2manywatches
Tyme Machine
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2019
- Messages
- 2,752
Well, welcome to 2021 all, and here I am, behind on posting up acquisitions from 2020, but, I’ll happily soldier on, and keep posting up my buys – plus I’ve already done a little shopping this year, so, my NBZ plans have failed a bit, but I’m back on track, at present, lol, so I’ll see how long I can last!
But, back to the end of last year….
On the heels of the TAG, and on the theme of getting some watches that had long eluded me, comes this Gucci (a brand in which TAG’s overarching ownership group, LVMH, in fact, once had a stake). A bit fortuitous, considering @misterjingles just posted a Gucci as well! We're trending, LOL.
Now -- that TAG buy turned out to be a real delight, and, while I’d first feared that it would be a case of blowing my money on something no more delightful than the average chronograph quartz from any other much cheaper-than-TAG brand, it is most certainly a cut above and, adding in the fact of my brain being impressed with a branded bauble, well, I love it, overpriced branding be damned.
The Gucci idea has similarly been in my head for many years – this watch in particular, in fact, which I first came across when learning more about my hobby, and running into the notion of “fashion” brands, and trying to make sense of all the angst about it.
For some, a fashion brand is simply any brand known primarily to the fashion world, that “also” makes watches. They supposedly are not a pure watchmaker, because they began in life peddling luggage or clothes, perfumes or jewelry, etc. As such, there are snobs who despise fashion brand watches as "wanna be" watches, and throw a wide net to include brands that don’t even really have a stake in the fashion industry, just kind of lumping together anything they don’t like as a fashion outcast. Geez!
And, yes, there is maybe something to be said for a brand riding the wave of its success in other areas, which starts popping out watches to expand consumer reach….and, from a business savvy standpoint, that something to be said is: “Hey, that’s a darn clever idea!”
How did the trend even begin? We can thank the quartz crisis, which turned into quartz gold for fashion brands looking to increase brand awareness. Seeing that they could simply (and affordably!) license out their name to watches they didn’t have to even build, it became a solid trend. Maybe someone couldn’t afford the handbag, but they’d wear the watch, just to be sporting a famous name.
Granted, it may have led sometimes to some brands seeking watches from the lowest bidder, and certainly some of Invicta misses can attest to the fact that a licensed money grab effort is not always going to make for great watches, but in many cases a non-watch exclusive company can wind up offering watches as good as any watch house.
And, let’s face it, there’s a “fashion” element, of course, to many watches we choose to wear, so watches and fashion are clearly not enemies.
In the story of Gucci, as one of the trend setters of the fashion watch industry, we have to understand the tale by following three storylines….
First, Alexis Barthelay, a jeweler from Paris who expanded interest in his brand, by crafting amazing jewelry that also happened to tell the time.
Next, let’s meet renowned watchmaker, business genius and philanthropist, Severin Wunderman. A survivor of the Holocaust during his childhood, he was hidden from the Nazis in a school for the blind, the only seeing child there. Not an easy start to life.
Some accounts of his subsequent journey are a bit difficult to piece together, in what facts are available to glance at briefly, but his life is an astonishing unfolding of rising high, despite starting from very difficult times.
His mother passed when he was but ten years old, and, as a teen, Wunderman eventually settled in the USA, and was at one time managing newspaper delivery boys during the day, with a second job, at night, working in a car park. In the late 1950’s, he found success in the making and selling of gold chains, having met a couple of Italian folks in the same trade.
His next step? Crossing paths with Alexis Barthelay, the aforementioned jeweler, and utilizing his strong sales skills to sell Barthelay watches, having found a market for them in the USA.
For Wunderman, the idea of marketing to Gucci was very tempting. Why just add any name to a watch, when it could be a name that already had a sizable following?
And, so we turn to the third player in this little skit -- Gucci itself.
As one of Italy’s oldest fashion brands (currently rated the number one luxury brand in the world), Gucci began as did many other style brands, making fine leatherworks and luggage. As is often the case with products of excellence, ultimately they became the brand to have for the wealthy and well-heeled, which always seems a confluence of quality products and clever marketing.
Today, the brand is so well known, that Gucci is even an adjective to describe things as being good or excellent, as in “it’s all Gucci up in here!” But, going back to the time before Gucci met Mr. Wunderman, a series of unfortunate events had the powerhouse brand teetering on bankruptcy, and this is where our three stories meet.
