I’ve noticed a recent source of conflict between watch enthusiast consumers and the companies that make the products they want. The conflict is between what consumers profess to want to spend and where brands feel they must price their watches. This isn’t new, and the luxury space has always been on the cutting edge of capitalism, whereby firms energetically compete for limited consumer dollars and attention. What is new is a growing rift between watch brands and many of their fervent followers. Watch companies are increasingly finding themselves with new fans who cannot afford their products and existing fans who can afford them no longer. Everything from inflation to low wage growth has contributed to the recent worsening of this problem. While there will always be strain on consumer wallets when it comes to spending on luxury products, if the nadir between consumer spending abilities and retail prices grows too deep, it can lead to at least two painful outcomes. high quality replica watches
The first is that many consumers will abandon the watch enthusiast hobby. If you can’t afford any of the watches you like, then you will become disheartened and frustrated when your disposable income doesn’t allow you to enjoy what your heart desires. This is a hobby of rewarding oneself by putting a cool watch on your wrist. If that part of the hobby doesn’t happen to you often enough, you might become bored of enjoying the hobby only vicariously through the experience of others. I aim to help consumers who can only spend up to a few hundred dollars to find watches they enjoy and want to purchase. Not all consumers will become educated here, and not everyone will be happy with a lower-end product. Given that luxury watches typically start at several thousand dollars, and can easily go into five-, six-, and seven-figure prices, a large population of the consumer market is left out for good. The danger of the watch industry failing to make entry-level consumers participate at the ground level is more real today than ever.
The second outcome of such a large consumer expectation/high quality replica watches watch price gap is that brands will find that they cannot find where to talk to people who can both enjoy and afford their products. This has been a perennial issue for most luxury watch brands given that it is so hard to discover/curate your consumer base. Many brands struggle for years before they find their voice and someone to speak with. Brands that charge the most for a watch will naturally have the smallest potential groups to speak to. If that brand isn’t able to reach that group or find a compelling message to share with that group, then it will eventually perish. The more a brand has to charge for its products, the fewer people there will be who can afford them. Without luck and investment, many brands will struggle to find their base of buyers.
Not all of this is related to a worsening economy or inflation. In very practical terms, today’s watch consumers are more educated than ever. It can take mere minutes of research to see what the world’s finest watches look like and read what experts feel are important about them. Both rich and poor can become romanced by the same stories, beautiful designs, and emotion-rich artisanship. high quality replica watches Once you fall in love with the type of beauty that only price can provide, it can be hard to settle for the obvious compromises that come with an entry-level product. Therefore, watch enthusiasts along all parts of the socio-economic spectrum can become fully-fledged horology fans in the same way and with broadly available tools. By visiting watch community events and commercial shows, even people without luxury watch money can see and handle the world’s best-made timepieces. high quality replica watches
This has had the effect of dramatically increasing the expectation of what many people expect from a luxury timepiece. There is no market left for practical timepieces since smartwatches hold market dominance when it comes to the majority of utilitarian timepiece sales. Almost anytime someone purchases or chooses to wear a traditional watch, it is for emotional reasons. Most traditional watch sales are predicated on capturing the hearts and minds of consumers. It isn’t enough to sell a good timekeeper; you also need to sell a beautiful, comfortable watch with a soul and a story. This all creates high consumer expectations at all price levels in the market.
At the same time, the cost of making a truly competitive luxury watch is only going up. It isn’t just supply chain issues and inflation, but also that the expectations consumers have of watches at higher price points have shot up. For many brands, that means investing more production effort into components, which increases prices. Watches costing $5,000 might now need to cost $10,000 to deliver everything consumers want. In fact, this number is relatively close to the truth. Just a few years ago, many high-end brands desired their volume products to be priced at around $10,000 to $15,000 USD. Now, those same brands want their volume products to be priced between $20,000 and $25,000 USD. Yes, the products are better, but the consumers aren’t actually much richer. So, the same person the brand intended to purchase a $10,000 watch can no longer afford the similarly executed product at $20,000. I find that brands are often confused by this and realize too late that in order to sell $20,000 watches, they need to be speaking to an entirely different set of consumers (i.e., those who can afford them).
Brands also overestimate the elasticity of consumer interest, meaning that they often incorrectly calculate that a consumer will be able to spend more money on the same product. I find that consumers are actually remarkably sensitive to price increases. Rather than spend more and stick with the same brand or product, consumers are more prone to sticking to their preferred spending level and going with a different brand or product. The only major exception to this rule is consumers at the highest levels of wealth who can easily spend $1,000,000 if the last time they were asked to spend $800,000 — and even among rich buyers, these consumers are comparatively rare. The main point I am trying to deliver is that when brands change their price points more than marginally, they often need to accept that a brand-new set of consumer relationships will need to be developed, primarily to make their products more competitive to their existing customer base.