Imagine you are looking at a Chronograph: a watch that both tells the time and has a stopwatch function. There are thousands of different ones available, but only one or two in front of you. 

Starting with the dial or display of the watch, what can you see?

Looking at the front, back and sides of the case is it clear what material it is made of?

Is there a brand on the dial, is this repeated on the back, what other writing is on the dial and the back of the case?

When you look at a watch, it is important to take in all of these details to start to determine the quality.

The watch world is huge and it is important to get good value for money. You could make mistakes and feel disappointed in your purchase, or worse, end up with a watch that stops working or breaks easily.

But before we get to a watch, we need to think about the brand. A brand can be a “shortcut” to the quality of the watch, so it’s important to consider the quality of a brand when considering making a watch purchase. Brands exist to inform us as to the nature of a product. This blog Post will help us think about what makes for a good quality watch brand.

We're often faced with too much choice in watch shops

What Is A Good Watch Brand?

Brands exist to sell things to customers. They can (and should) be judged as much as their products. For watch brands we should think about the following things:

• Quality of design

• Commonality of features across the range

• Good reviews

• Credibility

Quality of Design

When we learn about watch manufacturing, we come to understand that the quality of materials used is the most important factor, followed by watch design. Poorly designed movements won’t keep good time, even if they are quartz powered. Poorly designed cases or straps will leak or break easily. Just because something looks good does not mean it is well designed. We should think about the following aspects:

• Does the look of the case, dial, hands, and strap all look like they belong together? Are they well matched?

• Do the materials look of the right quality for the price of the watch?

• Does the watch look like it could be used for its intended purpose, or if it’s for fashion or jewellery, does it look like anything else available?

• Does the movement used come from a reputable supplier, or if it is made by the brand does that brand have a long history of movement manufacturing?

These questions help you check whether the brand is designing a good watch for their price point.

You want to know if a brand is designing watches that work. If the materials look very fancy but the price is low then the likelihood is that the brand is using poor quality materials in production, and making the photographs look better. Totally unique watches may be interesting but might not work very well. Unusual dial layouts or displays are also risky if they are too hard to read.

These questions can be asked of sellers, or the answers may be found in review articles or videos, or in personal reviews.

Patek Philippe 5296 - a great example of a quality design

Common Features Across a Whole Brand

Casio make hundreds of watches. Some are round, some are square, but all share the same types of digital display. If Casio made a mechanical watch, we may be sceptical they could do it well. Omega make hundreds of watches and over 95% of them are round. If they made square or rectangular ones they should be viewed with caution as they may not have as much experience making those cases to the correct quality. Some watch brands, such as Rolex, make sure all their watches are waterproof, some do not.

Is this caution really warranted? Yes! Small watch brands that change their style very often will most likely make all those watches badly, unless they are very specialised. Watch manufacturers that switch movements every few years may be similar. Watch brands that put every watch in metal cases but suddenly start changing to composite materials like Sapphire or Carbon Fibre could create low quality cases if they are not careful.  You want signs of consistency, because when a brand is consistent, they will be better able to ensure quality.

There are hundreds of variations of the Omega Speedmaster. They'll share some common features

Good Reviews

Today, watch reviews are  easy to find online. When you find a brand that you like the look of, you can check online to see if the things you like about it are actually what you’ll get. The most famous and largest brands have a long heritage and a history of many happy customers. Even if online reviews were not possible until the 1990s, the fact that certain brands survived and flourished shows they must have had satisfied customers.

Today, you can look up how brands are talked about in Magazines, on review Videos and websites, and in personal comments left on Retailer websites or Forum posts. You should take these into account when thinking about a Brand. Ideally, you should look at reviews that mention the following points:

• Sales process and delivery

• Quality of Watch

• Wearability

• Experiences returning a watch for a service, including costs

A brand does not have to be rated highly for all of these. You want to look for consistency. You don’t want to be put off by one or two negative reviews if they are about an aspect of the brand that doesn’t interest you. Check a range of review sources and use the things that come up most often and consistently as your guide.

There are thousands of watch review videos online

Brand Credibility

Jeff Bezos, the Founder and CEO of online mega-merchant Amazon.com, says the following about Brands:

            “Your Brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room.”

Reviews are clearly one way of learning this about a brand. We can also understand more by asking questions like these:

• Does the brand have a strong online presence?

• Does it have consistent messaging across the online and retail presence? Is the advertising that the brand does in line with how it appears on retail platforms?

• Is it sold through credible retailers, online and in real life?

• Does it always sell at a discount or special offer?

• Is it written about widely, in general publications and in specialist Watch Blogs or Magazines?

• Do people talk about it in Watch Forums?

You want to focus on a Brand which is well represented online, has consistent messaging, is widely talked about, and sells products outside of sales and discounts. This shows that they are popular with customers and can sell their watches at the right price for the quality. Consistent messaging is a sign they know what they are doing, and their marketing efforts reflect this. It is a sign of a well-run brand.

Historically when brands such as Breitling changed owners, both their messaging and their watch design changed rapidly over short spaces of time. Unsurprisingly, the watches they produced during those periods were not particularly successful and are not regarded as quality pieces from their history.

Summary

There is no such thing as a perfect brand. Everyone wants different things from them, and they will always be better at some things than others. So long as you ask yourself some of the questions above, you will quickly learn how to spot good watches from any brand, and how to avoid some brands altogether. At The Watch Collectors’ Club, we are as guilty as anyone at rushing into a watch purchase because we liked the brand, but didn’t know how to judge it properly. We will help you learn more patience and how to build knowledge so you can enjoy your watches with confidence. Next week we will discuss how to Buy a Watch Online.