It also demonstrates how far the chance winds of life can carry us.
On a sales mission, Wunderman hoped to convince Gucci to buy a quarter million dollars worth of Barthelay watches, to be branded and sold as Gucci watches.
One story has it that a telephone call from Wunderman to the Gucci company just happened to be answered by none other than Aldo Gucci himself, while another telling says that Wunderman had actually visited the flagship Gucci store for his sales pitch, and that Wunderman audaciously answered a ringing phone that store workers were too busy to grab. On the other end of the line? The big boss of Gucci, Aldo Gucci.
Whatever the myth, the fact is that Wunderman did wind up talking to Aldo, and certainly Mr. Gucci knew the company needed something to help its fortunes. He signed Wunderman up, but, it turned out Barthelay had doubts about being able to handle the order, so the story goes, so Aldo Gucci decided to finance Wunderman himself, with the $250,000, to set up Wunderman in his own American based watch facility, making watches to be sold under the Gucci brand. Talk about a successful sales call!
Some reports have it that Wunderman’s USA facility simply distributed watches made in Switzerland already, with others stating that they were initially made in the USA, until Wunderman reorganized production and moved operations to Switzerland, for more efficient control of the overall process, at which time production became Swiss.
However it played out, Wunderman’s watch company, in just a few decades, became a multimillion dollar business, producing and distributing Gucci watches, with growth said to be on the scale of a hundred fold. Not bad!
The brilliant strategy was just to play off of the well known Gucci name, and it inspired many other brands to copy that model, a trend utterly commonplace now.
Subsequent fights in later years over Gucci ownership eventually ended up with Gucci buying Wunderman’s watch operation, to improve the brand’s position. As any fans of Corum watches will know, Mr. Wunderman used the proceeds from that sale to take over Corum watches, bringing his substantial talents there, for much success.
As for Gucci, they finally came under the banner of the global luxury group, Kering, which also manages such brands as Saint Laurent, Brioni, Ulysse Nardin and Girard-Perregaux.
While fashion watch brands are nearly countless now, Gucci is still considered a pioneer of the fashion watch industry, and fashion watches remain a market chunk still very prevalent in watch sales, worldwide.
So, no, Gucci didn’t start with watches, but, then again, Toyota started by making weaving machinery, yes, looms, so, where we start is likely not as meaningful as the progress we make after that.
For Gucci, the entry into watches was an important success. Watch sales at one time were as much as 20% of their revenue stream, and, as stated at the outset, it is a logical and clever means of building brand awareness and growing a customer base.
So, not all “fashion” brands are cutting corners in a Far East factory somewhere, is my long-winded point, and the notion to combine the power of a brand, with the build of a fine watch has propelled a number of brands into rich profits with watches. Four of the planet’s most valuable luxury fashion brands (Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Chanel, and Gucci) all make their own watches in their own Swiss factories.
And, as for “fashion” watches and their standing in the annals of Haute Horology, one only needs to consider that such brands as Cartier, Bvlgari and even Chanel (which likely jump to mind for jewelry and other products, more so than watches), are all full partners with the prestigious Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie, having met the FHH’s criteria for the finest standards of Swiss watch making.
Bottom line, the fashion brands ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at! And I coulda just said that, right? But, the history is a bit of fun.
While reading, or skipping over, lol, you’ve been enjoying pics of my purchase, the Gucci G Chrono, a 44mm, 12.5mm thick, Swiss made, Swiss quartz powered (likely Ronda) chronograph, with a sapphire crystal, 50m WR, and which comes on a beautiful leather Gucci strap with deployant clasp. Lume is there, but nothing special, probably basic SL, which kind of sums up what one pays for here – the G U C C I.
Not for everyone, I know, and this particular model can range up to a few grand almost, in price, for which one would really have to want to sport the brand, I suppose, but I got it for well under a third of that, so it felt like a steal.
I not only like having a bit of Gucci in my life, lol, but I just love the projected opulence of the colors here, the near deep brown, not quite fully black “G” bezel, which ends within the dial itself (not sure how they seal that area?), accented by the polished case, held to the wrist with the Gucci strap.
The colorway is picked up then within the teaked dial, which is rich with brown tones and the gold of the hands and applied indices. It gives a 30 minute totalizer, subdial seconds, main chrono seconds hand, and there is no date feature.
