Dear Breitling - Shop Your Closet!

There are a GAZILLION "Sleeping Beauty" brands out there. And seeing as Breitling just "whipped it out" to buy an (let's be honest) essentially dormant brand, let's take a moment and consider what US $69 million could have been directed towards given the presence of an  already existing red-headed step-child living somewhat ignominiously under Breitling's roof. I speak, gentle reader. of Kelek. 

Formerly located just around the corner from Eberhard in La Chaux-de-Fonds, it merged / was purchased by Breitling in 1997. Prior to this time there had been a few iterations, but the short-form is that Kelek focused on mechanical movements and had worked with Dubois-Dépraz. It is also worth noting that in the 90s, Kelek was one of the largest manufacturers of automatic, mechanical chronographs. It is also curious to note that Kelek developed a working relationship with one Seiko (Hattori at the time), thus perhaps foreshadowing the great Tag Heuer 1887 movement fiasco of 2009 ; )

In short? For the price of, well, ZERO, the brain trust in Grenchen could have directed time, effort and a much smaller amount of cash towards rebuilding and relaunching something that would only be on life-support for a short period of time, and out of the "recovery room" even faster. But is also, admittedly, not the stuff of nocturnal emissions (that's wet dream to you) from watch nerds swearing up and down that they would buy a Universal Geneve if it were ever revived. These folks are, by and large, the horological equivalent of the now infamous (and largely fictitious) 400 pound guy "hacking a political party" from his bed. Hypothetically they exist, but it begs the question as to why the supply of vintage Universal Geneve watches are not exactly thin on the ground. 

Okay, that's not fair. I am sure that there are some folks out there, but the majority of watch buyers with ready cash listening to Beyonce name drop AP and SPENDING said cash are not borderline or current AARP members with purchasing decision-making impulses driven by nostalgic erections.

Just saying.

So back to the earlier question - when you have a viable brand already in your house, why go out shopping for something that costs you a WHOLE LOT more money than you really need (or likely should want) to spend? A lot of it is sex appeal - be it real or (I suspect in this case) presumed. But a lot of it comes back to what that other great commentator on the watch business opined in Moneyball, fear of looking bad and an inability to objectively and rationally asses value (both perceived and real) -

“There was but one question he left unasked, and it vibrated between his lines: if gross miscalculations of a person's value could occur on a baseball field, before a live audience of thirty thousand, and a television audience of millions more, what did that say about the measurement of performance in other lines of work? If professional baseball players could be over- or under valued, who couldn't?”
― Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

What is known is that Kelek would have likely made for a fantastic Oakland A. It was, and continues to be a potentially wildly successful brand if the owner / operator would spend one one-hundredth of the time, energy, and money that Mr. Kerns and Breitling are ready to hurl at UG. But then again, when you consider floating an idea like Kelek, you are flying in the face of the marketing logic of a brand that has been worshiping at the altar of stardom (and its reflective glow) for many years. So we'll let Moneyball summarize why activating Kelek would have made a HELL of a lot more sense than spending the kind of money that usually isn't exchanged without the aid of a getaway car.

“The inability to envision a certain kind of person doing a certain kind of thing because you've never seen someone who looks like him do it before is not just a vice. It's a luxury. What begins as a failure of the imagination ends as a market inefficiency: when you rule out an entire class of people from doing a job simply by their appearance, you are less likely to find the best person for the job.”
― Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

And yes, it is a metaphor. The "certain kind of person" is a certain kind of brand - in this instance Kelek ; )

What I've Learned - The Summer Vacation Edition

Have you ever had a few weeks of experiences that really make you question the sanity of the people you are dealing with?  Well, gentle reader, this past fortnight has been a trip!  So as life is a journey with several "teaching opportunities" along the way (not unlike Howard Johnson's along the interstates of 1970's North America) I thought I'd take this opportunity to offer a summer bonus - a double-scoop serving of "What I've Learned". 

1.  You only get to be the Prom Queen once

It's exciting to feel popular, to feel like everyone thinks you're the greatest. And the owners and managers of watch brands are just as susceptible to fits of ego as any teenager. It is exciting when the quarterback or the captain of the cheerleading squad asks you out. It's important to understand that one date (even to the Homecoming dance, with dinner at Sizzler and a limo), does not a relationship make. 

More simply put, the doors of success tend (by design) to swing both ways. It's great when you land front and center in a big-time watch media outlet.  And this tends to lend the impression that your champagne wishes and caviar dreams are all about to come true. The fact of the matter is, wonderful brand though you may be, the only reason you were noticed by a big-time outlet is because they found you through a smaller one. Not unlike how footballers get discovered and moved along the ranks from non-conference Sunday park players, to the Premiership. The only difference is that your brand is not a world class striker dating a Spice Girl. Believe it or not, as you are not a huge and well-established brand, and you are not (despite what you might think about yourself) a unicorn, you are likely to have a good pop out of your turn in the spotlight, but unless that big, sexy outlet keeps writing about you, you will be right back where you started from (hopefully a little richer, and a little wiser from the experience).  Or to quote that other great commentator on the watch business, Barry Hearn -

"The day you think you're the 'nuts', is the day you're disappearing down the toilet. Complacency in business is a killer. When you think you've made it, that's the beginning of the end. You have to drive yourself every day, every hour to be better."

