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The question is why? It's a $20 movement in a poorly finished case. The most important part of the watch isn't made in the USA. It's a $50 product being sold fo

• mikeash 7y ago
  Conspiracy theory: deliberately fail in order to demonstrate that “Made in America” doesn’t work so they’ll get less criticism about manufacturing elsewhere. More realistic: fleece suckers who think “Made in America” make it worth spending $500 for a $50 watch.
  • coldtea 7y ago
    Or, you know, taking advantage of some tax breaks and benefits. It's not like factory jobs are for other races and countries, and Americans should just sit back and solely devote themselves to pure ideas and entrepreneurship. >More realistic: fleece suckers who think “Made in America” make it worth spending $500 for a $50 watch. Most $500 watches are worth way less, even $50, so nothing special about this (regardless of where they are made). Besides, getting domestic jobs for people is still worth something. Those laid off factory workers of old aren't gonna "reinvent" themselves anytime soon and get into Silicon Valley, but if they could get a new factory job that's something - and beats homelessness or low-end shitty gigs like Uber.
    • mikeash 7y ago
      Plenty of great stuff is made in the US. I’d rather we focus on making things we’re good at, rather than taking random stuff, slapping “Made in America” on it, and hoping someone is willing to pay a premium for that text.
      • coldtea 7y ago
        >I’d rather we focus on making things we’re good at, rather than taking random stuff, slapping “Made in America” on it, and hoping someone is willing to pay a premium for that text. Why not make everything you can make? Would there be a problem is the US manufactured CPUs and phones as opposed to sending them to be made in China/Korea/Taiwan/etc? To outsource externalities (e.g. environmental costs)? Or to stifle any labor demands (by moving your production to wherever you like any time they are raised somewhere)?
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  • mc32 7y ago
    Thd majority of consumer products out there exhibit this quality. After certain price point you’re just paying for branding or perception/projecting Why doesn’t everyone buy Toyotas? It’s not being a sucker, unless we broaden the term where most all of us are suckers.
    • cr0sh 7y ago
      > Why doesn’t everyone buy Toyotas? Because nobody can afford 'em? Ok - I'm speaking mainly of their pickups, which are (overall) great vehicles (disregarding the earlier frame-rot issue they had in the early 2000s). But they're so great, that even used ones sell for absurd amounts...
  • Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    Are there laws about the "Made in" claim? That is, could they realistically have the movement and case and everything made abroad, then only do the final assembly in the US and earn the "Made in the USA" brand?
    • kodis 7y ago
      They already are. Their web site claims that they're using a Swiss movement. They're silent on where the case and other parts are being manufactured, but I'd guess that the movement accounts for a good portion of the production cost.
    • rwc 7y ago
      Yes there are laws. No they could not do that.
    • bardam 7y ago
      Yes. In 2016 the FTC stopped Shinola from claiming their watches were "made" in America. Much more accurately they were "assembled" in America (Detroit) from foreign parts [1]. I entirely agree with the FTC, their claims were dishonest. As a point of comparison, Switzerland regulates what percentage of the watch must be Swiss before it can be claimed to be "Swiss," but it's not an easy question. For example, with completely made up numbers, low wage Chinese manufacturer sells mostly finished movement for $20 that required 4 hours to make. High wage Swiss assembler puts in another hour, at a cost of $40. Total time is 5 hours, 80/20 Chinese/Swiss and total cost is 60, 33/67 Chinese/Swiss. From time perspective, it's a Chinese watch, but from cost perspective it's Swiss. [1] - https://www.truthinadvertising.org/revisiting-shinolas-made-in-the-usa-claims-three-years-after-ftc-inquiry/ https://www.truthinadvertising.org/revisiting-shinolas-made-...
• searine 7y ago
  >it completely misses the point of what made Timex famous to begin with; excellent quality at a low price. Brands change, particularly fashion brands. Many high-end brands become debased and low end brands slowly scale up in quality to become high-end a decade later. Timex doesn't need to make a lot of 500 dollar watches because they wont sell a lot of 500 dollar watches. It might however move the perceived value of the brand outside of the discount bin, and earn some cheap goodwill advertising while it does so.
  • AmVess 7y ago
    All good points, but they should have selected a non novelty grade movement to start out with. Landfills and warehouses are filled with this type of corporate vanity product that failed to deliver. Beyond that, Timex is a brand name relegated to disposable $20 watches. Trying to fluff up their mind share with a poorly made and laughably priced product is not going to work out for them.