This is just one I’ve wanted to have, because I’ve wanted to have it, and it likely justifies itself even less than the TAG, in the minds of some, but, we buy what we love so that we can love what we buy.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.
Thanks for reading!
Keep on watching!
But, back to the end of last year….
On the heels of the TAG, and on the theme of getting some watches that had long eluded me, comes this Gucci (a brand in which TAG’s overarching ownership group, LVMH, in fact, once had a stake). A bit fortuitous, considering @misterjingles just posted a Gucci as well! We're trending, LOL.
Now -- that TAG buy turned out to be a real delight, and, while I’d first feared that it would be a case of blowing my money on something no more delightful than the average chronograph quartz from any other much cheaper-than-TAG brand, it is most certainly a cut above and, adding in the fact of my brain being impressed with a branded bauble, well, I love it, overpriced branding be damned.
The Gucci idea has similarly been in my head for many years – this watch in particular, in fact, which I first came across when learning more about my hobby, and running into the notion of “fashion” brands, and trying to make sense of all the angst about it.
For some, a fashion brand is simply any brand known primarily to the fashion world, that “also” makes watches. They supposedly are not a pure watchmaker, because they began in life peddling luggage or clothes, perfumes or jewelry, etc. As such, there are snobs who despise fashion brand watches as "wanna be" watches, and throw a wide net to include brands that don’t even really have a stake in the fashion industry, just kind of lumping together anything they don’t like as a fashion outcast. Geez!
And, yes, there is maybe something to be said for a brand riding the wave of its success in other areas, which starts popping out watches to expand consumer reach….and, from a business savvy standpoint, that something to be said is: “Hey, that’s a darn clever idea!”
How did the trend even begin? We can thank the quartz crisis, which turned into quartz gold for fashion brands looking to increase brand awareness. Seeing that they could simply (and affordably!) license out their name to watches they didn’t have to even build, it became a solid trend. Maybe someone couldn’t afford the handbag, but they’d wear the watch, just to be sporting a famous name.
Granted, it may have led sometimes to some brands seeking watches from the lowest bidder, and certainly some of Invicta misses can attest to the fact that a licensed money grab effort is not always going to make for great watches, but in many cases a non-watch exclusive company can wind up offering watches as good as any watch house.
And, let’s face it, there’s a “fashion” element, of course, to many watches we choose to wear, so watches and fashion are clearly not enemies.
In the story of Gucci, as one of the trend setters of the fashion watch industry, we have to understand the tale by following three storylines….
First, Alexis Barthelay, a jeweler from Paris who expanded interest in his brand, by crafting amazing jewelry that also happened to tell the time.
Next, let’s meet renowned watchmaker, business genius and philanthropist, Severin Wunderman. A survivor of the Holocaust during his childhood, he was hidden from the Nazis in a school for the blind, the only seeing child there. Not an easy start to life.
Some accounts of his subsequent journey are a bit difficult to piece together, in what facts are available to glance at briefly, but his life is an astonishing unfolding of rising high, despite starting from very difficult times.
His mother passed when he was but ten years old, and, as a teen, Wunderman eventually settled in the USA, and was at one time managing newspaper delivery boys during the day, with a second job, at night, working in a car park. In the late 1950’s, he found success in the making and selling of gold chains, having met a couple of Italian folks in the same trade.
His next step? Crossing paths with Alexis Barthelay, the aforementioned jeweler, and utilizing his strong sales skills to sell Barthelay watches, having found a market for them in the USA.
For Wunderman, the idea of marketing to Gucci was very tempting. Why just add any name to a watch, when it could be a name that already had a sizable following?
And, so we turn to the third player in this little skit -- Gucci itself.
As one of Italy’s oldest fashion brands (currently rated the number one luxury brand in the world), Gucci began as did many other style brands, making fine leatherworks and luggage. As is often the case with products of excellence, ultimately they became the brand to have for the wealthy and well-heeled, which always seems a confluence of quality products and clever marketing.
Today, the brand is so well known, that Gucci is even an adjective to describe things as being good or excellent, as in “it’s all Gucci up in here!” But, going back to the time before Gucci met Mr. Wunderman, a series of unfortunate events had the powerhouse brand teetering on bankruptcy, and this is where our three stories meet.
It also demonstrates how far the chance winds of life can carry us.
On a sales mission, Wunderman hoped to convince Gucci to buy a quarter million dollars worth of Barthelay watches, to be branded and sold as Gucci watches.
