This week on aBlogtoWatchWeekly , Rick, Ariel, and Ripley launch the show with thevestigial clap-in and get right to the hot topics of the week: Watches &Wonders, of course, and the many varying views on Trump's tariffs and howthey'll affect the watch industry. But first, Ripley puts in a plug for betterswag at the event next year. Underwear and socks would be awesome! He ran outof clean shirts before his flight home, so he was ever-so-grateful for abrand-new Oris t-shirt. And Doxa g...
Watches & Wonders is in full swing, as are the hot takes! Rick wrangles the usual suspects (and some potato-quality internet connections) for an unscripted, no-holds-barred roundup of standout releases, questionable design choices, and horological head-scratchers. Highlights: 🕰️ Rolex Land-Dweller takes center stage—brilliant innovation or Tissot cosplay? 💥 The Dynapulse escapement has David calling it a "quantum leap." 🍯 Gold rush! Matt swoons over three standout gold watches. ...
The aBlogtoWatch team discusses Formula 1 sponsorships, Pharrell's LEGO movie featuring watches, and Ariel's take on sustainability in luxury watchmaking, arguing for a return to excess over token environmentalism. They analyze Rolex's retail strategies post-Bucherer acquisition, the shift from direct-to-consumer sales, and debate the importance of brand ambassador recognition. Plus, a deep dive into new watch releases, including the Resins Type 7, Kronoswiss Pulse One, and RZE United 8000.
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , the team isnow three. Where's Ariel? Rumor has it he's in Thailand, watch capital of....nowhere! We hope he's relaxing at a White Lotus hotel. Ripley is chilling inhis panic room, and Rick is home under the gray Scotland sky. David appears tobe having a normal kind of day. As you might guess, Formula 1 is the talk atthe top of the show, and Ripley and Rick debrief on the standings. Rick pivotsto the news of Frédéric Arnaud leaving LVMH, which leads David to sur...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , all the guys are in a jolly mood. What's in the water? Perhaps spring has sprung, or somesuch, and as Alfred Lord Tennyson said, "In the spring, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love" — only in this case,"love" is possible Watches & Wonders. Anyhoo, the team dives into the latest and greatest (or not altogether wonderful) watch releases, industry insights, and other watch-related thoughts that come to mind. Th...
This week on aBlogtoWatchWeekly , Ariel calls in from a cabin in the woods, David ishome in Budapest sipping a hot beverage, Rick is at the farm office, and atired Ripley appears to be at home in L.A. — all reprobate seals clapping in,says Rick. Host-with-the-most Rick takes time to explore each person's space,perhaps to delay what's coming next. To wit, David has found a Morgan-Stanley2023-2024 report comparing watch brands, which reveals that the top 50 brandsdropped production of watc...
This week on aBlogtoWatchWeekly , Rick reveals that he's now deputy director of theFBI (now that podcast hosts can hold such roles), and Ripley confirms that Rickis a solid enough conspiracy theorist that.... well, it works. Rick thenannounces that this will be an "F1 episode," and it's hard to knowwhat that might mean. One clue is the red robin on which F1 team each teammember likes best. When talk turns to watches, first up is the IWC Big Pilot's Watch Perpetual Calendar ...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , the guys areall in their respective Brady Bunch-like squares, and speaking of square,SpongeBob SquarePants watches are high horology! This segues quite nicely intoAriel's experience as an attorney specializing in contracts and his articleabout what watch brands need from their owners. In his column, According to Ariel , Ariel discusses why buying a watchbrand isn't about extracting profit but rather thinking about the overall valueof the company — and e...
