I’d be interested in comments regarding what you guys think this means for the industry, and particularly for micro brands. https://monochrome-watches.com/news...gation-to-deliver-movements-to-third-parties/
If Orange Man were here, he'd tell Swatch to hire more talent and increase overall Swatch profitability. It would certainly help with the Swiss GDP and unemployment. The excuse of cutting off the other brands so that Swatch group brands can "improve service and deliveries" is straight up BS
If the rumours were true that Comco was going to prohibit ETA from selling to third parties, that's a completely illogical decision. As ETA has noted, Sellita is now the dominant player in the market, and driving ETA out of that market makes no sense, particularly in the context of the paragraph below - it isn't explained in any detail, but it's important to this story: "In 2016, Swatch Group asked to supplement the agreement. The supply quantity agreed upon had not been purchased by third-party customers but ETA was obliged to maintain a production capacity of around 1.5 million movements. Therefore, Swatch Group requested from COMCO that ETA should be allowed to offer and sell the non-purchased quantities to all of its third-party customers – which was rejected." In the original decisions and agreements that allowed ETA to stop being forced to supply third parties, Comco mandated that ETA had to keep making movements in specific numbers to keep the market supplied through the duration of the settlement. The thing is, the number of movements they were required to make far exceeded market demand, partly because other brands started producing their movements far quicker than Comco anticipated. This left ETA holding massive surplus movements, so that is why they wanted to sell off those movements, but Comco refused. Now if they are telling ETA that after 2020 they won't be able to sell them at all to third parties, that will leave massive inventories of movements sitting unsold in warehouses, and on ETA's books. Comco is making a mess out of this...
It’s not a rumor. It’s an order from the COMCO (swiss anti-trust org). ETA was forced to sell to competitors of Swatch Group by COMCO but that order had an end date by 31.12.2019 - last Monday, COMCO published an update to this case and now they forbid ETA to sell outside Swatch Group from Jan 1st, 2020 on... Hard times to come for small brands... Sellita just finished building a new factory in La Chaux-de-Fonds - I think with this decision of COMCO they will quickly be considering to build another one Edit : just saw the update of the day. Happy to read they extended the current status by another year
Hey, it’s only 15 years! They have a long, long way to beat the dysfunctional record of the United States Congress! LOL!