2.  Nobody Remembers James "Buster" Douglas, but they should.

Permit me to take you back in time to 1990. I was finishing my last year at the U, getting ready to graduate, and I had finally made it onto the best football club in the city - NFZFC. I had played for a few years without much success in the city leagues. I was known, the opinion around the leagues was that I could play a bit, but I wasn't truly a "baller". That year I scored a boatload of goals, and NFZFC won the title outright. I had arrived after a long and circuitous route. But that's the funny thing about journeymen, they tend to surprise you when you least expect it, and the reason why they can do it is because the big swinging dicks fall prey to what the author of Moneyball warned against -

“The inability to envision a certain kind of person doing a certain kind of thing because you've never seen someone who looks like him do it before is not just a vice. It's a luxury. What begins as a failure of the imagination ends as a market inefficiency: when you rule out an entire class of people from doing a job simply by their appearance, you are less likely to find the best person for the job.” 
― Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

I received a communication from a brand owner recently that underscored this very backward thinking.  He essentially told me that his brand would only be sending their English language press releases to outlet X because outlet X had the biggest coverage and fit their perceived demographics as to who would buy their watches. He further said that he had worked with a "PR Professional" and they wanted to "cut down" on the amount of press coverage and focus on only this one outlet.  Now I realize, that I am a bit older and more conventional, but I was always under the impression that the entire goal of PR and marketing was to get your product in front of as many eyes as possible. So I am curious how the "RASPUTIN PR" group convinced the brand owner on such a dip-shit marketing concept. But from my own selfish perspective, it's one less brand that I need to worry about ; )  

But what this brand and their soft-headed pr agency are failing to grasp, is that while Mike Tyson was once the champ, and seemed unbeatable, he was knocked out in the 10th round by someone they didn't rate or respect. In this case, I think the most apt metaphor involves eggs and baskets. If you are a brand, you should want as much coverage as possible. Moreover, you shouldn't tell 99% of the media outlets to go and piss up a rope, because sooner or later, just like Mike Tyson, big sexy Media Outlet X is going to replaced by someone else. Quite possibly someone the brand snubbed before. And suddenly, it's prom night and Brand Y is sitting in the limousine with the corsage for big sexy Media Outlet A, watching as the geeky kid from the math olympics team hops out of his mother's station wagon, and picks up the Prom Queen ; )

Long story short?  It's a relationship business. Relationships take time, and they don't happen overnight. But they can be ruined pretty quickly without too much effort.

Repeat - The Secret Sauce

This originally ran in February last year, but with the recent announcement of Hodinkee's "holistic" approach to coverage driven commerce, I thought it might be worth re-heating. 

As a someone who gets called in from time to time to handle a mediation and help settle disputes, I often tell the participants the same thing:

We did not get here overnight.  This has been developing for quite some time.  It just seems to be a recent problem because you are finally acknowledging it.

The Secret Sauce 

Market Inefficiencies

Yesterday should be a wake-up call for the industry.  FC and Citizen made a bold move.  Unfortunately they are not only the pioneers in common sense, they will probably be some of the only ones making clear, informed, proactive decisions.


The industry is still jammed with people chasing pay checks instead of working to build something.  There is a huge pool of potential talent on the sales and marketing sidelines that will never be considered because they do not fit a particular mold.  So instead of hiring a new person with a different perspective, the same pool of marketing, Pr and sales "talent" keeps recycling around the system, half-assing it from one brand to another.  Sorry, but that's the reality.

So I'll leave you with two of my favorite quotes from Moneyball that truly sum-up why FC and Citizen are big winners this morning, and why pretty much the rest of the industry will continue to suck it for the next two to three years -


“Managers tend to pick a strategy that is the least likely to fail, rather then to pick a strategy that is most efficient," Said Palmer. " The pain of looking bad is worse than the gain of making the best move.” 
― Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

And one of my talking points during every consultation that I have with a brand -

“The inability to envision a certain kind of person doing a certain kind of thing because you've never seen someone who looks like him do it before is not just a vice. It's a luxury. What begins as a failure of the imagination ends as a market inefficiency: when you rule out an entire class of people from doing a job simply by their appearance, you are less likely to find the best person for the job.” 
― Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Think outside the box – and I do not mean the “watch box”

That is Barry Hearn's third rule that I have adapted to the watch industry.

4.  Think outside the box – and I do not mean the “watch box”

The watch business is not strictly black and white.  As Mr. Hearn shared about the business of football, you don't work just right handed or left handed - you need a bit of "ambidexterity".  More often than not, there is an unshakable belief that the business is done by certain people in a certain way to achieve a certain outcome.

And here is where I will borrow from Moneyball -

“Managers tend to pick a strategy that is the least likely to fail, rather than to pick a strategy that is most efficient," Said Palmer. " The pain of looking bad is worse than the gain of making the best move.” 
― Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

Or to put it another way, brand managers and department heads are in some instances so concerned  about being reprimanded (or worse), they will inevitably take the safest route to ensure continual employment.

This is, of course, a recipe for failure in the long term.  I will share the abbreviated story that a friend shared with me back in 2009 -
Meeting with the heads of several of the group's brands, they had outlined a plan to cover the needs of the entire group in terms of a pr/marketing proposal that would double their coverage and cut their expense in half.  The brand heads said that they couldn't make that decision, that only Person X could.

My friend said - "Great!  Let's set up a meeting!"

The brand heads muttered amongst themselves, and looking extremely uncomfortable said "oh, we couldn't make that recommendation.  Maybe you could contact Person X and propose the meeting to present it again..."

The truth was that it wasn't that they couldn't make the recommendation.  It was clear that they were too afraid to make the recommendation.  Moreover it was abundantly clear that Person X had instilled such a fear of failure, and fear in general that nobody in all of those companies would dare to "break wind" without running it past Person X first.

It was an opportunity to think out side of the "watch box" and do something different, but the fear of failure was far greater than the possible gain of making a bold, but beneficial decision.

This is not intended as an attack of the brand managers, department heads, or even the CEO pulling the strings.  All of these folks are just doing it the same way that they've always done it.  And being employed is far better than being unemployed.

It is an open question to the culture of the industry and how things are done.  Perhaps it is time for a little more "outside the watch box" thinking?