Kobold Watch Challenge

The Watch Snob's New Challenge

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The Watch Snob is in.

It has come to my attention that some of my earlier published judgments of Kobold watches have raised the ire of the brand’s owner. Michael Kobold has submitted a rather spirited defense of his company’s watches to AskMen’s editor, and this was passed on to me. While his letter is longer than many of Hemingway’s later works, I have decided to publish it in its unabridged entirety. I do this out of a spirit of fairness and also as a prelude to a challenge I issued to Mr. Kobold: Send the Watch Snob a watch of your choosing for an honest assessment.

I will be glad to deliver my unvarnished opinions as to Kobold’s quality and value vis-a-vis the other timepieces I have owned and handled. Mr. Kobold has agreed to this challenge and I expect a timepiece delivered in the next few weeks via a trusted third party to protect my anonymity. I will publish my full response sometime in June after a thorough assessment of said timepiece.

Be assured that my review will be honest, brutally so, but I am a man of integrity, and if the watch lives up to Mr. Kobold’s billing I will gladly admit that. I applaud Kobold for standing up for its product and accepting this challenge — perhaps this will be the first of a series in which brands submit timepieces to the scrutiny of the Watch Snob’s unflinching and critical eye.

Without further ado, here is Michael Kobold’s thesis, in its entirety. A trip to the lavatory is recommended before you begin.



Michael Kobold's Letter To AskMen

Although in his column the Watch Snob has correctly identified an industry-wide problem (i.e., watch companies using smoke-and-mirrors techniques to dupe unsuspecting customers into buying their overpriced watches), he clearly has got some of his facts wrong.

It has sadly become a prevailing industry practice to use base ETA (or other) calibers and combine them with cases made in China that cost between $25 and $60 [U.S. dollars] per unit. Swiss and German laws regarding the use of the terms "Swiss Made" and "Made in Germany" are very lax, which allows watch companies to identify their watches as such, even though critical components (i.e., the case) are made in a low-cost country such as China.

Including assembly and all other components (dial, hands, band and box), a watch produced in this manner typically costs less than $200 to make. Depending on the relevant watch company's brand positioning, said watch will then retail for between $1,000 and $5,000. The profit margins of these watches are astronomical. Numerous very large and powerful watch companies have amassed a great deal of wealth precisely in this manner, all the while misleading the public by using the "Swiss Made" or "Made in Germany" trademarks.

Making a large profit is in itself not a bad thing. Time has proven that capitalism, as flawed as it may be at times, is still better than the alternative options. Typically, profits are reinvested into R&D in order to identify better technologies, increase product quality and to lead the way into a better future. At least that is the case in theory. What has happened in the watch industry (and in a number of other cottage industries that faced exploding costs in their traditional places of production in the 1990s), instead, is that manufacturing and artisanal jobs were cut at home in favor of low-cost jobs overseas. This has caused two problems.

First, the loss of jobs affects the individuals and their families, as well as the specific country's economy. Just last summer I toured a very prestigious watchcase manufacturer in the Swiss Jura who had to shut his company's doors and lay off some 60 employees. Until then, the company had been led by the fifth generation of expert watchcase makers. Instead of regrouping and working with fewer people, the owners decided to abandon the watch industry altogether. Today, they import solar panels from China.

The second problem is the permanent erosion of trade-specific know-how in these former centers of the watch industry. Europe is losing its cutting-edge technology much in the same way that the U.S. has lost a lot of its manufacturing expertise.

As a lifelong collector of watches, I find these practices abhorrent. I started with Swatch when I was 6 years old, and over the course of 25 years progressed to Chronoswiss, Patek Philippe and vintage Rolex. I have spent my entire adult life, from when I was 17 years old, in the watch industry. As a result, I came to benefit from the tutelage of men like Helmut Sinn (founder of Sinn watches) and Gerd-Rudiger Lang (founder of Chronoswiss). These men have taught me a thing or two about creating a unique product and selling it by way of an enticing story.

However, the practice of selling cheaply made watches that are essentially from China (for they may also be assembled there) is not unique, nor is stamping "Swiss Made" on the dial of such watches any part of telling an enticing story. It's selling watches by way of an elaborate ruse.

At Kobold we do things very differently, and it's my firm belief in the fairness of our products and our trade practices that has led me to write this response to the Watch Snob's column.

First, Kobold does not simply "bury" ETA movements into oversize watch cases. The term "bury" is misleading in the sense that it implies that we, as a company, are not proud of using these movements. We are!

Although any connoisseur of fine mechanical watches will agree that ETA movements are not the most exclusive in the world, as a watch manufacturer I know that my company's customers can rely on these movements no matter how much abuse they take. It's actually an ETA movement that can take a licking and keep on ticking! Why is this so important? Because Kobold watches are made for men who abuse their watches in all types of harsh conditions.

Keep reading — we're not done yet...