Value judgement

How things are priced is a bit of a dark art from the consumer side of the fence. Are you paying for superior craftsmanship, high-quality materials or the fee attached to having an A-list actor front a campaign? The confusion becomes even greater with watches.

Ostensibly, as a customer, you’re looking at a selection of similar items with comparable case sizes, in the same metals, maybe with identical complications and yet the discrepancy can be huge. Take for example, one of the standout watches from this year’s Watches and Wonders – Frederique Constant’s Classic Perpetual Calendar.

As perpetual calendars go, it didn’t reinvent the balance wheel. As its name suggests, it’s a traditionally configured calendar – three sub-dials at three, nine and 12 with a moonphase at six – classic-looking with slim indices, sword-shaped hands and a leather strap.

What generated column inches and blog posts was that this was an in-house movement, with basic decoration, that will retail at under £10,000. By comparison, a perpetual calendar in steel at IWC will set you back £20,600.

The most obvious answer for why this is the case is finishing. It’s estimated that hand-finishing can add 40 percent to a watch’s value. However, if you’re a customer looking at the descriptions of these watches, side by side, the descriptors are the same – ‘perpetual calendar’, ‘steel case’ ‘Côtes de Genève finishing’: how are you supposed to know which is the better value watch?“

Research becomes incredibly important in watch buying and understanding where value lies,” says Lydia Winters, brand consultant, watch collector and host of This Watch Life podcast “For me, even though brand and storytelling are vital, I still don’t want a watch if it’s only a great story – it still needs to be of high quality and offer value. It’s one of the reasons I started buying Nomos Glashütte watches almost 10 years ago – I saw the care they put into their watchmaking (in-house movements) and designs while maintaining affordability.”

Doing your research is something of which Christopher Ward CEO Mike France is a fan. After all, it’s the phrase that ends many of the company’s adverts. What might come across to some as confrontational is actually a plea for customers to find out where the value in a watch lies, because, as Mike has constantly maintained, some brands are experts at obfuscation.

“Research is incredibly important in understanding where value lies”

“At the end of the day, if you’re happy with any purchase you make it can equate to ‘good value’,” he says. “However, if you’re like me and want to know whether the price of a watch represents ‘fair value’, focus on the cost of the movement. A little research will liberate the price of most well-known calibres – and don’t be fooled by brands attaching their own reference number, they’re most likely to be from a major movement maker. Also, because cases, hands, dials and straps are most often similar costs for all brands, you can work out who’s charging a fair (or ridiculous) premium to their product.”

Value, whether concrete or constructed, is a complex thing to argue when it comes to purchasing a luxury item. There are facts you can hang your decision-making process on: the metal it’s made from; how it’s assembled; what sort of finishing has been applied to the movement; is said movement properly in-house or is it a bought-in base calibre that’s been modified by the brand?

You can use those to try to explain why an open balance from Christopher Ward – The C12 Loco – costs under £4,000 while a three-hander in steel at another brand will set you back £30,000. However, unless there’s complete transparency from all brands at all levels of the industry, you will never have all the facts at your disposal; something that could explain why more and more customers are turning to independent, or smaller brands, because in this space, people can actually see where their money is being spent.

“Many smaller brands are shifting the landscape of watchmaking by pushing themselves with more complex watchmaking while keeping their watches relative affordability,” says Winters. “Look at Kurono Tokyo and Hajime Asaoka’s goal of making his watch designs more accessible through an offshoot brand of his high-end watchmaking atelier. At the end of the day, none of us really need to have a luxury watch so the value lies in what you most prioritise as a customer.”

The likes of Christopher Ward, with its ‘three times cost’ philosophy – meaning that it only ever marks up the retail price by three times the cost of production – or CODE41, the Kickstarter phenomenon that marketed itself on detailing exactly where every euro goes – are creating a buying environment where the customer is king, not patronised to, and is made to feel like a valued part of the business, not just a bank account to be mined.

Which goes some way to explaining the enthusiasm of their fanbase; one which doesn’t just buy a watch or three but actively encourages friends, neighbours and that bloke down the local who likes his watches to get in on the action. However, wherever you want to ascribe value, what matters most is how that watch makes you feel.

“The best way to find out what you value as a watch enthusiast is to try on and spend time with as many watches as possible, to learn what speaks to you, and almost as important, what doesn’t,” says Winters. Because while we can debate value constantly, the real worth of a watch lies in whether we love it or not. After all, you look at it 144 times a day and life’s too short to spend that amount of time looking at something you don’t really like. Where’s the value in that?