Manufacture to Sale Time

I've been doing a bit of research on my Seamaster de Ville which my wife gave me when her father passed many years ago.

I needs a service and I remembered having the original International Guarantee booklet along with the instruction booklet.

When Googling the work number etc I was surprised to discover that the watch, whilst having a manufacture date of 1968 (based on the 27xxxxxx work number), wasn't purchased until May 1971. I'm pretty certain that the watch would have been new when purchased as the Guarantee is completed with my father inn laws details. Would it have been normal for a watch to be on the jewellers shelf for a few years before being sold or was there a long delay from manufacture to the watches arriving at the retailers?

I appreciate that this may well have varied depending on location, the watch was purchased from Fred J Malcolm Limited jewellers in Belfast.
Colin

Two data points: My first Omega, a quartz Seamaster, was manufactured in 1979, it sat somewhere until late 1982 when I bought it from an official Omega jeweller in Boston. My first Heuer, a Carrera, was made late in 1969 and delivered to me very early in 1970. So watches could sit for a few years or, if they were desirable, fly off the shelf.

Supply chains, customs inspection, manufacturers' batch production, importers' ordering quotas and retailers' ordering from the local importer would add up to make delivery from manufacturer to retail display time highly variable, at best weeks at worst months. And then the product might not be in demand. Remember that the "Paul Newman" Daytona was considered unfashionable when it was new and when Joanne Woodward bought one for her husband it had been sitting on the shelf for years and was at a discount.

Supply and demand can take funny turns, here's a non-watch example. In 1970 I was doing sales quotes for a part of British Steel Corporation. Necessary in every quote is delivery time of course and I needed to get prices and delivery from another part of British Steel for their products to use in our work. Internal price discount was great but the delivery time was always terrible. Because the external middle-men had pre-ordered in big quantities, could then monopolise production and sell back to our part of BSC at full price 🙄

There was nothing normal about May 1971 in Belfast.

Your father-in-law bought his watch amid the riots and sectarian violence which lead up to Bloody Sunday.

Fred Malcom still owns the store opposite Belfast City Hall where your father-in-law bought his watch. The Jewelers is less than a mile from the spot where Loyalists and Nationalists clashed in 1969 with machine guns and petrol bombs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1969_Northern_Ireland_riots

https://www.fredjmalcolm.com/our-heritage

Now THAT is some context.

I was born in Belfast in the mid 60s so am well aware of our troubled local history. The owner of Malcolms at the time was a personal friend of my father in laws. His son now runs the business which unfortunately no longer deals in watches.

We bought some really lovely chocolates across the street from that jeweler when we visited a few years ago.

http://www.cocouture.co.uk/

Thanks for all the replies.
I had contemplated getting an Extract from the Archives done and now will definately do so once I get the case opened for the required info.
I also plan to approach the jewellers where the watch was originally purchased to see if their records go back that far to try to discover the original purchase price. (I know the owner so if it's available I'm reasonably confident I'll be able to get it.