Welcome back to another episode of Hodinkee Radio. Today's episode of the show is sponsored by our friends at Brookladi, the award-winning whiskey from Isla, who we have partnered with here at Hodinkee for the last couple of years. Stay tuned for an update later in the show on what we're up to this season. Hello and welcome to another Hodinkee Radio episode. It's actually our last episode of the year and the fourth in our year-end series. So we did two looking back at 2024. We did...
Two, looking forward to 2025. I've already recorded and you'll be able to see the one with Malaika and Tantan. Check that out on YouTube or certainly on the site. But check out the previous episodes for sure. And now we've got the final episode of the year and I've got editor and photographer Mark Koslerich and editor Rich Forden joining me today to chat all about kind of what we think of 2025, what we're excited about, what we're kind of concerned about.
where we think things are going. Guys, you know, we spent the last episode with you two really chatting about what it looked like the trends had been for the last year. I'm interested in what your sort of predictions are, even at sort of a broad level. If there's something from this year that you think won't work next year, something we'll see more of next year, if there's a play that feels...
I feel like the playbook for the last several years has been vintage-inspired design for a lot of watch brands. Does that playbook still feel relevant? Do we think there's a new one? Where do you guys land on this? Maybe, Rich, you want to take it away? Yeah. Thanks, James. I had lots of questions in there. I think the topic on vintage re-releases or inspiration.
We're seeing things that have a bit of vintage inspiration already, but are moving things forward. I think the industry as a whole is lacking in new designs and some of the smaller brands are coming in with.
vintage inspired things that feel very very new so it doesn't have to be like an rm or some crazy hublo to be a new fresh design to the watch world i mean there's a lot of like open space to run in when you look at watches so right I would expect continual tying to heritage product with brand story and product story, but offering something that's truly different and trying to move things forward, which I think the watch world could use a lot of.
How about you, Mark? What do you think? You feel similar? Yeah, I mean, you asked what I was concerned about. I don't know that we have enough time for that, and I don't know that it's on topic for this podcast. Hey, it's the end of the year. This could also just be the airing of the grievances.
let's let's just get into it now um lights a cigarette um no i mean i i have similar sort of general concerns i i don't know that rich framed him as concerns but like there is there's so much repetition and um you know i think a lot of people might be surprised at the number of um you know cold emails and pitches and messages to my instagram and messages to my personal email which i specifically
The only place it's listed, I specifically say don't send watch pitches to this email, but people still do it anyway. And I would say like 80% of them look the same. It's hard to... imagine that when we see things like burner on or other brands coming out with creative things and i think that's great and necessary but it's so hard
because you don't want to be mean to people that are trying really hard and doing something new but it's hard to for me to sit and look at somebody and find a way to say like you're dive watch that looks like everybody else's dive watch isn't maybe necessarily the thing that the market needs right now or might not be successful i i do have a concern
as we talk about like the trends of the market uh economically and and a lot of like hemming and hawing about downtrends and prices going down i'm a little worried about um how many micro brands smaller brands like this brands that aren't bringing something unique to the table will survive in 2025 um so not to start out or end the year on a depressing note but that's something that i've been thinking about for a while
i think that's a that's an interesting concern and i think there's a couple examples here of like things that i predicted years ago but of course i was just like dead wrong
I thought that we would have been totally tired by the vintage trend now. And instead, we have a major brand relaunching Universal Genève. Clearly, we're not tired of this as a whole. Maybe it works better with UG because they're... they strive to align with some sporty elements but very dressy as well versus you know a purely sort of mid-century sport watch brand and then at the same time i think i also said that yeah
Probably 2018, 2019, I thought it was going to be a pretty tough time out there for micro brands, especially those in the budget categories, the Kickstarter brands, things like that. And it feels like they've also enjoyed quite a bump in the resulting years from...
the increase in attention during the pandemic, but then also into what we've seen post pandemic with kind of a lot of price sensitivity, bringing more focus to these brands that are able to make a watch that people can be excited about.