One story has it that a telephone call from Wunderman to the Gucci company just happened to be answered by none other than Aldo Gucci himself, while another telling says that Wunderman had actually visited the flagship Gucci store for his sales pitch, and that Wunderman audaciously answered a ringing phone that store workers were too busy to grab. On the other end of the line? The big boss of Gucci, Aldo Gucci.
Whatever the myth, the fact is that Wunderman did wind up talking to Aldo, and certainly Mr. Gucci knew the company needed something to help its fortunes. He signed Wunderman up, but, it turned out Barthelay had doubts about being able to handle the order, so the story goes, so Aldo Gucci decided to finance Wunderman himself, with the $250,000, to set up Wunderman in his own American based watch facility, making watches to be sold under the Gucci brand. Talk about a successful sales call!
Some reports have it that Wunderman’s USA facility simply distributed watches made in Switzerland already, with others stating that they were initially made in the USA, until Wunderman reorganized production and moved operations to Switzerland, for more efficient control of the overall process, at which time production became Swiss.
However it played out, Wunderman’s watch company, in just a few decades, became a multimillion dollar business, producing and distributing Gucci watches, with growth said to be on the scale of a hundred fold. Not bad!
The brilliant strategy was just to play off of the well known Gucci name, and it inspired many other brands to copy that model, a trend utterly commonplace now.
Subsequent fights in later years over Gucci ownership eventually ended up with Gucci buying Wunderman’s watch operation, to improve the brand’s position. As any fans of Corum watches will know, Mr. Wunderman used the proceeds from that sale to take over Corum watches, bringing his substantial talents there, for much success.
As for Gucci, they finally came under the banner of the global luxury group, Kering, which also manages such brands as Saint Laurent, Brioni, Ulysse Nardin and Girard-Perregaux.
While fashion watch brands are nearly countless now, Gucci is still considered a pioneer of the fashion watch industry, and fashion watches remain a market chunk still very prevalent in watch sales, worldwide.
So, no, Gucci didn’t start with watches, but, then again, Toyota started by making weaving machinery, yes, looms, so, where we start is likely not as meaningful as the progress we make after that.
For Gucci, the entry into watches was an important success. Watch sales at one time were as much as 20% of their revenue stream, and, as stated at the outset, it is a logical and clever means of building brand awareness and growing a customer base.
So, not all “fashion” brands are cutting corners in a Far East factory somewhere, is my long-winded point, and the notion to combine the power of a brand, with the build of a fine watch has propelled a number of brands into rich profits with watches. Four of the planet’s most valuable luxury fashion brands (Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Chanel, and Gucci) all make their own watches in their own Swiss factories.
And, as for “fashion” watches and their standing in the annals of Haute Horology, one only needs to consider that such brands as Cartier, Bvlgari and even Chanel (which likely jump to mind for jewelry and other products, more so than watches), are all full partners with the prestigious Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie, having met the FHH’s criteria for the finest standards of Swiss watch making.
Bottom line, the fashion brands ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at! And I coulda just said that, right? But, the history is a bit of fun.
While reading, or skipping over, lol, you’ve been enjoying pics of my purchase, the Gucci G Chrono, a 44mm, 12.5mm thick, Swiss made, Swiss quartz powered (likely Ronda) chronograph, with a sapphire crystal, 50m WR, and which comes on a beautiful leather Gucci strap with deployant clasp. Lume is there, but nothing special, probably basic SL, which kind of sums up what one pays for here – the G U C C I.
Not for everyone, I know, and this particular model can range up to a few grand almost, in price, for which one would really have to want to sport the brand, I suppose, but I got it for well under a third of that, so it felt like a steal.
I not only like having a bit of Gucci in my life, lol, but I just love the projected opulence of the colors here, the near deep brown, not quite fully black “G” bezel, which ends within the dial itself (not sure how they seal that area?), accented by the polished case, held to the wrist with the Gucci strap.
The colorway is picked up then within the teaked dial, which is rich with brown tones and the gold of the hands and applied indices. It gives a 30 minute totalizer, subdial seconds, main chrono seconds hand, and there is no date feature.
This is just one I’ve wanted to have, because I’ve wanted to have it, and it likely justifies itself even less than the TAG, in the minds of some, but, we buy what we love so that we can love what we buy.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.
Thanks for reading!
Keep on watching!
A big congratulations!
