WHY ARE LUXURY WATCHES SO EXPENSIVE?!

so today we have two very special guests um i get asked a lot about my affinity for watches and what makes me choose certain brands and today we have with us an absolute watch expert his name is mark andre and he runs the youtube channel watches tv he's really a watch journalist and knows more about watches than probably anybody and as well we have mr jacob arabo from jacob and co so we're going to talk about jacob watchers watches in general and yeah let's have some fun hi guys yes how's things everything is great how is new york city amazing cold i'm sure and it's probably chilly in switzerland as well mark andre in geneva how are you yes hello from geneva uh well it's indeed winter time but over the last few days it's been kind of a bit better okay because it's been horrible raining and snowing all the time over the last two three weeks so it feels a little bit of a spring feeling right now well both of you welcome to the channel and uh it's great to see you and today we're going to do kind of like a round table talk about watches talk about uh what is so special about them and i'm going to throw the ball over to you mark andre so you can uh you can ask some questions because you are in fact the watch journalist well okay then i'm going to start immediately with you and i would like to know this is kind of a typical question for me but this how did you start to like watches what is your path that led to to you in this situation today that's a great question well i started watches um i got my first really nice watch when i was in my teens and what i did was um i i followed something that my father told me that if i ever achieve anything in life buy myself something along the same lines and and start collecting them so i had no idea what to do i really didn't know much about watches but i thought to myself okay anything i achieve in life i'm going to buy myself a watch never thought about how much they were going to cost or what brand they were going to be but i was going to build a watch collection and then after i think my second or third watch i got addicted and i know i've never to this day really understand what goes on inside the watches the movements i don't care i buy them by the aesthetics by the art and i've generated a great love for watches myself what about you jacob how did you fall into watches for me i fall in love when i was a teenager yeah i was like 15 years old when my father got me a job to be a to to learn the watchmaking uh from this watchmaker in new york so i spent my whole summer working for him and when i took the watch apart the first time i really realized how difficult it is to be a watchmaker how much you have to remember where every part is going it's so many of them i mean some of these watches have eight nine hundred parts right uh components so that's when i decided i i not decided but that was my dream back then one day i will make my own watches so i didn't actually know jacob that you could build the watch movements yourself i didn't know that you were actually able to do that you know like if you get um a kit where you build something you get an instruction manual with watches you don't have that right you just see all these pieces and then you kind of have to put them together i'm not the watchmaker anymore you know i i did much simple watches when i was a kid but yes if you don't remember there is a whole technical drawings the whole book that goes with the watch where the watchmaker opens when he doesn't remember where some part is going or what the function is most of the time the watchmaker remembers everything if he's the one who built the watch or put the assemble the watch he knows every part of the watch that's intriguing it really is and mark andre what got you into watches well there are a few i mean there are different dimensions why i like watches one is kind of a philosophical one because i think it's just such a fantastic demonstration of our human ingenuity you know to think that 500 years ago without any machines whatsoever some guys some people some they managed to transform something as intangible as time into a mechanical object and i find that absolutely fascinating and from 500 years till today i mean we've naturally improved many of the the manufacturing processes and things like that but it's it's still the same principle basically you know and uh i i find that uh indeed it's just it's it's like a nice sign of a nice demonstration of where we come from and that's why i think uh mechanical watchmaking is indeed still relevant because it's a link between our past and where we're heading to especially in our more digital world that we live in today that's a very good point that you bring up because one of the things that uh gets talked about a lot at least i believe it does because we're in the digital world why do people still want watches well when i look at a watch i know it's a timepiece but i don't really look at it to tell the time i look at it as a piece of art and the craftsmanship and the brilliance and the the work that goes into making a watch i've been fortunate enough to go to a few factories um different manufacturers of course one of which is jacob and it's astounding the amount of work and and effort that goes into making the watch from the from the clothing you have to wear that dust proof and and these these anti-static environments it's incredible so yeah i think it's art and and it's much more than just telling the time yeah there is also a nice uh analogy with other things in our daily life is that in a watch you can have okay maybe 500 components or a simpler one with much less components 100 or whatsoever and you just need one component that won't be well manufactured or so and the watch