for 1500 bucks or less something like that yeah now now that price sort of that that price point has moved up a little bit i think you know it's it is harder to keep things under 1500 we were we were talking about this for year end recaps is you know give me a couple extra hundred dollars and i can find something pretty good but that budget mark is is harder to meet i do have i have a question for rich actually as somebody that pays attention to the
vintage market secondary market these sort of revival brands and stuff i assume that 2025 will finally be the year of urban jorgensen um we've been waiting for a while we missed i think the 250th anniversary i still see a lot of them come up for market a lot of dealers asking about them
posting urban jurgensen all the time a collected man just posted one is that a sign that there's still demand is it people trying to get ahead of hype by like gathering resources and holding on to them or do you think urban jurgensen is going to actually have like a pretty successful launch when it happens yeah i think it gets into its topic of like how brands are doing real launches or
urban urgenson is a vintage inspired brand whenever kari decides to come out with it which you will never hold him to a date as we've learned but what i like to think of for vintage inspired brands and this gets into ug as well is that like the lawn jeans playbook from 2014 2015 is been played and does not work anymore
like they did a great job they're probably the best big brand to bring back a heritage line that was super inspired by things and make it a little bit bigger make it wearable make it palatable to their customer which is a more consumer level customer but also draw in the attention from enthusiasts who maybe can't find that vintage thing or think it's a bit too small. I think that playbooks done. I don't want you to do that playbook. Nobody does. But it's still a very, very fine line to walk.
We'll see what UG does. Obviously, they've already done one watch, which is in very low quantities, which is more of that one to one playbook. But I understand that's not the direction going forward, which. I'm almost I'm glad to hear, you know, I'd rather you see that name be used as something to move watches forward with a great heritage to tie to rather than just say.
You don't want to go on eBay and buy a UG. You can walk into a store now. How about that? Like, I don't want that. Nobody wants that. On the Urban Jurgensen topic, you know, interest is still growing. Rose gold. Reference 3 just did, I think, 65 at Phillips or Sotheby's in New York, which is a really good number for that watch. I think that's the number they should sit at. It's a perpetual calendar. really, really amazingly finished from the dial hands encased perspective. But
I think there's a bit of speculation going on. The interesting thing about Urban Juergensen to me is the man that owned or was very involved in brand. He didn't own it. Peter Baumgartner did, but his best friend was Dr. Helmut Kroff.
who is still very active in the watch scene i was in geneva um the first night i was there i was shown by someone actually works for a collected man a what was told to me as a unique white gold reference three which is when you find them in white metal it's most often platinum um and he was showing it to a couple people around this party i was at and i was like that's really cool i wrote a whole story about reference twos and threes and i saw one in white gold before
ran into helmet crop the next night and he's like oh yeah we made like 10 15 of those i don't remember exactly how many but definitely not unique so it's interesting when vintage collecting gets this point of like when whenever we think about truths in vintage collecting it's always like
in this distant past which you can never know it's almost like archaeology but with urban jorgensen but the guy who bought the back stock and all the archives is like still around so you can ask him which i think actually can kind of hurt a brand when information is super set in stone like that or you know whether he's willing to give it or not it was just to me in conversation he might not even like me sharing it here but um as a collecting
sort of community i think it's better for the market when things are a bit more like rolex than they are patek where it's like yeah you know this case and this dial come from the same year let's accept that that's correct Whereas Patek is like, if it's not on the extract, that's not your dial, which Irving Irving is in should it sort of mature a ton, that style of collecting.
is probably more towards the patek side of things where we know what the watches were when they were first made um when i look at kari's relaunch i tried to get information out of him when i wrote that article i think it was about a year ago i've tried many times so don't don't worry that you didn't
get much even so much as like are you going to use the same lugs which are very unique on urban jorgensen's from the 90s that i love so much like they're very small like turtle lugs but super super tiny teardrops and he was like yeah i won't even say that much so i mean we'll see the direction uh the guilloche dials that were in urban areas and made by derrick pratt and his team probably will be carried through takari's iteration because that's you know
also his specialty but beyond that i'm just waiting and seeing and i'm not gonna i'm not setting a calendar um reminder for that one we'll see Again, special thanks to our partners at Brookladdy for the support of Hodinkee Radio. This holiday season, we've partnered with Brookladdy on a special giveaway that you can learn all about in the link in the article below or in the notes for this episode.