This week on aBlogtoWatchWeekly , the only two usual suspects are Rick and David.Ariel and Ripley are in flight, or fleeing, or otherwise elsewhere. They are,instead, joined by semi-regular, non-suspect Azad and Kevin, and then surpriseguest, Leslie. All of the Euro-men are complaining about the weather ('tis therainy season in the UK, ya know). They get right down to business with adiscussion of the news that Rolex has retired its Carl F. Bucherer brand, andthere are various degrees of lame...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , Rick, Ariel, David, and Ripley are, for the second week in a row, all in their respective home cities and Rick teases the show's preamble by announcing a very special new limited-edition series of watch cases made by the team's AV garbage. That's all we'll say, for now. (The show is banned in Nepal, but why?) All the guys have new podcast-designed mics and are feeling quite professional, at the moment. Getting down to business, Rick asks Ariel a...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , the gang is all together again and settled into their respective rectangles, all shockingly in their home bases. Rick begins by segueing from the live broadcast of the show (after the clap-in) to reflect on the previous conversation about blue foods being the "taste of 'merica). When they get down to business, the first item on the agenda is the Tudor Black Bay Chrono Flamingo-Blue watch , and it suddenly seems that blue is a theme! But make no mistake; this is...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , Rick is baaaaaaaack to the land of the living — but where is David? Ariel and Ripley are here, and despite the fact that the word "snot" has been mentioned more times than the law should allow in the first five minutes, Rick is also kind enough to ask Ariel and Ripley how they're doing re the fires in Los Angeles. It's a lot. But we're all comforted by talk of watches, so they guys get right to it, and Ariel discusses a dystopian future wh...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , Rick is out sick (but he is listening). David and Ripley are present and accounted for, and Ariel jumps right in with a discussion of some of his predictions for 2025 . He thinks the theme song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show is the best background for this discussion because we're in somewhat of a time warp. His top five trends? Listen in to find out. Hint: There are five, and he goes through them one by one and asks the others what they think of his powers...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , Rick is virtually flanked not only by Ripley, David, and Ariel, but he's also got three guests on board for this week: Kevin Roberts, Alon Ben Joseph, and Simon Ryan. They begin by doing a round-robin of "Where are you, and what are you wearing?" meaning "What watch are you wearing." This greases the wheels for Rick's Rules of Order, in which Rick discusses how the show will unfold vis-a-vis the four categories he's asked each guest to speak to on this NYE show...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly, Rick is once again lost in the Scottish countryside as Ariel, David, and Ripley hold down the holiday podcast fort. Things start off with a deep dive into Seiko's Incredibly Specialized Watch Exhibition 2, including watches for Santa, ninjas, and DJs. Then they get down to brass tacks with the ABTW team's favorite releases from 2024 and a discussion of how the team approaches the decision. Then it's on to a few new watches, including a lighter and a teeny tiny G...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , Brother Rick is conspicuously absent, so it's Ariel running the show alongside Ripley and David, who all know that to take a podcast vacation now would be to deprive listeners of the comfort of a discussion of their watch hobby straight to their ears. The guys get right to it with a look the new Venezianico Arsenale . Ariel proposes that when glasses take over smartwatches, the wrist will become available again for useless things like mechanical timekeeping. Th...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , Rick is back in the proverbial saddle, and the laughs are on high volume again. Ripley is adorned in Tudor cycling gear from head to toe, and Rick admonishes the team by noting their "rubbishment" of Panerai from last week's show, which David wholeheartedly defends. When they get down to business, the "JaGUar" (stet) rebrand is the first item on the docket. (Rick pronounces the word phonetically, which seems to be a British thing.) Then, the guys wax sardonic o...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , the opening question is: Where's Rick? Ariel, David, and Ripley ponder Rick's potential whereabouts, with guesses from something related to farming to simply taking a good old-fashioned vacation. The working proletariat goes on without him. Ariel takes the wheel and shares his astonishment at just how many new watch brands are out there; Ripley concurs. If these guys haven't heard of a brand, who on earth could possibly keep up? Jerome Lambert is the next topic...