won't work so it just shows that it's it's it's a full package that needs to work and it's like in our society basically you know if we want things to work we need to all work together so one of the questions um that i get asked a lot and i'm going to actually throw this one to jacob jacob why are watches so expensive good question very good question uh most of the time they're very expensive not because uh the profit margin it's because of research development it all depends how much time you spend to develop the watch it's the time it sometimes could take one year two years three three and a half years to make the time by the time you complete one whole movement the first one so that's a huge investment and then to develop it and to manufacture every component and to make sure it works um that's where the main cost is and then of course the cost is divided by by how many watches you're going to make of the of its kind so that's how you calculate the cost and that's how expensive it gets because of how many people and how many hours and days and months and years that spent that would be costly and that explains more than one person involved well that also explains why limited edition pieces cost more money because you're making fewer of them but the components you have to make go through the same procedure exactly exactly and and i'm sure uh mark andre he you know a lot about this uh this this question also has to go to you you would answer it maybe even better than me please tell her what do you know about this well uh i was just the other day with a really nice independent watchmaker and we're talking about uh indeed also the the prices of watches because sometimes for some people it can be you know almost a bit shocking those prices but uh that's why for on my side for instance i mean we very rarely talk about prices because it's uh this is not why we like watchmaking it's not because it's worth something that uh x amount of dollars or whatsoever that you should like to watch you i like it because it it has like uh it portrays and it gives you a emotions basically and i always say this is that you're not gonna like a painting because it's worth five ten or twelve millions it's because it's there's something happening and where the watch will be exactly the same i believe and uh today i mean they're the the the kind of the status symbol of a watch is obviously very important it helps sell it but when people understand indeed how many hours are behind each of these timepieces then you kind of realize that it's indeed something completely different and it's nice also to think about the watch in terms of not its cost but how many hours have been spent developing it manufacturing it and so forth and so then when you relate to watch oh well this watch it takes i don't know 400 hours to do 500 800 hours then you start to understand what it uh what it means but um regarding the the the prices obviously when you do limited edition because we're talking i mean we love these kind of independent uh watchmaking uh type of uh watches where the creativity is absolutely uh fabulous but the investment made by companies behind that is just absolutely tremendous and sometimes it's only to do five ten twenty watches that's all so it's obviously that equates to some serious money at the end so i i have a question to add on to this topic and that is what makes a watch better than another watch so you you can get 10 different brands of watches and you could ask a thousand people on the street which watches better they always gravitate toward towards the best known names or the ones that have had the best branding but my question to you and to jacob um in fact i'd like to ask jacob his thoughts on this first what makes one watch better than another watch well some watches are better than another because they're just fashioned you know they're trendy and they're more fashionable than the others other watches they're more better because they're more mechanical driven and more complicated uh and that people that understand they they go after that more than they would go for a fashion watch so for example i'm wearing one right now this is i don't know it's not a fashion but very difficult to manufacture you know this is a bugatti chiron this here the whole idea was here to make it work you know to have this engine work inside the watch so that to me was a challenge to do for example you know a huge challenge and it was a question it was a question will it work or not so we still invest the money and the time and spend a lot of time to make it you know to try to make it work and we did so to answer your question it's uh like i said it's some watches are just trendy uh than others and but the ones i would look at is the ones that's much more uh difficult to manufacture and uh very complicated complications well you make some of the most complicated watches in the world i don't i don't know anybody that has anything close to the astronomia i personally love that watch when i look at them when i wear those watches i i see art i see ingenuity i see brilliance creativity and they're astounding um with i've actually put them on and warned them i've been out for dinner and the watch has been upside down and i didn't even know it was upside down on my wrist because it's still a piece of art in any direction you know and i know you've actually commented on me wearing them upside down on occasion but it doesn't matter if it's this beauty on your wrist that also is functional and um you know when you create something like that it's very very special a lot of people say how can you wear that aren't you scared to knock it or bang it will it break and it's incredibly robust so you know do you get that type of comment as well you get questions like