You might be surprised at what you see, and you most definitely don't want to miss it. And now, back to the show. One thing that we touched on while getting into the Urban Jurgensen line there was pricing of watches these days. Do you guys think that there's a pricing problem? We definitely see it in the comments where pretty much any watch comes out at almost any price. And the pushback is like, hey, I'm interested in this, but why this number?
There's a new level of price sensitivity that comes from the level of inflation and other things we've been experiencing outside of just watch pricing. But I think it also has an effect on watch pricing. And I think that in many ways, it feels as though pricing is kind of outstripped. the normal kind of growth that pricing can go through over a period of time? Where do you guys land on pricing? Because value still feels okay, but there's definitely examples of stuff that feel real spicy.
It's tough to say because there's one watch in particular that I talk about a ton. Every time I look at their website, it seems like we can get an extra $500 out of you. We can get another $500 out of you. And I like I look away for two seconds. I come back and it's five hundred dollars more. And that's not really how it is. But when you set in your mind like, oh, this was good at, you know, ten thousand one hundred and then it's ten thousand five hundred.
and then it's 11 000 the last time i looked at uh this watch and it was it's the slgw 003 the manual line grand seiko that's crept up yeah and it literally just came out this year so i was a little I was a little surprised at that. But then there's also, I think the hardest thing maybe for some people, first of all, like understanding that your frame of reference for what a watch is worth is formed when you start looking at that watch. And maybe if the watch.
Or that framework of watches, whether it's Speedmasters, have been out for ages and some people have been looking at Speedmasters for 10 years and thinking, oh, you know, Speedmasters should be X price and now it's X plus two or three thousand dollars.
um you're gonna feel that that hit for the pricing a lot more and then the other side of it too is when you compare against other people on the market or even within the brand i think it becomes very easy to become very price sensitive and a little surprised um i mentioned Maybe to you, James, the other day, but I was going through the Rolex catalog and I did not realize that there's only like a $600 Delta between.
a date submariner and a gmt and that starts to feel a little strange as well like shouldn't the gmt be significantly more complicated and to be I don't know if it's a GMT should feel more expensive or a Submariner should feel more like a more entry-level budget option or something like that, a little more value in there. But I think people are paying a lot of attention to all of those little things.
any little movement any little thing that you can pick up on in terms of pricing feels really big lately we're also just seeing new watches come out at what feels like more than they would have come out at just a couple of years ago so it's not just
the progressive percentage added on to a line of successfully working watches he's like new watches come in you go like well okay i guess that's the price like the speed master that i wrote about the pilot speed master i think people were sort of surprised at the price on that And it's sort of what I was alluding to when you're used to a Speedmaster of some sort being worth, you know, maybe say under $8,000.
and a new one comes out and all of a sudden it's significantly more than that even though there's nothing you know that you can do a direct one-to-one correlation for a new model even if there's small changes like mechanical this one's an automatic it has 100 meters of water resistance or whatever but you you've sort of already framed your expectation of what a a speed master can be and even though those have now crept up over eight thousand dollars
Something that's getting closer to 10 just feels really outside what you're used to, whether or not it's a good value for the specs or whatever. Rich, what do you figure? Yeah, I think... on the modern watch side obviously is what we're talking about here where the brands let me down a lot of times is that i i do not think that these large modern brands are hurting for margin
So, yes, you can give them excuses of inflation costs being higher. And they just pass those right on to consumers without wanting to. I mean, with wanting to. sort of maintain their previous margins which we don't know for a lot of brands but i i know they're they're very healthy right like i would like to see a bit more respect of price bands by the brands do not push themselves out of something just because costs are rising given macroeconomic factors i can come to this question from
I used to work on the shop side and be more on the merchandising and buying side. And I can give credit to a former colleague, Saori Omura here. She was a master at pricing when we did our vintage drops and. We would have conversations all the time of this is a great watch. It has to be under seven because.
