how the next generation watches will look like. BTW this also true for other manufacturers as well. I am always annoyed that by cosmetic changes only, we are supposedly  offered a new watch. For example, PP last year introduced 5140P with a new blue dial and made such a big deal out of it. It has the same mechanism 240Q which is in 5140G, so what is the big deal here?  Why I cannot send my 5140G and have PP swap the case with platinum during a regular service and let me have the watch I really like to have - 5140P with white dial. Anyone with a CNC machine can fabricate the cases, so why are they so inflexible? Obviously, I do not mean to dramatically change the way the watch looks, as this will take away from the brand name recognition. But exchanging cases or dials for the same series? This should be standard procedure for all manufacturers.   

I can order a $100K Porsche with any color I want, in and out, auto or manual transmission etc, without damaging the Porsce name. If Porsche can customize my car, with greater production rates, why Patek does not do the same thing for me? When I send my watch to service, PP takes meticulous care of recording all the parts, condition etc. At that point, why not give the customer the option to change a dial or case?  (Note: In some very limited cases they do exchange dials!)

I think PP and other manufacturers are used to passive and indifferent customers - who are used to expecting changes only at the discretion of the manufacturers. And for the manufacturers cosmetic changes are easy. It is up to us to change the status quo, but I sure have no clue where to begin.

I sincerely hope that this forum will start something for the benefit of all of us.

Cheers Jim