that me yes yes yes of course because it looks fragile but it's not because it's really old sapphire crystal it's very strong and like i said this watch is you know i for example whenever i design or build a watch i'm only going for new technology so that new technology has to be new concept and something that was never developed or designed in a watch industry so and of course the not just the design and quality of the watch it has to be safe so when you wear it that you don't just break it by by knocking somewhere so it looks like it would break but it's not especially astronomia has a very thick very safe supply crystal on each side especially on top uh 100 secure 100 secure as you know you've been wearing it for long long enough now i know i i get such a thrill every time i put those watches on and uh i get more comments wearing those i could i could literally wear pink purple green stripes all over me a crazy hat nobody would ask me anything other than what's that watch on your wrist you know so it's spectacular and it's a it's a thrill to wear and i'm so blessed to be able to wear them right and i remember mark andre did the first uh episode he he did i think it was my uh astronomy sky if you remember years ago right andre yeah right yeah he uh he came to my basel show i remember and he picked that one watch that was the most complicated most difficult to make which is the astronomia sky and um he made a special you know he he he did a reporting on it basically he did a reporting and i mean those shows uh really quite unique and but something coming back also to what i was saying before regarding our past i mean before i mean the main driver for the development of watchmaking was this quest uh for proper keeping i mean it was extremely important it and and this is something that maybe today we take for granted but most of our societies modern societies have been developed on the the notion of mastering time in a proper and efficient way today this is still obviously quite important but it's it's not as important i mean today if you want to have the precise time you have enough things around you your phone or whatever that will give you uh exactly this uh so you want something else with a watch you know it's uh and that's why i think i see many uh watches today that they don't necessarily have you know seconds uh that are uh apparent because this is i mean you're not wearing that to have the exact precise time or whatsoever obviously it's nicer when a watch is uh accurate and it's kind of annoying when it's if if there's an issue and you're losing five minutes uh per day but nevertheless you want something else and this is this notion of emotion and when you have something like that happening in a watch uh that tells a story obviously it makes it much more fun and what you're having michael with people looking at uh at your wrist when you're wearing uh the the these watches i mean it's normal because it's extremely intriguing if it was just a plain watch there's something more to it and this is something that today i think has more and more importance i couldn't agree more um which brings me to let's talk about some watches um i'm sure jacob has some beautiful pieces that he'd like to show us but before we get there i just want to ask jacob one thing i get asked this all the time we announced it was about eight months ago i think it was that uh jacob and i were doing a collaboration with a producer michael watch and everyone's asking when's it coming when's it coming well uh i believe it's coming quite soon we we had hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of submissions of ideas for uh the watches and i can't wait to see it jacob talk to me well you will have your watch next month it's uh we're waiting for some parts right now to be finished and you'll be able to show it and talk about it uh in about three to four weeks yeah it's going to be something special very light very easy to wear and of course with all the you know designs you and i talked about and we we going to launch it with you together in about three to four weeks from now but um yeah it's going to be very exciting this watch uh i have us also to show you here today i have some uh interesting watch while you know happens to be in my shop now it's the latest billionaire that so this is a surprise for you today this is wow it's not just the watch and it's not going to lose any five minutes a day because it's also tourbillon and you know andre mark will explain what this old tourbillon is and why we make tourbillon watches so this is all full diamond baguettes all special cuts does this watch took one year to build because every stone has to be cut especially for this watch and they all have to be perfectly the same uh they have to be the same quality and also um they have to be gauged and sized and re-cut to be filled together so that's a how many carrots do you have on this on this watch looks crazy like 173 carats this one all finest jams and then of course the question is how much is it this watch is 7.4 million retail 7.4 million not because of the movement of course because of the movements is part of it but the most of it is because of the diamonds that's holding that is just insane what a gorgeous gorgeous piece jacob i have a question for you uh also regarding your your gem setting uh technique because you're one of the rare guys that you you gem set also the back case of of some of your watches yeah why would you do that why i do that yeah to show the importance the importance of the movement you know it's just to me it's just as important because i like to see it this way and it just makes it to me more important and to yeah to show the importance of the movement and if i can do it why not it's luxury it's the luxury uh