    • criddell 7y ago
      > novelty grade movement It's from Ronda and it's a good movement.
      • AmVess 7y ago
        It's a $20 retail movement in a $500 watch. It's many steps away from the quality of a similarly priced Seiko product.
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        • criddell 7y ago
          The point of this watch is that it's assembled in America with decent labor conditions. I think that's probably why they went with a Swiss movement rather than one from Seiko or Citizen. Perhaps Seiko's environmental and labor practices are part of the reason their watches cost less.
• ousta 7y ago
  no one can win on seiko at this price point and in terms of hardware. but that doesnt matter much. have a look at shinola. they sold 700$ watches "made in detroit" that are quartz movement and they made so much and it worked so well that they are now selling automatic movements. don't hate on the made in america it is a brand in itself.
• themodelplumber 7y ago
  I'm a periodic Timex buyer, and I've been wondering for the last few years if they've noticed what I've noticed: "High end" Timex watches tend to sell. They have legs. This is just based on watching both pricing and availability at watch retailers. So when earlier this year I saw an attractive new Timex design listed at a bit of a stretch price considering it's a Timex, I decided to buy it. I own other reliable and discontinued Timex watches that never reappeared on the market. Nothing _really_ high end though--and for that reason I think they noticed the room for additional profit. It's getting a bit worn unfortunately, as a word, but IMO good "design" still moves customers and this moves products. I'm glad I bought my new Timex (nothing super high-end, just around to $100 but not a design I had seen before) and I bought it from a watch retailer who up until recently refused to carry them. Something's changing. Looking at the $500 price, a lot of watch collectors look for that thing that the other guy doesn't have, which also gives them brand nostalgia, etc. They know that when it's gone, it's usually gone. And $500 is nothing to a lot of these guys. They will spend $500 on a pocket knife that stays in their pocket all day.
• coldtea 7y ago
  >The question is why? It's a $20 movement in a poorly finished case. The most important part of the watch isn't made in the USA. It's a $50 product being sold for $500. Most watches are like that. In the high end, it's $1000 product being sold for $30000. >Further, it completely misses the point of what made Timex famous to begin with; excellent quality at a low price. They already do well in that market. It's not enough for them, they want a market with better margins. It's not like they're the only: Casio G-shocks are now having a "high end" brand, selling $100-$200 worth of watches for 1 to several K dollars. There's a basic square (the classic 6510 and co mechanism that sells for 30-50$) that goes for $800 just because it's now in stainless steel.
  • petre 7y ago
    That's quite hillarious, $800 Casio G-Shocks and $500 Timex watches. A Tissot T Touch is priced in that range, why would anyone get a Casio or Timex for the price of a Tissot?
    • coldtea 7y ago
      Probably because at least with the Casio and Timex you know you're getting something overpriced openly. With the Tissot you're just getting a pretentious overpriced crap (whether it has this or that custom movement, the margins are still stacked way against the buyer).
  • CydeWeys 7y ago
    Your typical $30k watch has way more than $1k of highly skilled hand labor that's gone into it. Agreed that the component prices don't add up to close to $30k, but throw in all the other overhead typical of manufacturing and selling luxury goods, including labor, advertising, servicing, maintaining physical stores, etc., and the profit margin on those watches is gonna less than, say, selling Internet ads.
• anthonybsd 7y ago
  Shinola is stuffing $100 movements into cases that are frankly completely oversized for them and selling them for $1000+. I guess Timex wants in on the action. Don't underestimate the power of marketing hype.
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  • CydeWeys 7y ago
    Unfortunately a lot of my extended family has gotten into Shinola watches because of familial origins in Detroit. At least they're still significantly cheaper than Rolexes while still doing a passable job of telling time, even if their resale value suffers? I used to have a fun 24 hour analog quartz watch that I stopped wearing after I got a ~$150 Garmin fitness watch. This thing always tells perfect time because it syncs off my phone (including time changes from traveling or DST), has a GPS tracker for runs and bike rides, can measure heart rate, and pairs via Bluetooth and reads me incoming text messages. It's crazy how, at much cheaper price, you get so much more functionality with a smart watch. And it's even better at being a watch! It just doesn't look as nice.
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• patrickg_zill 7y ago
  If it is a $50 product at retail, then you should be able to point to watches that retail at $50 that have the same features. Please do so... I would put it roughly at ~$150 Costco or $199 retail pricing.