once you creep over seven even if it's seventy two hundred dollars that you're asking you're asking someone to spend ten thousand you know if there's certain barriers in watch pricing where it starts to become feeling like you're spending more. And if you keep it under those barriers, it feels like you're spending less. For example, like 38 is way closer to spending three grand than it is to spending five grand mentally, even though you're spending five grand like.
after tax after everything um there are these certain and excuse me if i'm getting a bit too high-minded but we used to think about it a lot is like what is the psychological process of somebody clicking that buy button and
if we can move the price a couple hundred dollars and make someone feel a lot better about their purchase then that's not a return that's also a happy customer you know like there are certain things that you can do specifically on the we would do that work on the buy side with the seller and say hey
Can we knock 100 bucks off this price? We want to keep it under here so it sells quickly and we have a happy customer. Brands can do that, too, where they say we're going to give up $100, $200 of margin.
to make our customer feel a bit better by keeping it a speedy what is it under seven grand instead of a little bit over like that's a big barrier am i right there i think the last time i checked speedy pricing but plus or minus a thousand i think but yeah yeah i mean the same cycle like psychology can apply to the difference between seven and eight you know those especially when you're under 10 grand it's very very sensitive even a couple hundred bucks um
And I would like to see brands respect that further. I don't think they need to. I don't think they will. But I'll just call it out and say something I wish they cared more about. No, and I like the position of making the recommendation, essentially. This is something people should be focusing on. I just think there's eras.
everything's a push and a pull, right? The swing of the pendulum. And there's areas where price sensitivity is very low, 2021, 2022. And there's areas where it's quite high. And I think a lot of us can remember even like 2015, 2014. We saw a lot of adjustments to the market in terms of pricing and that sort of thing. And I'm definitely curious to continue on this trend of how we might approach these sorts of things. So just for fun.
for 2025 you're going to be and we've got a handful of brands i've got on a list here the ceo of a brand what would you do to kind of like fine-tune something that feels like it would be a good move for 2025 why don't we kick it off with like a brand that absolutely crushed it in 24 with tutor if you guys were if you guys were going to be in charge of tutor for the year or whatever would you just carry on the same
Is it more Formula One? Is it less Formula One? Is it more Pelagos, which has definitely been in the playbook for the last year? Or is it less now that that line's quite broad? What do you guys think? I have some hopes.
tutors an interesting one because i i feel like every once in a while they give you exactly what you want um i think the black bay monochrome was kind of that and it was sort of proof that it's okay for them to run into rolex a little bit i think there's been some skittishness the last few years of tutor being like we don't want to come too close to giving you a perfect version of the rolex you can't get
So let's give you something that has a little bit of oddity or variety. We still saw that this year. The Black Bay 58 GMT is something that I would have probably immediately bought if it had the... you know styling of the black bay gmt with the pepsi bezel and you know or even even if they had done the white dial version of that you know but the guilt and everything like that i think
turned a good number of people off of that watch and sometimes that feels like what they're trying to do um you know making sure that people think long and hard about what they want whether it's you know do you actually want the rolex or are we going to give you a budget of something that budget pick of something that's going to compete with that um i think you know i heard the feedback from the fxd gmt i don't really again i don't necessarily see that as
I see that as a design choice. But I also see a world in which if that was just a black watch with a lot less color and stuff, it would have been a much more massive hit with people.
so if i was you know in charge of tutor which would probably make me i i don't understand their corporate structure but it would probably make me in charge of roletts as well so i guess it's a cop-out but i would i would i don't want to use the word confidence because i think they're doing a lot of really bold things and confidence makes it sound like they're not but like have the confidence to say like
look, we're not going to be competing necessarily for the same market share. And so if I'm doing the budget version and I'm giving people exactly what we want, we are doing the best thing for our customers who probably aren't going to be buying. a rolex every day anyway i think the overlap is not as big as they are afraid it will be um okay so that that would be my pick for tutor all right rich you feel any differently a different strategy in your mind
I actually feel quite similarly. Tudor does annoy me with their use of color and Fotina and on products that if used in a much more toned down color palette would be better products almost.
like unanimously and i think that gets into the rolex not wanting to compete with rolex thing and wanting to give people an option that's lower price point and has a bit more color is more of a unique sort of motif i guess it would be but uh i this mark's thoughts actually brought me back to a vintage story that i've heard um when
When Rolex switched from hollow folded end link oysters to solid end link oysters, they updated the Tudor Submariner as well, which at that time was the same watch, just with a ETA movement and it was all black. You know, there was much more similarities between Tudor and Rolex at that point than there are now. But they updated the Tudor Oyster to be solid like as well. And they saw a decrease in Rolex Mariner sales. I mean, this is, of course, just a story. I don't know the actual numbers.
