Maybe a decade ago the idea that a decent mechanical watch could be either a serious investment or made by a company that wasn’t also a global brand would have been fantastical. Proper watchmaking was the preserve of mostly Swiss, historical companies who charged a pretty penny for their products – products that, aesthetically, rarely deviated from the tried and tested. Prices – often driven by the supposed need for huge advertising campaigns – demanded that they find as broad a market as possible, after all.
But what a difference a few years makes. Certainly, if the quartz crisis of the early 1970s caught the international big guns of the watch world napping then it looks as though they’re facing a similar challenge now,