Father's Day Repeat - Jumping the Shark with Mido

This originally ran back in 2016, and with my 50th birthday rapidly approaching, I have been feeling a wee bit nostalgic about his Mido which I passed on to my niece a few years back.  And the nostalgia turned to bile rising in my throat when I received the email announcement from a certain "soft-grey" marketeer proudly crowing that I could buy a brand new Mido watch for better than 40% off of retail price.  Here's the thing - watches are not milk or eggs.  They don't tend to "go off".  I also realize that you may have more stock on hand than you know what to do with, owing to over-production.  Here's a crazy idea, try to deal with it privately, quietly, subtly, as opposed to selling it to a discount outlet.  All this succeeds in doing is convincing people that your watch was maybe not worth what you were trying to sell it for. 

But for those shopping for bargain lingerie, sex toys and other items, you never know, you might be able to combine shipping with this shopping site and bundle your new watch with some lube and something called "exercise balls" which does not resemble anything that I ever saw in gym class.  But then again, I did grow up a Northern Youth in a small Ohio town...

It is hard to build a brand when you are constantly dumping old stock in the same market you are trying to build.  Just saying.

So for those of you looking for a brand new Mido at nearly 50% off, go for it.  For myself?  I'll stick to my memories.

Father's Day, Mido and Jumping the Shark

So with Father's Day here again (seems like only a year ago) I look back at the image of my father's Mido and feel a pang not necessarily for the departure of someone who was ready to go, but maybe for a place and time when things were clearer.  As anyone who writes about this stuff will tell you (provided enough liquid encouragement) it is hard not be romantic about watches.

And just as we are attached to watches, we who follow this sort of thing are perhaps a bit emotionally involved with the companies that produce them as well. Right or wrong we feel that tie. And in all truthfulness that is one of the major things that the marketing and pr arms of the brands are counting on. Nostalgia, connection, belonging.  And in truth, that is what we are all looking for as well - whether we acknowledge it or not.

The Mido that made my father's watch has, not unlike Elvis, left the building.  And yes, many would say that they have lost their way.  While they may have joined forces with the Miami Hurricanes, in doing so they have also jumped the shark. 

But life moves forward, doesn't it?  You can't live in the past.

So while it is easy to feel disillusioned, I have found some wisdom about life's impermanence and propensity for change in the words of that famous poet philosopher - Master Po from TV's Kung Fu:

Caine: Is it good to seek the past, Master Po? Does it not rob the present?

Master Po: If a man dwells on the past, then he robs the present. But if a man ignores the past, he may rob the future. The seeds of our destiny are nurtured by the roots of our past.

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there.

An Open Letter To Glycine

Dear Glycine, 

Longtime fan, former (and frustrated) Airman owner.

Today I awoke to find an email announcing yet another product flush disguised as an opportunity to purchase a unique and historically important timepiece (at a rock bottom price).  

PLEASE do yourselves and your customers (previous, current and future) a favor and STOP sending your watches through the grey market to speed the clearance of product.  You have failed to understand three very important things:


1.  Your brand was originally built on highly functional, reasonably affordable watches.

2.  Over the past 6 - 7 years you steadily ratcheted up the prices, and over the last 2 - 3 years you failed to pay attention to your retailers (particularly here in the US) as they continued to struggle to shift the product that they already had.  You failed to take into account price sensitivity and our old friend supply and demand.  Moreover, there was little to no communication about the brand, product, etc. 

3.  With the sale of Glycine to Invicta, many purists out there poo-pooed and felt the sky was falling.  I, for one, did not.  I thought that the new owners would understand that the integrity of the brand (although not where it had been maybe 10 years earlier) was still there and could still be salvaged and built upon.  But as of right now it seems that there is a more assertive effort to shift units, and that has been borne out in the large numbers of Glycine watches finding their way to online discount sites.
There is a very, very big difference between watches and milk.  While I understand that overstock needs to be cleared to improve cash flow, I also know that when you slash and burn prices on product across the board and in a very public way, you lose the support that you once had, and it bears mentioning, that support has been getting thinner and thinner over the past few years.  There are subtler ways to clear overstock - methods that are a bit less drastic, respect the retail partner and current customer, and achieve the same goal.  But that would require Glycine to:

1.  Open their own online store
2.  Actually go out and cultivate the market, visit and engage with retail partners
3.  Reconnect with their community of fans and supporters
4.  Stop selling to the grey, and soft grey markets
5.  Stop trying to solve several years of poor sales in a hyper-paced drive to purge stock in as fast a manner as possible

You didn't get into this situation overnight.  You won't get out of it overnight either.

The long game is always challenging.  But several brands out there have managed to keep going by not abandoning what they were built on, paying attention to what is going on, and making the necessary adjustments as the situations have necessitated.  


For a brand looking to shift product quickly and instantly stimulate cash flow, the grey market is probably not unlike heroin.  That first experience can be amazing, but it never ends well.