To make a quick introduction, I have been collecting, buying and selling watches (mostly vintage) over the last 20 years. Through time, I got bored with most brands (starting with Rolex) and all the fuss about vintage. As a consequence, the only watches I have kept and keep on buying are Omegas (mostly, if not all, new). As I guess many would agree, Omega, as a brand, has something special that goes beyond the products it sells. Of course, some will also critize the over-abundance of LEs - and they're quite right - but this is not my topic here.

The reason why I write here is that, in my opinion, a few events have started damaging Omega's brand image and cutting into the probability of me continuing buying Omegas and watches in general.
- The first is the management of boutiques. It used to be places where you could get a decent level of relatively basic range of services (polishing, changing crown...) for a reasonable price without being forced to send the watch at a service center. Now, with their recent decision to let their repair staff go or move into sales (exclusively), this kind of service is now almost limited to bracelet adjustment and battery replacement.
- The second is the disconnect between the firm's policy and environmental matters. Like a few people here, I got invited by Omega to attend in May a dinner party in Florida (Cape Canaveral). While I should have feeled blessed by this invitation, I found it disgraceful. Living in Europe, this would have meant flying 20 hours in total just to attend a 3-hour party! What a poor use of money and resources! In which world are these guys living to ignore the negative message that is conveyed here? Aren't local teams supposed and able to do the entertaining job by themselves? Sure they are! So why do they need to fly over clients, bloggers and marketing guys at such an expensive environmental and financial cost?
- The third is the product availability. Long has been said about the so-called scarcity for the 60th trilogy and the 50th moon landing watches. But when you get told that you won't be able to buy a Japan Olympics' speedy even though quite a few are available and nothing legally prevents a shipping from the manufacture in Switzerland to where you live, you just feel that these guys have really lost their focus on customer.

Anyway, I sincerely hope for Omega that the next generation will enjoy wearing watches, will not renege on paying a few hundred bills to get their watch serviced even when it works fine, will not care at all about global warming and will enjoy being treated like a supplier. If not, good luck!

My 2 cents of course.

 

Hi Leon

at least in the OB where I go, I can still deposit a watch to be ( polished, glass change etc...) and this job is still done at the OB , I think is more or less the watchmaker capacity and the relation that you have with them, of course theses job cannot be considered as overhault but some time a quick refreshment done in a couple of days make me happy , also the watchmaker as to do business at least the guy I know is traced about what is selling ( bracelets etc...) .

Paul

 

Thanks Paul. Actually, it's not a question of the watchmaker's willingness. Among the 3 OBs that are the closest to where I work, 2 no longer have any watchmaker and within the 3rd one, the watchmaker had to move into a sales position and had most of his hardware (including machinery to polish) removed from the boutique. So, it's not a question of being nice or willing to. They simply can't and would not be allowed to perform the job. I am in France by the way.
Best,
Jean

 

Are you sure these were actual watchmakers? There are two levels of technical service that are provided at OB's. One was with a Boutique Technician, and the other was a Boutique Watchmaker - these are the official Omega titles for these positions. The technicians were not trained watchmakers, and were generally selected from existing staff, and given specific training on specific tasks, and their ability to do tasks is quite limited to very simple things. In contrast the watchmakers were in fact fully trained watchmakers, that were hired on to do proper watchmaking work in the boutiques (one boutique I visited tried to hire me on the spot when I mentioned I was a watchmaker) and this includes everything up to performing a full service.

I can't imagine that a fully trained watchmaker would agree to being stripped of their hard earned trade and put on the floor as a salesperson. So I suspect that the people you are referring to were boutique technicians who are essentially going back to what they started doing at the boutique.

The boutique technicians were far more plentiful than boutique watchmakers for obvious reasons - there just aren't that many watchmakers around and their services are in demand. I've not seen anything official from Omega on this topic since they rolled out the BT and BW program across the globe, so it might just be lack of demand locally that is driving the decisions you are seeing, rather than some broad policy change.

Cheers, Al

 

The environmental concerns (or lack of) is also something I have been wondering about. Also in relation to all the watch blogs. It seems like a lot of the people on Hodinkee, Fratello etc travel a great deal by plane but I haven’t seen environmental issues raised a single time. And I agree fully that having people from around the world attend a short event seems like a waste of ressources. But I guess that the fashion Industry as a whole (if the watch Industry is that) is slow to catch on.

