It is difficult to walk through a watch fair without stumbling over a plaque, a dial engraving, or a press release that claims a foundation date in the 18th or 19th century. The horological world, more than perhaps any other segment of the luxury goods industry, is seemingly obsessed with its own past. But many of these claims to heritage are more complicated than they first appear. While a number of brands have survived the past decades, more or less unscathed, others are only nominally connected to their historical forebears. Some disappeared entirely, only to be revived decades later by investors or conglomerates hoping to cash in on the growing appetite for vintage-style watches with prestigious names and “heritage”.
While my simple brain understands buying a brand if it comes with certain other “essentials” such as intellectual property, worthy designs, other assets, possibly some unique tools and all that, I wonder if this “strategy” of simply buying the “name” is still a necessary one in today’s watch world? To be clear, I am not judging the strategy itself, it makes sense. I am however questioning whether this is still necessary in today’s watch world. Simply buying the name to revive it, why?
We are all hyper informed compared to just a few years ago. When the watch industry pulls one of these Frankenstein moves, I would think that every sensible potential buyer reads right through this after spending less than a minute of research. And that well-informed potential customer is not going to buy a new watch (from a revived brand) for the heritage, but rather for the watch and its intrinsic and extrinsic qualities. But I could be completely wrong. I do still struggle reading through press releases when a “new” brand rises from the dead and that this inflated heritage is what they highlight, instead of… the watches themselves. Am I the only one?
One does wonder, could this same logic apply to one’s CV? Work a single year in investment banking, take a gentle nine-year sabbatical on a beach in Koh Samui, then re-emerge into the workforce boldly claiming “a decade of experience in high finance”? Would HR simply nod approvingly, perhaps even impressed by your “heritage”? Somebody please test this, and report back in the comment section..
This phenomenon is particularly visible in Switzerland. There is of course one particular reason why there are (still) so many brands waiting for their revival. The quartz crisis. The quartz crisis of the 1970s and 1980s dealt a devastating blow to the Swiss mechanical watch industry. The introduction of inexpensive, accurate quartz watches, pioneered in Japan and rapidly adopted by consumers globally, rendered traditional mechanical movements commercially obsolete almost overnight. How bad was it? Swiss watch exports fell straight off a cliff. In the early 1970s, the country exported nearly 84 million watches; by the early 1980s, that figure had dropped below 30 million. Thousands of jobs were lost, family-run businesses closed their doors, and entire brands (and suppliers) ceased to exist or went in deep sleep.
Many of these names would later be revived. Even some brands that claim founding dates in the 18th or 19th century have experienced significant interruptions. Blancpain, which proudly claims to be the oldest watch brand in the world, was essentially dormant from the 1970s until its rather brilliant revival in the 1980s by Jean-Claude Biver and Jacques Piguet. The Breguet name, one of the most storied in horology, changed hands multiple times after the death of Abraham-Louis Breguet’s descendants, and it wasn’t until its acquisition by Swatch Group in 1999 that it was meaningfully re-established as a serious watchmaker. Such stories illustrate how fragile heritage can be and how flexible the industry is in its use of it.
There are, of course, exceptions. Patek Philippe, founded in 1839, has maintained continuous operations and a consistent identity through two centuries, including its stewardship by the Stern family since the 1930s. Rolex, relatively “young” at just over a century, has never halted operations or deviated substantially from its mission. Longines, founded in 1832, has kept meticulous archives and operated continuously, even through the turmoil of the 20th century. IWC, established in 1868 in Schaffhausen, also enjoys a continuous history with strong technical records and an unbroken lineage of production.
Luxury brands, and not just in watchmaking, are heavily incentivised to create the illusion of permanence. Heritage signals authority, taste, and longevity. For the customer, it offers the reassurance that a product is not just well-made but culturally and historically significant. A founding date is an implicit promise: this object is part of a story that predates you and will outlast you. The problem arises when the story is fiction or when it omits long chapters of absence, irrelevance, or failure.
But I wonder, is this revival strategy still money well-spent in today’s watch world. Today’s consumers, in the age of information transparency and information abundance, are surely (?) more sceptical of corporate myth-making. No?
The watch industry remains firmly fixated on its past, with many brands clinging to founding dates and heritage stories as if history alone can guarantee relevance. But nostalgia, while commercially powerful, is not a strategy for longevity. If today’s watchmakers spend all their time polishing yesterday’s legacy, they risk becoming tomorrow’s forgotten names, dormant logos waiting for a future entrepreneur to stitch them back together like a horological Frankenstein. A better investment might be in the now: innovation, design, and clear purpose, so they don’t become the very ghost stories they currently love to tell.