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly ,Rick and David are both back, so the happy regulars are all reunited. "Who touched whose Cubitus?" is the first question right off the bat, and hilarity ensues. Next up is a look at a WatchPro article regarding Rolex's exit from the Formula 1 stage . They pause for a moment to ponder a lovely and well-photographed visit to Louis Vuitton's Les Fabriques des Arts Workshop , discussing the positioning of the brand in the larger watch world. Then, they guys turn the...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , two of the usual suspects, host Rick and regular commentator David are MIA, either gallivanting or recuperating — or both. So, to mix it up, we have Ariel, Sean, and Ripley, kicking things off with Sean's observation that the news cycle, which usually slows around now each year, is still busily speeding forward in surprising and compelling ways. Ripley is sipping tea instead of Scotch — maybe he hasn't seen the results of the U.S. elections yet. Ariel cuts to t...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , Ariel is traveling, so Rick is joined by David and Ripley, and guests Kevin and Matt. They start off with a 69k Omega X Swatch — say what? — That's a $300 watch. But it's for charity. Next up in the queue is talk of the end of the Only Watch auction, which would be the end of an era if it had actually been an era. Talk then turns to the GHPG Awards, and Ripley takes note of the brands not participating, and the significance of that in context. The guys briefly ...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly, Rick is joined by Ariel, David, and Ripley (is Ripley sipping Scotch?) on U.S. Election Day. The subject of watches is more of a balm than surveying the political landscape, alas. Ripley is happy that he can now wear his Mondaine Stop-to-Go watch since most U.S. states have "fallen back" to standard time. Surprisingly, no one extended the metaphor to politics, but perhaps the polls hadn't closed yet. Getting down to business, the team starts right off with a rev...
Here are the show notes. Do you have a title yet? This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly, Rick is joined by Ariel, David, and Ripley, as per usual, and they start things off by discussing, um, time. How unusual! Well, the subject is the time changes in Europe and the U.S., which marginally has to do with watches, although, honestly, there's no segue except for a brief foray into those rare parts of the world that actually run on 30-minute time zone differentials. It all comes 'round. One of the more i...
Recorded during Geneva Watch Days 2024, David sits down with Breitling Global Head Of Heritage Gianfranco Gentile and Breitling Historian Fred Mandelbaum
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , Rick is joined by Ariel and David, while Ripley is conspicuously absent, and the three muse about his whereabouts. He's visiting a brand we've never worked with, in a country he's never visited. Maybe the mystery will be solved next week. Meanwhile, the remaining trio gets right to it with a discussion of the news that Rolex is out and LVMH is in with Formula 1. The thesis? It's all about the money. Rick can't keep himself from lol'ing that Donald Trump has upp...
Richard is back to host this week's aBlogtoWatch Weekly show — sadly, he needs a vacation from his vacation — and the team starts right off on its usual quirky path by asking ChatGPT the price of a rhino. What does this have to do with watches? It all comes back to Hublot. (You'll have to listen to decode all this.) Then Rick chastises Ariel and Ripley for talking about too many watches last week. Once that post-mort is done, the guys spend some time talking about Ariel's recent column, whose th...
With Richard on the lam (or perhaps, as the team muses, at a Scottish day spa with the family and farm animals), Ariel hosts this week's aBlogtoWatch Weekly show, flanked, as always by David and Ripley. They get right down to it with a discussion of a trend in watch world: coffee table books. They flip through the pages of several new releases and ponder their respective audiences. Switching gears, the guys discuss the new Breitling Chronomat NFL Collection watches and express some awe around th...
This week on aBlogtoWatch Weekly , Rick is joined not only by Ariel, Ripley, and David but also by Richard Benc from Studio Underd0g. After some chitchat about how expensive it is for brands to attend Watches and Wonders, the guys jump right into a day in the life of Benc, who's starting his day with this podcast and then heading off to launch a new watch! He gives us some of the backstory of the new StudioUnderd0g 03 Series Monopusher, which dovetails with the topic of collaborations and th...