 

Hello Archer - I agree with you that it sounds surprising. 2 of the 3 are watchmakers for sure and I was told the 3rd one, whom I never met, was also a watchmaker. The watchmaker who has left went to work for Longines. The other one is a now a salesman. I happy to provide with his name and contact details if you wish so.

On your second point, you may be right. My experience is with local OBs only. But I do not consider the French market to be a particularly slow or tough market. So even though it is just a decision applied to France, one can still be surprised by such a move.

 

It looks like many modern watch makes aim for the Asian market, hence the modern bling bling watches being produced... and yes I count the waved dial Seamaster glitterballs among those. So for me the darkbrown Bond 2020 Seamaster is breaking with this and an interesting "toolwatch" design.
I guess my view, being a vintage guy, is normal... but then again de gustibus non est disputandum
Looking forward though to the 50th Apollo 13 and the 50th ASTP Speedmaster versions... dreaming of a 1976 Italian Apollo-Soyuz lookalike !

 

I have two thoughts as relating to the original post:

1) When I bought my "waved dial Seamaster glitterball" (tm SpeedyPhil) at my local Omega retailer (not a true boutique) they were unable to size it for me, and were going to send it "out" for several hours and asked when I'd like to come back. I had visions of the guy that does watch bands in the mall kiosk stripping all of the screw heads out of my shiny new bauble. So I took it home and did it myself. Disappointing.
b) As an occasional journalist myself, I know firsthand how much vendors pay to ship and house and feed journalists for product launches, so I'm not at all surprised about the comments on the "3 hour party". Corporate responsibility and environmental stewardship go out the window when marketing gets involved.

As for availability, I can only imagine (hope) that future limited editions are, in fact, limited. Who gets what, when only a few thousand are made, is surely a conundrum for those marketing folks.

 

OK, that was three thoughts.

 

Well if you say so, but it seems odd that someone would spend the time and effort to become a proper watchmaker, and then just be a salesperson...

I wasn't talking about "the market" but the need for someone at a specific boutique to do this sort of work. If an individual boutique isn't seeing the expensive technical resource they have hired being fully utilized, it's anything but surprising that they would eliminate that position.

 

On the environmentalist sentiment: the airplane you would've been on still made its flight to Florida and another one came back. I don't think your rather rash reception of the invitation to attend a special event is warranted in the sense that Omega is not responsible for that flight occurring.

This is the second time a similar sentiment has been made here at OF and the last one got shut down. It's entirely your prerogative to object to air travel if that aligns with your belief system. But I just don't think it's well-informed or appropriate to insinuate that Omega is somehow covertly sending messages of environmental ill will just by sending you an invite to a shindig.

More realistically, their marketing people probably recognize that the buyer profiles of prolific customers happen to be that of a wealthy segment that does a lot of flying. Thus, it makes sense to send invitations to those folks as they'd likely already be in the area for other business or would need interested in making the trip anyway. What's another leisurely jaunt to the States anyway? $$

In the interest of full disclosure: I earned my degree in marketing and I make my living in aviation (though, strangely not in marketing)

 

Re Japanese LE’s. They where and still are relatively easy to source. All you had to do was call a Japanese AD or OB and you could get them sent to you.

 

For those concerned over the environmental impact of flying around for marketing purposes, the logical endpoint would be to shutdown the entire Swiss mechanical watch industry as it is non-essential, no one needs any of their product. So save on all the energy for raw material production (gold, steel, leather, etc), refinement into finished product, construction of facilities and special machinery, heating/cooling, transport of employees to/from work, shipping of watches, etc, etc. Personally, I have no time for this environmental hysteria which claims that if we go 1/2 C higher in global temps the system will collapse and mankind will be doomed. That's just completely unbelievable to any rationally thinking person. Even first world countries are resisting being sucked into this morass as evidenced in Madrid.

 

Hysteria? What hysteria? We are not talking half a degree here. https://climate.nasa.gov/ But even climate sceptics would reckon the absurdity of flying someone around the earth for a totally useless event.

 

Where did you read me objecting to air travel and sum up the issue to a binary question?

 

My goodness, what an ignorant statement to make. Maybe we should just leave it at that and not get into politics...

 

Climate science isn't even for meant to convince a

Also mega fires and 50 degrees C in Australia...

 

Environmental matters - that’s why I stick to vintage mostly, reduce reuse recycle

 

You have a point here. Maybe I'll get back to vintage...