Zenith

Let's talk some industry stuff.

I believe it was three or four weeks ago that we had a conversation about Zenith and that the solution to Zenith's problems was increase marketing, sell the watches cheaper, but maintain the quality.

Instead, what they're doing is they're going to sell less of them, do them more expensive.

Which proposal do we think is likely to work? Our proposal to pile it high and sell it cheap? Or their proposal to try and make Zenith the new, I don't know, Richard Mille or something?

I'll go

first here.

And one thing that I think you can assume they hope to happen right now is that people get worried.

Like, wait a minute, they're going up in price.

very well put together and something you may like is some information that we have the drumco drums have been beating over the past few months about zenith part of lvmh a brand that we'd really like a brand that i have almost bought one of the watches and tried to a number of years ago and it never really happened not due to myself they were under the care and attention of julian tonnerre who then moved on to tag briefly for about six months and is now at ublo as the ceo they've been doing great things over there recently we talked about the balloon dog watches And they just blew my mind when we got to see them recently.

It was fantastic.

But things from Zenith on the release front has been a little more stale.

The biggest thing they talked about this year, as I've mentioned before, was new clasp technology, which, yeah, that's pretty cool.

But we're here to find out about watches, cool designs, new tech, maybe movement wise.

It is kind of breaking news as it happens just now, but Dave, do you want to bring us up to speed on the

latest news? It's not going to be good news for everybody, it has to be said, although it may be good news in the longer term health of the brand.

As Ricky mentioned, Zenith owned by LVMH.

More about them later on in the show.

Andrew, Zenith is one of those brands that I look at and just feel a little bit sad.

And I think that's because we've mentioned Zenith, well, several times on the pod, but we did it in, I think, quite a great bit of detail relatively recently.

And we were talking about how... it's a shame to an extent that Zenith's only really seen for that one movement that really helped Rolex during the quartz crisis and stuff.

And actually, there was like 100 years worth of watchmaking before that.

So Zenith is a brand that really should be seen in higher regard.

But it does feel, you're right, a lot of brands are struggling at the moment, especially brands...

under big kind of umbrella conglomerates um and often it feels like they get a little bit neglected but basically to set the scene i want to sort of you know let you and the listener know what is supposedly happening at zenith just to really sort of paint the picture of the arguable turmoil they may be in.

Four and a half, five weeks.

Okay, so it's not bad, I mean, compared to my Zenith.

There was a bit of a, you know, back and forth about, do I get a new crystal? Should I buy a pre-owned crystal, but in very good condition? Both would be original.

In this case, we got a new crystal, brand new crystal.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So this is what Zenith has told me.

Remember, the watch has been gone since June.

But let's talk about some news.

Well, just after we recorded today's episode, major news out of Switzerland, LVMH has announced that they are restructuring Zenith.

That means they're eliminating hundreds of jobs, maybe most of the jobs at the brand around the world.

It also means that they are essentially shutting down the brand for a period of years.

We see this happening all over the industry.

We've talked about the boom in the high end of the industry and just how challenged brands are in the sub $10,000 price segment.

We've also discussed trouble at Zenith.

For instance, earlier this year, we talked about reporting that that LVMH was exploring a sale of the brand.

Was it allowed?

Okay, so you saw me react to that Zenith, right? You saw me like jaw hit the floor.

It was the best Zenith of all time because it had Hida's DNA.

And I, yeah, it was an easy pick for me.

I was a bit disappointed how easy the pick was because there's two other very good watches in there obviously the 37 would have got it if there hadn't been anything else stand out to me because it's just a great solid watch not my preference of finish but i would have picked it above almost everything else but the toric would have beaten it into second place because that hand hammer dial is absolutely delicious so yeah sorry mate um i'm gonna kick it back at you and guess you said the 37 i may be wrong but i think that of those six it probably stands out for you

He's arriving at Uplo, but also, it's not just that he's at Uplo, he's at LVMH Group.

So I suspect Zenith are about to leave.

to get a bit of his love as well.

It'll not just be, it'll not just be Hublot.

Omega.

Zenith.

Take your pick.

JLC.