Horological Meandering

aaronm
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Sometimes a difficult distinction to make in my head

I am, somewhat by nature, a skeptical person.  I have become quite skeptical of anything that appears in company press releases, not because I think that they are lying to us, but because what I think of as "reality" somewhat conflicts with PR.  PR is, in some cases, the art of saying the nicest thing you can about something as long as it isn't wrong.  But the in the gulf between incorrect and correct is misleading, and many companies plant themselves there.  This is in no way a unique-to-the-watch-industry phenomonon.  They are perhaps more succeptable to hyperbole, and use several terms which don't really have an established meaning("Swiss Made" has a finite meaning, but "In House" can mean whatever you want)

It doesn't help that the Swiss watch industry thrives in secrecy, a habit that causes a cloud of distrust to hover about them.  A example of this would be all the troubles between Franck Muller(the man) and Franck Muller(the brand).  I still have no idea what the final outcome was of all those lawsuits.  Did FM-the brand use Russian movements in their watches?  Was there dishonesty on the part of FM-the man, there were even rumors of drug use.  Ordinarily a company would put out an honest press release and this would be settled, but these issues are all settled in secret, satisfying the parties, but leaving the customer without a final answer, and with increasing doubts.

There are also some examples in the last years of companies promoting a watch or a movement as one thing, and only retracting or restating it when facts came to light that counter indicated that. (one example would be Hublot and their magnesium 7750 movement, which they called in-house, because they had manufactured it under license. )

Because of previous examples, people become cynical when the brands are completely truthful, making it harder to kill these rumors.   It also causes things that ARE promoted accurately to suffer through years of "copycat" complaints, like:
1.  the Hublot Big-Bang is a copy of the AP ROO,
2.  the Omega 3313 is a modified FPiguet 1185

So I try not to be a cynic, because then it wouldn't be fun, and for me this is a hobby, something fun.  Who'd buy, thinking everyone was trying to scam you?

Sorry this kinda rambled on....
A

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