But you do see as you move further into the 90s, they actually revert to their back to a folded link oyster to make it feel cheaper and to sort of drive more people towards the Submariner from Rolex.
um which i think gets into a lot of the psychology of what tudor and rolex mean to that larger brand or foundation however definitely set up now yeah definitely at the time i think i think that philosophy i think that the connection between the two brands is quite different than it was 20 years ago um but i guess you know following the relaunch in the us to sort of tie up that point
i think tudor and rolex are more split now than they were ever in terms of where they're thought of in the market i think when somebody's new and into watches they might say oh yeah tudor is the sister brand of rolex and that's why people sort of start to get interested but i think they're
Customer bases are so different now that Tudor could do more to release products in more Rolex-y colors like the Black Bay Monochrome and not be so afraid of stealing market share from Rolex, which is just not happening. like if you look at the colors rolex uses which are very very toned down very mass market the pepsi and the batman and the sprite i mean the sprite feels crazy even it's just green you know like um
I think Tudor could use some of those more mass market colors and be more successful while also not stealing any market share from Rolex. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree if I was put in charge. I'd say, let's just try and do... a couple more really conventional watches. I think they have such a strong lineup of options. And then even though that's strong and they garner a huge amount of attention in the industry and the rest of it.
Then they launch something like what we all call the monochrome, the 2024 41 millimeter Black Bay. And you just go like, yeah, but this is the one. like it took them however many years 12 years or whatever uh to kind of dig into that and and i think that they just made a great thing and i would love them to take that formula and apply it to the gmt and apply it to the the 58 in general and the 54.
and all this sort of stuff and just kind of keep iterating in that space. And, you know, hopefully we continue to see some cool kind of avant-garde thinking in the FXD space. I think it's like the FXD being a sub-brand of the Pelagos gives them some room to play around, whether it's a...
you know, cycling chronograph or something as wild as like the proper FXD GMT and that sort of thing. So I think there's lots of good on the horizon for them and I'm excited to see it. And I mean, obviously we can... parlay this right into rolex we've got a handful of brands so i'm going to say you got two or three sentences what would you do with uh rolex this year mark daytona single tone sub dials
no yeah no i mean that's that's for me that that would be it i mean look they only did one steel sports watch last year uh at watches and wonders which i think really people didn't process um yeah
Steel, Daytona, Leica Le Mans with the singletone subdials is basically, I think, everything that anybody's been asking for. I don't care about the lollipop indices on the subdials or any of that. I don't need the red on the... bezel just give a classic looking daytona back to the market and um i mean rollez is printing money already so i guess i could say they'll be printing even more money but um that would be it for me so thanks rich
Yeah, I think there's a few small tweaks that Rolex could make to already existing products like the Submariner. I just think of it because Jeff Hilliard is always complaining about the clasp on his new Submariner in the office. Rolex like still leans into wanting to create a professional product for this imagined consumer that's diving deep with their watches or doing the.
exact thing that you're supposed to be doing with their professional models which is the reason why that clasp is so big and long because of dive extensions and wanting to you know feel like a very stout product for that Honestly, imaginary consumer. I'm sure people are diving. There's a handful for sure, but it's not to the extent that the Submariner is made. That's two very different numbers. I don't think you lose much of that. consumer or that wearer and like
big part of your brand identity by making the small tweaks to make a watch like the Submariner a bit more comfortable for everyday life. And I think that sort of thinking can be trickled down throughout their whole catalog for those professional models like, hey, guys. We don't have to be so, so professional anymore. You're making a watch that's, I think, mass market for the most part and debatably luxury, according to some of our team members. But yeah, I think.
that is long gone for rolex you know and they're not making a watch for scuba divers anymore and they could do a few small tweaks i would also say like within the world of rolex's lineup they also have the pro the pro pro diver in the sea dweller so i think they would have room to actually make the sub a little bit more cushy if you will I would love to see what the next eventual evolution of the Explorer 2 is. We haven't seen a fully new take on that model in quite some time.
