Wristwatch Terminology Worth Ignoring (See These and RUN!)
As advertising gets more advanced, you’re likely to encounter more and more tempting treats. If you’re in the market for a wristwatch, I bet there are a number of brands following you around the internet right now. I’ve noticed that loads of these ads use similar buzzwords to try and part you with your hard-earned cash. A variety of stupid sales slogans that essentially mean next to nothing.
In an attempt to cut through some of the BS, I thought today we’d go through some of such slogans, so that you can look through them and actually buy the watch that is best for you. I’ve fallen victim to such marketing tactics in the past, so I’m hoping this video proves useful.
Let’s start with the big hitters and then move onto some of the more obscure.
Affordable Luxury
This one simply has to come first. I see this phrase plastered over a huge amount of watch brands on Instagram and it’s just laughable. This saying is self-contradictory, like the phrase ‘gamble responsibly’. The whole idea of a luxury product is that it is inherently not affordable for most people.
I kind of get where people come from with this, I guess what they may be trying to say is that they’re trying to offer comparable built quality for a lower price than what is typically considered luxury. However, in practice, I’m yet to see this ever fully materialise. The vast majority of brands using this term are offering products that, in my opinion, are nowhere near their ‘luxury’ counterparts and just use the ‘affordably luxury’ term as a placebo to convince people the item is luxury, despite its deficiencies.
In reality, a lot of brands like this are essentially just mid-market brands trying to fool you that they are otherwise.
Cutting Out the Middleman
Hand in hand with affordable luxury, ‘cutting out the middleman’ is another go-to choice for fashion watch brands. The premise here is that certain brands claim they can cut costs and lower prices by selling directly to the consumer online and avoiding mark-ups from retail stores and advertising. Therefore, in theory, you can get a better-quality watch for less money than with traditional watch brands.
This one sounds really good on paper and even makes logical sense, what’s to be afraid of? Once more, it’s the implementation of this concept. Unfortunately, it seems that customers rarely ever see the promised benefit of this cost-cutting process, with the companies just using those cost cutting methods as a way of creating even larger profit margins for themselves and still selling their products at even more extortionate mark-ups. Out favourite brand MVMT perfectly showcased this a while back, when they began selling their wristwatches in retail stores for the same price as their online store; despite asserting for years that they were ‘saving you money’ by selling directly to you.
Most of the brands using this phrase aren’t out to save you anything and are using this term to disguise their actual intentions. There are certain brands out there that may run things differently, but always take it with a pinch of salt. The best way to cut out the middleman yourself, is to research and purchase your own watches directly from Chinese wholesalers, but that’s for another day.
Shaking Up the Industry / Disrupting the Industry
Because of their ‘revolutionary distribution system’, a lot of brands go on to claim that they are shaking up the watch world; as if they were taking on the mighty forces of the ‘evil’ traditional watch industry!
For the most part, what are these brands actually doing that’s so revolutionary? Nothing. Wow, they’re selling cheap watches online, so what?
Why do they say this sort of thing? I think it’s in an attempt for you to feel like you should side with them and join them on this amazing ‘mission’, almost like a call to action; I find it both amusing and interesting.
The only thing I think they’re actually disrupting is the marketing tactics, a lot of traditional watch brands are still stuck in the 20th Century when it comes to this area, it’s like a few of them have only just discovered the internet; despite them having far superior products.
Our Story/Heritage
Watch brands seem to include these as whole segments on their websites, even for brands with very little to no history whatsoever. I think they do so in an effort to make customers feel like they are really buying into something meaningful and substantial.
Let’s be real here, it takes a lot of time to develop any kind of meaningful history or heritage, decades really. Any young brand trying to spout some sort of story is really skirting around the elephant in the room. Let’s be real, brands are founded to make money; they don’t like to tell you that, but that’s the truth. That’s totally fine and perfectly normal, but there’s no reason you should fall for made up fairy tales and let brands use them as leverage. New brands have to start somewhere and that’s cool, but in such circumstances, it’s worth judging the watch for what it is, a watch.
Also, make sure you’re aware of how these webpages actually match up with where the watches are manufactured. Lots of brands base themselves in European countries and plaster beautiful countryside images over their story page; suggesting that’s where the watches are from. In fact, most brands ship their products from completely different environments on the other side of the planet.