• duxup 7y ago
  Aren't watches mostly fashion type products anyway and their value sort of fungible anyhow? I don't doubt there are plenty of really cool watches out there that are "worth" $500.... but generally they seem to be fashion products where even the price seems pretty disconnected with the actual product / utility.
  • criddell 7y ago
    Things are worth what people are willing to pay for them. There are lots of watches worth orders of magnitude more than $500. If you can buy a $10,000 Rolex today and sell it tomorrow for $11,000 it was worth it, right? Plus, nobody is buying a $50,000 Patek because it solves the problem of showing what time it is. It's about appreciation of artistry and craftsmanship and letting other people know that you are the kind of person to wear a Patek.
    • duxup 7y ago
      That's kinda what I'm getting at. Complaining that the watch isn't "worth" something when it comes to fashion... not sure that jives exactly.
      • laken 7y ago
        Is a BMW in your opinion "worth" the same as a Kia then? A BMW generally has more complex engineering, and a more "luxury" look. A Kia works exactly the same at driving, so therefore with your logic, it's worth exactly the same. High-end watches are extraordinarily complex machines, and yes, generally have a "luxury" look which may be un-necessary in your eyes. Though, the market for "incognito" luxury movements within cheap watches is way too small to be sustainable.
        • criddell 7y ago
          Watches are somewhat unique in that expensive mechanical versions perform their function more poorly than cheap quartz watches (with the exception of Zenith and maybe others).
• sithadmin 7y ago
  >The question is why? It's a $20 movement in a poorly finished case. The most important part of the watch isn't made in the USA. It's a $50 product being sold for $500. Because they saw Shinola doing the same thing, which proved that 'Made in the USA' on a watch is all it takes for suckers to pay premium for a mediocre product.
• bouncing 7y ago
  Questions of cost and "why" apply broadly to the whole category of watches. Up until the late 70s, watches were tools to keep you from being late. Since then, you've been able to get a cheap, reliable watch for next to nothing. Quartz movement, combined with mechanization of production, ensured that. The whole industry had to adapt to making watches themselves sort of an aesthetic statement, not a practical tool to keep you from being late. At this point, any watch costing more than $25 is itself an aesthetic piece. Part of that aesthetic is where and how it's made. There's probably a market for watches made in Antarctica because of whatever sense of taste that "story" appeals to.
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  • irq11 7y ago
    ”Up until the late 70s, watches were tools to keep you from being late.” That’s not true at all. There have always been a lot of reasons to wear a watch that have nothing to do with getting the time. Cheap movements expanded the market to the low-end, but didn’t really change the reasons that people buy watches. Fundamentally, watches are jewelry. That’s been true forever, but it also isn’t something that can be reduced to “aesthetics” alone (for example, people pay handsome premiums for better mechanical movements, even though it has no impact on the look of a watch. The idea of wearing a well-crafted, tiny mechanical device is itself an attractive prospect.) It’s the equivalent of people who talk about Windows machines being “better deals” than Apple machines. After all, they both flip bits, right? If all you do is fixate on the function, everything becomes a commodity.
    • bouncing 7y ago
      People pay handsomely for better mechanical movements, but that's still an aesthetic choice. The world's most accurate mechanical movement is just not going to be as accurate as a mid-range quartz movement. Paying a premium for something that's mechanical because it's mechanical is the epitome of an aesthetic choice. It's not at all like the Mac vs PC choice, which might have some aesthetics involved, but is still about support, ease of choice, brand reputation, and of course, technical details. Maybe watches have always been somewhat aesthetic, and while they were made to be pretty in the 1920s, they really did exist as timepieces first and foremost. Now a mechanical watch's main function is the way it makes you feel.
• handedness 7y ago
  Watch manufacturers sometimes do things like this to limit demand when they aren't ready to scale production, but still want the buzz of launching. Launch a successor at a much lower retail and discontinue the original reference, which collectors may care enough about for its historical significance to keep the price of the original high on the used market. I'm guessing their strategy of engaging non-watch companies to supply parts (and it shows) has something to do with the price and likely low production volumes it will receive. But I agree–the hands look terrible even for a $50 watch, and those movements are certainly costing Timex less than $10 each. The only value here is the story, and nice (if underfinished) brass caseback insert. The rest of it is positively terrible at that retail price.