But I'm not playing the guessing game. We'll get to that in March or whatever when we run that story with all the Photoshop. But I think it's an exciting time. With you guys on the call, I would love also, again, try and keep it... tight so we can get to a handful of these but what about patek is there something you would just maybe maybe we go this route doesn't have to be the ceo thing
What's just something you would love to see from Patek? In a recent video that Ben did for the UBS thing, he spoke about wanting a really genuinely high-end take on a time-only Patek.
something with the finishing from the higher level models in a very tech forward movement and that sort of thing is that would you guys just pair it like is that something that's kind of universally felt among patek's fan base i would just say simplify for protect like that's all they really need to do is um they have for for a brand that makes so few watches in a year they they have a lot of models they could simplify you know
also simplifies maybe some of where they're drawing inspiration from in their history and you know look if i could if i could have anything if i could do like a slightly smaller qp chronograph um with like a vishay case you know that's not a very it's a complex movement but it's not a very complex demand um forget like triple step cases or whatever but just like simplify and give sort of a little bit more of a classic taste and sure a little bit less you know what do you think rich
Yeah, I think Ben's call out is basically he wants Patek to make a retch up or something on that level. I would want a similar looking and feeling product. But at the other end of the pricing spectrum, I'd love to see Patek come out with a viable. less than 38 39 millimeter calatrava that you could enter the brand with they just don't have that product right now they don't have the entry level this is what patek is time only watch um which i think is desperately needed
Okay, cool. I agree with those for sure. What about Cartier? I know certainly, Rich, you just did a great story for the magazine, Volume 13, reference points on the Tank LC. What would you love to see from, you know, we had a party at Cartier last year. We were all in the room. It was a very busy day and they had a lot of watches. What would you guys love to see, you know, come March, April from Cartier?
Party of the Bay does a lot of what I would already want to see, to be honest. I think of modern brands, they respect their heritage maybe the best. That being said, they respect their heritage the best at the high price point CPCP stuff. I would like to see that level of thinking and that level of care and honestly sizing and like case thickness. The effort that they put towards that CPCP level product is for the consumer.
Like me, who is really knowledgeable about their history and understands how those vintage and even like even from the 90s cases feel and how they wear on your wrist. I'd like to see that trickle down to the more. commercial product like a centre that you don't have to spend 80 grand to buy would be amazing. Mark, what do you figure for Cartier? That's about what I would say, I think.
Again, they do a lot of really respectful things with their heritage. Every year they come out with something really interesting. I think it was the Cousin that was the watch that you could use.
press and it would move and you know it was that was kind of a scary thing to witness in person this like cushion watch that you could just compress the case it's a pillow and you can push on it but it's set with diamonds and stuff like the most expensive tide pod i've ever held just like this is terrifying you know then they do they do their you know rewind this year which i think a lot of people thought that they were crazy for um when it came out it's a crazy idea
and now it's like in a lot of people's picks for you know i think gq mentioned it as one of the best watches of the year i think a lot of people have come around to it as a crazy idea um i think that kind of thing but maybe make it slightly less limited slightly more accessible
I also like this is a really random thing and maybe they're doing it for like high-end clients and I don't know but bring bring back the like super wild 1920s Cartier mystery clocks I don't know who wants them okay I don't know like
who wants to spend a million dollars on a jade mystery clock but i want to see that like sitting in the center of the watches and wonders display and just be like okay cool they just brought back this thing that people are going crazy for on the auction market and they're i think they're very aware of what the market
is is doing so it would be kind of fun to see absolutely oh i got i got one more for cartier um sapphire or blue cabochons on white metal cases i think just do not like the ruby or red cabochons on platinum watches all right interesting
Well, there you go. So a few tips for Cartier there. Look, the next one is one that I think it's a whole different ballgame than what we've been talking about. But what about with Swatch? Arguably the kind of the... impression brand on the internet of the last couple years thanks to moon swatch and then uh in some ways also scuba 50 downstream of that what uh what would you guys love to see from swatch i talked about this with maleka and tan tan and they had some ideas for
watches they would love to see be Swatchified, like in the same metric as the Moon Swatch and the Scuba 50. If we're even dreaming outside of the realm of the Swatch group, what brand do you think would offer a really fun platform for that sort of exploration and that sort of move to bring a brain that we would know as watch nerds down to a level where a lot more people might be interested in experiencing it and lining up for the product and all that kind of stuff.
