PeterCDE
10167
Exactly that´s to come
G'day,
as an interested amateur, my 0.02 cents are pretty much worthless...
But i agree and not hanging expectations too high myself:
1) Several major brands started production on short-time work, which limits capacities (and probably developments). Such happens at some big BIG names (in the horological order of things and by production totals) in the watch industry. It might be concluded some new models will be postponed, until demand and financial status (including retailers/dealers) proof to be a bit more on the safe side. Some brands currently run on the edge of insolvency, having stopped or very significantly cut down orders on watch production components. For such brands it might be a question whether or not 2009 can be survived, maybe a somewhat more pressing issue than collecting orders during the SIHH fair.
2) Not only since 2008 there´s a significant bottle neck in supply, such as vital watch components. One example are high-end dials, but even seemingly simple things like jewels for watch movement can result in more than 18 months of wait. Already in 2007 we´ve seen a lot of "design studies" in the annual watch shows, which later became difficult to produce due to the lack of available parts. Such happened in 2008 at least in the same degree and it did cause quite some frustrations (including dealers and customers). This may have warned some big players to be careful and not to sell what later turns out to be difficult to deliver.
3) For SIHH brands, the model year of 2009 starts almost 9 month after SIHH 2008. That´s in fact not a long time to push out new things. And even prototypes or "design studies" need to be existant (again, parts supply may lead to omissions here). While i´m not ruling out long-term developments to be seen, i´m not expecting these to outnumber the "smaller" additions and "updates" to come.
4) As per dealers, in some regions reportedly shelves aren´t empty by now. Such seems to affect "entry-level" to "medium" price range. This will limit means to take in new stock, hence orders may be smaller or slower.
I might add and emphasize all above is not the case at Girard-Perregaux, JeanRichard and A. Lange & Söhne, except parts suppy which is a common problem for any higher brand these days. But then, each of these brands already started to rearrange the model portfolio earlier in record sales years and do maintain a likewise limited production total, hence an overwhelming number of new releases wasn´t to be expected anyway.
5) On the opposite, the current trend for really expensive hardware is reported to be unbroken and so are sales in the very high-end segment for several Haute Horlogerie brands. I´m tempted to conclude we may get to see some really expensive (in the higher 6 figures and above) "bling" and specialities (tourbillons, repeaters). This at least if critical components (for those brands without production capacities in this field) can be obtained in time (or paid for).
Over all, it will be a most interesting year and for many brands, a very difficult one.
On the other hand, in the last years several brands maintained research in extremely interesting fields and the results are promising to be real stunners.
Cheers,
Peter
JANUARY 19-24TH!!
In fact...
did not even notice RL until now
I expect...