point of the watch i have a question my question is how many people have bought these watches which one the billionaire the billionaire is um it's very difficult to manufacture and there's only a few produced very few and uh i believe this is number four uh uh if you take each one of them that was made each one is different each one of them is made different so this is uh number four in the collection fabulous what what other watches have you got there to show us oh we have uh one of my favorite watches here i don't know if mark andre saw this before but this is um this is a roulette watch as you know this is very very special watch you've seen it right yeah i've seen it i've seen it yeah yeah it's uh i find it something that i really like is that there's so much you i mean you bring some playfulness in this uh that is people are not used to it and this is is refreshing well for me this is all toys for boys you know so i create toys and um to me most of my watches are the meaning and the meaning big boy toys right these are big boy toys so everyone has a meaning you know like the shiron bugatti has a meaning because of bugatti car shiron engine and 16th cylinder the casino with a roulette table because not just the roulette table that actually tells you exact numbers with uh ball rolling uh and also has the astronomia movement on top of it so you know for me everything has to be with the meaning otherwise i'm not just i'm not interested to make watches just to tell what time it is or for example you tell take this oil pump and the oil pump has two derricks and it's pumping oil and into the barrel i guess with the tourbillon watch and you've seen this one before right michael i have indeed it's a crazy watch thank you thank you very much my other favorite watch here is uh sf24 i don't know if mark andre saw this watch sf24 yeah i've seen this one yeah right sf 24 has 24 time zones very easy to use because most of the multi-time zone watches are very difficult to to use uh this is easy to see the time easy to use easy to change the time and the cities is very easy to read but regarding this watch i think something that i think is interesting with this one is that coming back to this notion of emotion is that indeed when i saw this watch i i obviously i kind of flipped back myself to the to the past when i was a kid and i remember going to the airports and seeing those flat boards going like crazy and we all like that and we talk when i talk with about this with some friends we all have this same kind of souvenir and this appreciation of this flat board and to see this in a watch obviously you know you create this little link and that's the cool part yes is that what you should be on is it like the idea from is when i used to go with my parents or was to go to the train station and you saw those you know flip flips to change the time and the cities and that's where i got the ideas from and that watch is also a tourbillon is it not yes this happens to be tourbillon yeah this black tinting watches turgon but this also comes without the turkey and i know everybody's going to want to ask um one of the questions is how much is the the bugatti watch you're wearing in the gold version on your wrist and how much is the uh sf-24 the bugatti watch is 360 000 retail it like i said it has the uh 16-cylinder uh engine that's as you can see and it has a tourbillon in the front uh 360 000 and the sf24 is 175 000. which is reasonable and if it's a non-tourbillon how much is it with the tourbillon hundreds of without the tourbillon i believe it's 69 000 without turkey and in tantanum and and that once again uh tremendous amounts of r d go into that so that that's where these prices come from it's really i remember when we developed the sf24 really took us two and a half years little it took long time because it's two different functions in here all has to work together this is a separate module the uh cities and the time zones uh so it has to work together with the main movement so that was uh be complicated very very complicated to develop but once we developed you know production was a little bit less less complicated but the first one was difficult to make i also have some time you know two and a half years which may sound a lot but at the same time it's not that long you know i mean and with the bugatti it it took you uh i mean it's you you were really fast and because i mean i've been following watchmaking for a very long time and i know that just to develop sometimes a movement can take four five six years and so forth and you're extremely fast how do you achieve this you know i have very good team in switzerland working and all my engineers developers they're very excited working on these projects that i design and i guess when they're excited they work harder and they put more time into it and this passion here is love you know and they just come up with better answers and faster answers yeah the chiron took us only like one and a half year to to design uh to to develop and um we were lucky uh to do this so quickly because i don't it really could have taken another year year and a half so you never know you never know it depends on a watchmaker it depends on engineer it all depends on your team you're extremely creative but sometimes did you have like ideas that you couldn't transpose in reality can you talk i was just going to ask the same question i was going to say how many times have you designed something and it went to research and it just didn't work you know something i have to tell you nothing happened like this anything i presented was made and delivered i have much more ideas that that it's difficult for me to make everything that i have in my mind i think i have more ideas than i can afford but i just do the