I don't know about doing a Moonswatch-related collab or something like that, but one, I know that they've put some online. I'd like to see them start putting more of these releases online for people. i think you know now that they've slowed down past the moonshine releases being so frequent i think the pace is pretty good um So, yeah, I mean, I don't know. What I'd like to see is more options just in their general lineup. I know they have a ton of watches out there.
um but i went into a swatch store with my mom actually a couple weeks ago and was looking for something that might fit her and just like there weren't enough smaller options there weren't enough things that really did anything for her i was going to buy her one just as a fun gift and and um you know so a couple more options a couple more fun things a couple more simple things just continue expanding the lineup now that you've got the eyeballs on the brand
and again like look you they know what they're doing with the moons watch thing you've james you've said it like people ask us to stop covering it we'll stop covering it when they stop reading it you know um the amount of And it's not all about the clicks, but that does show that there is a level of interest when that stuff comes out. So who am I to say that we shouldn't cover that? Rich, what do you figure?
Yeah, on the collaboration question, I'm still trying to think, but I don't know why this one popped ahead. pop to mind but um they've done a chronograph they've done a dive watch i'd like to see something a bit more interesting on the dress side um like a dressy swatch collaboration i think would be cool i don't think it would be nearly as popular as something like a moon swatch and um
But like, I don't know why this one obviously it's in the group, but I actually really like Harry Winston's aesthetic. The case that mimics the front doors of their I think it's their flagship boutique. I'm not sure. I don't even know what they call the name. or this case these days but it's very like architectural and um i think they might sell four and three to me but doing a moon or a swatch collab with harry winston in that case i think would be really cool actually a harry swatch
Yeah, yeah. It's got a ring to it. Yeah, and it's a totally different product than what we're thinking of, probably. Yeah, I think it's a fascinating thing to kind of dream about other brands that I think it could work on. I think the craziest one in my mind would be Richard Mill, like a Swatch Richard Mill, something that captured the case shape and the architecture, but rendered it not in, you know, nanotubes.
tpts but rather in uh in bioceramic you know obviously the the issue there's some issue there with to really replicate a richard mill you usually have some insane complication or technical sort of evolution or even just like skeletonization. So some of that could be kind of difficult, but I do kind of like dream of that. I think Hublot would be an interesting partner for them as well, like to do a little Big Bang or even something more.
wild something in like in a little bit more of a conceptual space could be really fun uh yeah i i don't think the idea is going away i think this would be a crazy time for them to like go ah we did enough it's all good i think we'll see more speedies i don't know if we'll see more block pond
But I'd be surprised if we didn't see more speedies down the road from them. And I agree with Mark. The thing that I would be changing if I was in charge would be, I get like if you just launched the brand new one and it's for a specific color of the moon.
sure yeah it's it's store only for the first month or it's store only and they sell them out and you don't have to put them online but with anything that's not limited like just sell it online let people buy it I had one last idea with this watch thing, and I thought about it because I have this watch from a retailer in Japan, and I think it's something that they could maybe do.
