Where do the watches come from?

I was flipping through the August edition of WatchTime and noticed an interesting chart. The chart was a snapshot of the big players in the global exports of watches by country, value and number of watches. This is what it listed:


Number of Watches Exported (in millions):

China - 682.1
Hong Kong - 402.7
Switzerland - 29.8
Germany - 14.5
USA - 7.4



Value of Watch Exports (in USD, billions):

Switzerland - 21.8
Hong Kong - 8.8
China - 3.7
Germany - 2.0



Average Export Price (in USD):

Switzerland - 688.00
Hong Kong - 15.00
China - 2.00



Being new to the hobby, that was pretty telling. It appears that the far east countries listed are producing low cost watches by the truck load. Not knowing much about the quality of these watches, I assume that they are low quality. Maybe this is not the case, but that is how I would expect it to be. On the other hand, it appears that the Swiss watches are high cost and higher quality. Maybe this has to do with labor costs, but I don't imagine that it is all due to that.

Is this a bad assumption?



One other thing that jumped out to me is that they left off Japanese makers. I assume that they would produce more watches than the USA. Am I off base here?

SWISS MADE holds some PRESTIGE with many watch collectors...

I'm telling you though, and many will want to disagree to justify their expenditures, but from coming full circle in watch collecting, having everything from a SEARS Good Wrench Anniversary watch, to Zodiacs, Nauticas, Hamiltons, MICRO BRANDS, a Panerai, and two Breitlings, at some point, you just start paying for the NAME and REPUTATION of a watch...

The ONLY watches that MIGHT be worth the big bucks are the ones that are TOTALLY made by ONE manufacturer, making their own movement, case, sapphire crystal, NO outsourcing at all, an IN HOUSE watch as they call them...

I had a $350 Hamilton and a $2400 Breitling, they both kept the same time and were both well made watches...

I don't know.



In my mind, there has to be some connection between price and quality...to a point. I mean, how much care can be taken on a watch that has a value of $2.00? I can guaranty that there probably isn't too much attention paid to detail and quality control! When you layer on the sheer volume of 682,100,000,000 watches exported, that tells you that it has to be a quick and dirty process to get the watches completed and that volume must take a priority over quality.



Combine the two statistics listed for China and I make the conclusion that the $2 watch must be of less quality than the $688 value Swiss watch.



I do agree with Alan on the decreasing returns arguement. After a certain point, a watch needs to reflect the price paid. Be it a better quality finishing process or components used...there needs to be a real difference for me to buy, other than an mere name on a dial!



On the other side, after a certain price

That is really some great information OU812 ! Would be nice to see the U.S.
move higher up on the list there at some point.