Swatch Group

and discuss, this is an article from Sean, I don't know how much attention anybody's paid to this, other than somebody's been on the Swatch AP website and has thought, you know, we can do that.

We can design watch bits that hang from luggage and probably with less drama than Swatch Group did it.

Damien Lillard.

You mean this

is Swatch Group.

This is just down the hall at Swatch

Group.

$2,000 for a PRA?

I mean, like I'm, I think that's the cool thing about micro brands or independence in general is that, um, if you look back to all those, you know, Rado isn't something that we see as independent or anything like that.

Of course it's Swatch Group, but if you look back to its history, this is what they were known for.

This is the thing like scratch proof, like this is their USP.

The ceramic thing is the most popular thing.

And that had been that kind of story for, let's say, 100 years.

And then, as everybody knows now, around 2003, Swatch Group decided they didn't want to supply kits.

And then they decided later on they didn't want to supply finished movement either.

But they started by stopping supply of kits and then the movement.

But as all these movement companies were bought or bankrupt or whatsoever, so we reduced from all these Unitas, all these different brands basically just were all merged into ITER.

actually, you had a monopoly situation for movement supply and this didn't end up well.

And that's how Selita managed to grow is because they decided to supply to all the ones where the Swatch Group didn't want to supply anymore.

Yeah.

They had Breguet and Ebell sitting side by side.

They sold Breguet to Swatch Group.

They sold Ebell to LVMH.

I thought they sold it to Inotrode.

Oh yeah, there you go.

It was Swatch Group brand, if I'm not mistaken.

Right.

Yeah, nothing really spectacular, actually.

You can't make this stuff up.

And even Jean-Claude Biver, the greatest showman of modern Swiss watchmaking, the man who resurrected Blancpain and later would remake Hublot, stepped out briefly of the Swatch Group in early 2004 to lend Frank a hand, which tells you the gravity that this conflict kind of carried.

It was not a squabble.

This was a heavyweight bout, okay? It ended formally in October, I think, 2004.

I mean, these guys are so determined and enthusiastic about these things and the products that you see inside wind up.

And I can tell you, I did not see any swatch group brands there or LVMH or Richemont for that matter, which means that all those brands, many of those, most of those brands did not exist back then.

Or not to the level they exist now, but I guess most of them that just didn't exist.

Yeah, of course, Bulova, Casio, Aorus, those guys, yes.

Yeah, I thought you meant the OG events.

Yeah, the events.

To me, when Swatch Group mentioned it was not going to participate in the fairs and do these more tailored events, I would have thought that those would have really... kicked up because i think they're really good at spreading the the speed master interest yeah and um but yeah it's been relatively quiet i know there have been a few but not like there used to be um i don't know i i get the feeling that somewhere there there's somebody in charge of branding or something that has decided that these are not not how they want to move forward.

It's strange to me.