Why Seiko Is Still Underrated

Seiko: The World’s Most Interesting, Most Overlooked Watch Brand

Today we (and by “we” I mean I) decided to take a little breather, as it were, from the usual reader query format, and address one of those questions which turns up over and over like a bad penny. That question concerns Seiko, a Japanese watch company that has the unmitigated nerve to make watches every bit as good as anything made in Switzerland (the country most traditionally associated with quote-fine-unquote watchmaking) but at a much lower price than you would be charged if you bought a watch from the land of cheese, chocolate, and cuckoo clocks.

The specific question in whose context the name Seiko most frequently arises is when someone asks me what watch they would recommend in the under $500, or the under $5000, or the under $50,000 category, for that matter; the answer is frequently “Seiko” and that is for a reason. Those reasons are especially apropos today. For, my horologically inquisitive readers, these are hard times for the Swiss watchmaking industry. Beset by collapsing demand — brought on by overproduction in general, and a precipitous drop in demand in China in particular — what we are pleased to refer to as “the brands” are in a quandary, with no real idea of how to recapture the sales they have lost.

Much soul searching is going on, and much hand-wringing: whatever shall we do? All sorts of strategies are being discussed, and strategies considered: how ever shall the marketing departments get people to once again regard The Brands with sufficient uncritical adulation, that pockets may once again be emptied, as in the happy days of yore?



And there, my friends, is the problem. Certainly it is true that marketing can sell a lot of watches. However what I think our friends in Switzerland have forgotten is that beyond a certain point, marketing will only get you so far.



And that is where Seiko comes in. Seiko, unlike the Swiss luxury brands, is barely a brand at all, in the conventional sense of the word. What they do have, instead of “brand DNA” or some such folderol, is a hell of a lot of watches. They make excellent watches offering excellent value at every price; they are one of the very few companies continuing to make more-accurate-than-necessary high precision quartz watches (along with, to be fair, Citizen, Breitling, and Bulova; however none of those companies has the repertoire of offerings from the most basic to the most sophisticated that Seiko has).

Seiko makes the Kinetics (self-recharging quartz watches); they make the Spring Drive (quartz regulation with no battery at all); they make some of the most classic entry-level wristwatches in the world (Seiko 5 and the SKX007 diver’s watch) whilst at the same time making luxury level mechanical watches — the Grand Seikos — with such excellent fit and finish that there are collectors out there with Grand Seikos rubbing shoulders with Langes, Pateks, Vacherons, and APs in their collections. And at the very high end they have repeaters and other chiming watches made in vanishingly small numbers yearly, with peerless sound, and with finish that has been openly and publicly admired by none other than The God Of Movement Finishing, Philippe Dufour.

So why do some still shy away from, let us say, a Grand Seiko, simply because it says “Seiko” on the dial? Lots of reasons, but mostly ignorance, or at best, habituation to a conventional model of luxury (that is to say, the traditional sadomasochistic relationship between luxury brands and their clients) which prevents one from appreciating good watchmaking at a good price.

Now, it is also true — you simply cannot deny it — that there is a very small group of individuals who know perfectly well how good the Seiko watches are, and that they represent astonishing value, and in that full knowledge simply prefer to have a watch from another brand — one with a better-recognized presence as an object of prestige. But to make that choice is to miss the point: that far too many of The Brands insist on trying to sell The Brand, having forgotten that there is a reason we distinguish between style and substance, and that just maybe, one might try selling a watch not by selling a brand, but via the forgotten expedient of making a good watch.

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