Handcrafted
What’s better than a watch? A ‘handcrafted’ one. These days, this has gotten to the stage that ‘handcrafted’ is being used as a premium sounding synonym for the word ‘made’.
Let’s be real here, some of the very cheapest watches made in terrible Chinese sweat shops are essentially made by hand; people physically putting certain parts of the watches together. As long as there is a person somewhere even slightly involved in the design or production chain, brands will plug on this buzzword to convince you their piece has been painstakingly manufactured; as if it were a luxury watch worth thousands.
As with the rest of these points, it pays to do your research. I’ve generally found that watch brands who actually have good craftsmanship aren’t afraid to showcase where and how their watches are made; whilst those who abuse this jargon only ever talk about it. If you’re only paying £100 for your watch, it may be worth overlooking this word altogether.
High Quality & Premium
When someone tells you something is high quality, that is their opinion. I think it’s fine when an independent third party gives their viewpoint on product quality, provided they’re nothing to do with the brand.
However, in any industry, it pays to be sceptical when it’s the brand themselves telling you how premium their products or materials are. Let’s be real here, what are they going to do, tell you they are bad quality? Of course, every brand out there is going to tout their own product as the best out there and a super high quality, even if it sucks. Their opinion is 100% biased.
I’ve ordered watches advertised as ‘high quality’ before and they have been terrible. I’ve purchased ‘premium’ straps before, which have arrived and been disastrous.
Is this buzzword as bad or annoying as something like ‘affordable luxury’? Not quite, but I still think it’s something worth ignoring, at least when it’s the brand themselves saying it. Your best bet it to do your research and look at unpaid reviews of watches to get a more accurate judgement on whether the claims stack up.
I generally find quality watches don’t need to loudly advertise their high-quality nature; they tend to attract consumers who recognise the quality themselves.
Fair Prices
To go along with the latter, this is another one I’ve seen creeping up in popularity recently. More brands are using this as a softer version of ‘affordable luxury’, which has garnered some ridicule over the years.
The same premise really applies with this one. When a brand tells you their watches are fair prices, don’t listen! It’s not up to the company to judge whether the price is fair, it’s up to you! They’d be telling you they were fair prices even if their mark-ups were a million percent.
A fair price for you considers what you find important and how much budget you have to play with.
Italian Leather Straps
A cheap way for watch brands to make their watches sound more premium is by providing ‘Italian leather’ straps with them. Those less well-versed in wristwatch foolery may see this and automatically assume this will be a fantastic strap. In actuality, ‘Italian leather’ literally only says one thing about the strap – that it’s come from Italy. What about the quality of the hide? How are the straps made? It’s all left up to speculation.
It sounds good because you’ve heard that Italy can produce some luxury leather products. However, as with leather from any other country, the quality can vary massively across different manufacturers. Sometimes they can be good, other times they are made for a few pence and are outright garbage.
1000% Mark-ups on Rival Brands
It seems that the founder of every fashion watch brand has ‘discovered’ these mark-ups put in place by traditional watch brands (which they never list by name). They’ll often rant about this on their ‘about’ sections and suggest their brand does things differently; despite charging some of the highest mark-ups in the industry themselves.
These sorts of claims are usually made by cheap watch brands and while admittedly, many luxury watches have massive mark-ups over the manufacturing price; it’s far less of an issue in the budget space. Mark-ups on watches from brands like Timex, for example, are perfectly acceptable in my mind. Usually, this is an apples and oranges comparison. The ‘rival brands’ likely aren’t rival brands in the first place and probably occupy a different space in the market. It’s just more marketing fluff and lies.
Emphasis on ‘expression’
For some reason, watch brands are obsessed with connecting their pieces to ‘self-expression’, almost as if their products are the only key to achieving it. There are a ton of wristwatches out there and whichever you wear, they are all a method of self-expression in some form. It’s far from an exclusive selling point.
One of the best ways of ‘expressing’ yourself with a watch is to simply try alternative straps - it’s much cheaper than buying a fresh wristwatch for the sake of it.
Family
This is a weird one. Some companies try and sell you the idea of joining a ‘family’ of people when buying one of their watches. Unless your idea of a family is someone you don’t know and will never speak to, then I’d say this is pretty unrelatable. To be transparent, brands aren’t looking to raise you, to take care of you, to feed and house you…they want your money.
Remember, you are buying a product, not an ‘idea’.