best i can i i don't sometimes my uh one of my employees said to me jacob you don't think you have too many projects going i said no not enough you know so i i love to be busy i like stress uh i like to push the envelope and and you know and we have great team of people working and they love what they're doing and uh we deliver as we can we deliver as you know as as we can your products speak for themselves and um as a watch collector i i have to tell you i i i've tried every watch on that exists well that's not true i've tried a lot of watches on from every manufacturer there's some great watches out there there's some great brands out there but i still gravitate back to you um there's nothing like a jacob and co watch it tells you something when you wear it it tells you that you're creative as a person i'm not sure about you i'm talking about the wearer when you look at the watch and even this one that i'm wearing today um it's special it's just special uh this one oh yeah one of my favorite watches it's not one of the most expensive watches in the world um it's not a inexpensive watch but it just it's special it feels good and i enjoy them and i look at these watches and i say to myself yeah this is fun you know there's no need to have a watch like this but if you're creative and you're able to get one why not i think that would you just the word fun is extremely important and this is what personally why i love so much the watchmaking and the watchmakers and all the people involved because i mean a watch is only the final result of many processes before okay and i personally i'd like to show what happened to get to that uh to that final piece but something that uh that i absolutely love uh with this industry is to see how many passionate people you have in it and they do this with a true and sincere sense of pleasure and you find this throughout the en entire production chain basically i mean from a designer to the guy that does the prototype that the guys that will do the finishing the people that will assemble and thing like that they all have pleasure and the the end consumer i mean you buy a watch not because you need it because it is going to please you okay and uh i think this is something that is even more uh apparent with those kind of crazy timepieces that uh you managed to to to to produce there are obviously many other examples and i'm privileged enough to see so many different uh type of watches but there is really a common denominator which is this notion of pleasure and fun i have a question for you mark andre living in geneva probably the epicenter of watches in stores in the world as well as manufacturer being a watch enthusiast do you find yourself going walking down the streets going into all the different watch stores every day or often i prefer to go in the manufacturers i prefer to go in behind the scene i prefer to go into workshops i prefer to see some of the guys that are actually working on on things so uh this is yeah that's where you indeed coming back to this notion of pleasure people being again passion some guys you know they will do the same exact movement they've been doing it for the last 20 years and so forth but they're still as passionate and motivated in doing their very best and that's something that is extremely i think satisfying and it's uh it's just beautiful values and that's another thing that you know when i buy a watch i look at it as i'm also supporting the art i'm supporting the watchmakers i'm supporting the designers everybody that goes into putting a watch together and that's a lot of people and so much r d as we spoke about earlier and it's nice to be able to support that as well and then enjoy the final product so that's one of the reasons also that i collect watches i enjoy them there are many many different sets of competencies required to build a watch there you have a few kind of master watchmaker that can indeed build a watch from a to z but it's a real teamwork and that's what i was saying before the with the fact that i mean you have one component that doesn't work then entire thing won't work so here's a question it's again i'm very naive i have no idea how the movements and watches work but let's say there's a watch it has 600 components and it's not working because one of the components is bad how do you identify which component it is that's not working is that a question for me or mark let's just i'm going to ask you that question jacob yeah okay so it's actually more difficult to find out what's wrong with the watch than to build a watch sometimes it takes a week for watchmaker to actually understand and res you know to underst to realize what is wrong with the watch if it's not working so he takes it apart he checks every function it takes time it takes time it's really time consuming and the repairs you know even after self-service if the watch is under warranty or not already under warranty it could take a long time and i know some guys do complain a lot about long you know long time to repair watches but please don't because it takes longer to repair or wash sometimes than to build a watch because you really have to understand first what is wrong with the watch it takes sometimes it takes time it could take weeks that's very interesting and i'm sure that uh it's actually happened to me i've sent a watch in for repair and it's been six months i think where's my watch and they said to me yeah it takes a while and i'm thinking it's just in a heap of watches waiting to be repaired but talking about that one last question for you watch servicing is it that important to get a watch serviced on a regular or semi-regular basis you asking me that yes so there is a time you know if if you have already passed your warranty and the watch doesn't give