You said they've done other complications. What about a push-button minute repeater swatch? I have a quartz minute repeater. It's so cool. What's the brand on that? it's shellman retailer yeah shellman in japan we'll put it in the show notes you guys have to see this thing it jaw dropped for not that much money when when you showed it to me yeah i mean they're they're harder and harder to find because they were made in the i think in the 90s late 90s maybe but um but
you know it's a miota movement it's a quartz movement and it's a digital chime so it has that digital like almost eight-bit quality but it kind of when you leave the door open on your chevy lumina So why not do that if you're Swatch? I'm sure it would maybe be a $500 watch, but I'm sure they could figure out a way to make a beeping sound out of a watch, and then all of a sudden they've got some sort of minute repeater.
i mean that's a really fascinating idea because it takes it kind of takes the moon swatch idea and flips on its head where they're taking an iconic design and like a cultural element and making it a swatch and With this, imagine if it was a Blancpain or a Breguet or something like that, where you could really tap into the structure of some very traditional watchmaking and introduce that as the platform for new enthusiasts. I think that could be... That's actually...
That's cool. I like that idea. Look, we are running the clock though. So I just wanted to leave it up for the last five minutes or whatever we've got. Anything else you guys are like looking forward to next year? Something you're excited about?
I'm kind of like I'm stressed about it, to be fair, but I'm also kind of excited to see what Watch and Wonders is going to be like after last year. I think it's going to be I'm expecting some fireworks would be my guess. Yeah, I mean, I think we were sort of told.
going into watches and wonders last year that this year was going to be kind of tame yeah um which year whatever yeah and it was you know people people holding back 2025 nice round number you get something interesting coming out i think that's fine um until the you know it's like you put off a deadline and all of a sudden
You have 14 assignments that are due at the same time. It's kind of exciting to see and you hope that it's going to happen. But now I'm a little stressed about if you've got 12 brands that are going to have... the biggest year you've got an anniversary for vacheron 270th you've got an anniversary for ap so there i think there's going to be a lot going on the other thing is is when you say stuff like that it does
push the expectations up a little bit um you know and so it's it's very possible that like it could be you could walk into watches and wonders and have the uh the like christmas day uh sort of situation where you open the package and you're like oh socks
You know, like, you know, you got really excited. You told people what you wanted and that's what you got, which I've started to reach the point in my life where socks aren't a terrible gift. Oh, socks are a great gift. But if you're expecting a yak back. The socks are tough, you know? Yeah. The only one on this call, old enough for the yak back. Understood. Okay, fine. Rich, how about you? Any final thoughts for 2025?
I'm just thinking about my sort of what I call 2024, which was the year of the shaped watch. I think 2025 might be the year of we're tired of the same shaped watch. I'm just I'm just thinking of the actual. buyer and someone who's interested in something like that is pretty thin and i i sort of hesitate with especially the larger brands um if there's shaped watches on the floor at watches and wonders i think we're in we're in trouble
What sort of trouble? I think people will just get tired of that trend and revert back to round and more standard designs pretty quickly. I'm not calling it because I think there's something else going on with the crash market. If you look at the way the crash has sort of trended downwards, it's telling me that the buyer for things like that at the highest level is not a very wide market.
i think if if micro brands continue to go into that space and and look into different shapes although i'm all for it i'll i'll love them every time um i think sort of the mass watch world might sort of flinch if uh if brands and smaller brands continue to enter into this shaped uh like interesting design led uh markets uh nice yeah good feedback and a good thought i had the shaped
shaped trend on the list and we didn't quite get to it. That's how these pods go. I'm sure we'll have lots of fresh conversations in the new year, but I wanted to thank both you guys for coming on and closing out 2024 with me.
popping champagne now is this how it's going let's do it yeah i don't this will probably run like right around new year's so one of us somebody will be getting some champagne for sure i should have had like sparklers or something ready for the yeah you guys didn't bring caviar and champagne we'll just have we'll put all that
in digitally it'll be okay we'll use the ai it'll be fine but yeah thank you so much for listening and to you guys for coming on the show and if you're listening and want to get in on the conversation about what you think 2025 is going to be like, what your favorite parts of 2024 were, major watches, releases you're hoping to see next year, the rest of it.
Hit the show notes and you'll find the comments just below that on hoodinky.com and certainly a great conversation over on YouTube as well. So thanks so much for listening this year and we'll be back in early 2025 with more. Take care.