Swiss Luxury Watches

Ok, so you want to look like you’ve spent much more than what your watch is worth. Most replicas and fake watches are made in China. A recent article from the New York Times gave a glimpse of the conditions surrounding the manufacturing of watches in China. The author talks about a Chinese watchmaking factory.

“[He's] a good salesman, charming guy. He makes watches, about 1.5 million pieces a year. He makes sterling silver watches for the QVC home shopping network and watches with the famous crocodile emblem for Lacoste. He makes Juicy Couture’s hot young line.

Tommy Hilfiger, Jennifer Lopez, Coach, Titan, Trump — name the brand and [he] is manufacturing their watches in China’s southern Guangdong Province, the place that is now the world’s factory.

[He] was wearing a great hulk of a watch called a Bonja. It’s big in Gulf states, where it retails for about $4,000. Leung told me he’s paid $200 for this model and that leaves him a comfortable margin. For Juicy Couture watches that retail in New York for $95, he gets eight dollars. He’s still making money on that. In general he receives about 8 percent of the retail price, or about 40 bucks for a $495 Lacoste watch…

The average worker at Dailywin earns about $150 to $200 a month, before overtime, ranging higher for supervisors. About 70 percent of the more than 400 workers are women, many from inland provinces, living six to a room in on-premise dormitories and sending their earnings home…

The low renminbi rate is about growth, jobs and exports. That’s the fundamental underpinning of the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power… A dollar at 6.83 yuan keeps Chinese-made global brands with their colossal mark-ups in the global mall.”

Excerpt from: “The World Watchmaker,” by Roger Cohen, New York Times, Published: February 8, 2010.

Call me a snob, but I would rather spend a little more than contributing to the propagation of the above-mentioned conditions prevalent in the Chinese watch industry. While some name brands are also made in China, contrast these with the high quality standards used in Swiss watchmaking.  Watch the following video.