you any trouble i don't see a reason why you need to get serviced maybe i don't know maybe it's a simple chronograph or just automatic watch maybe yes but more complicated watches if it's working perfectly you don't touch it you don't touch it until it goes wrong which is very rare right oftentimes there are people who know how to keep their watches you know there's got to be in the right place it's got it cannot be overheated place or cannot be too dry it has to be also well kept if you keep your watches in the right condition nothing should ever go wrong with it unless you does it hurt to watch if you let's say you're a watch collector you have lots of watches um do you have to wind them on a regular basis um people have said oh you need a watch wine to keep them going i don't do that my watches live in a bank vault and i go and get them whenever i get them at the end of the day they they always work i haven't had any problems with them really my answer no you don't have to keep whining them for them to keep working i want to hear from mark andre what he thinks yeah i know it's true i mean it's like if you if you're keeping them winded all the time basically it's running all the time so it's wearing a bit more than uh if it's just sitting still indeed in in your safe uh but then i mean there are watches if you're like if you have like a perpetual calendar and you don't want to reset anything like that so if you keep it as long as it's an automatic watch of course if you uh keep it on a winder it will obviously prevent having false dates and things like that and you having to interfere but uh the the problem is that if you don't use a watch for a long time i mean you have a bit of oil inside them uh to you know to smooth them up in some parts of the movement and so forth and some of those oils then can dry up if they're not being used so this could be a an issue but indeed i mean there you have different schools of uh thought i mean you have people who say oh it has to run all the time some people say no it doesn't really it's not required personally i think it you you don't it doesn't require to be used all the time i would be uh so watchfinder is a nice thing because if if you're gonna wear it within the next three four five days or whatsoever then it makes sense otherwise sincerely i don't think it's that uh that necessary don't forget we have guys who own 500 to 1000 watches possible to wine each one of them and where everyone so that's very very true well i think this is michael you should have you must have 100 watches how many how many you have i have a lot yeah i have quite a few too many for should be considered sensible no that's not true there's never [Laughter] thing that is enough is that i mean two in in two weeks six months three years and things like that there will be a new watch that will appeal to you and that will create this desire and you would like to do to own it yeah yeah i'm very passionate about watches so to me you know people collect different things some people collect stamps coins cars whatever it might be watches i'm very passionate about them and i love them so i i guess as long as i'm able to do that i'm going to continue to build my collection i don't need any more watches but uh do i look on the internet every single day to see what's new yes and there's something also you know important regarding a mechanical watch and it is that it's it's sustainable basically you know a real mechanical watch anybody any watchmaker should be able to repair it in 100 or 200 years time you know it's it's not like a piece of uh i mean your iphone is gonna get obsolete at one moment and the only thing you can do is thrash it unfortunately uh a watch it's not like that from day one if it's well constructed any watchmaker should be able to you know put it back i mean to service it if there's an issue okay it might be complicated if you have to do another uh gear trade or something or another opinion that to repair the watch but it's doable it's sustainable that's very interesting it's very true and you can just collect them and pass them down generation to generation so yeah well well gentlemen this has been a fantastic fantastic talk uh very educational i'm sure everybody's enjoyed it i don't know does either of you have anything else you want to say before we uh we end the video well i would like to say that there's something you know for new generation uh because watchers had indeed for us our generation a functional reason it just give us time uh so today uh watchmaking is in a certain way totally anachronic but it still remains extremely meaningful and i think this can only go through with kind of education about what is behind watchmaking it's not only a status symbol no it's much more important than that it's very true very true jacob yes sir no thank you very much for inviting me in i enjoy every time i talk to you and welcome mark andre also thank you very much for uh for the compliments you always give me for my uh creations i appreciate it for both of you to recognize my brand and uh to enjoy it thank you very much for invitation well guys we'll be seeing much more of mark andre as well as jacob on the channel i hope you've really enjoyed this please hit the subscribe button hit the bell and we are in it to win it

Channel: ProducerMichael

Views: 161,514

Rating: 4.8293667 out of 5

Keywords: luxury watches, expensive watches, expensive watch, worlds most expensive watch, most expensive watch in the world, jacob & co, rolex, audemars piguet, patek, watch collector, horology, watch collection, watchestv, jacob arabo, michael blakey, producermichael, producer michael, richard mille

Id: 5tE0zTtO1CU

Length: 40min 9sec (2409 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 23 2021