With the recently launched Moonswatch operation, Nick Hayek has achieved a “double strike” success while being the first in the watchmaking industry to provide a solution to ” recover ” the staggering revenues that kept slipping out of his hands. Let me explain…

Joël A. Grandjean, JSH® Magazine & Swiss Watch Passport’s editor in chief & publisher
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In the watchmaking business, waiting times are bordering on the unacceptable. A handful of brands, including an increasing proportion of independents, have to deal with a demand that is greater than the quantities that could be delivered or manufactured. Or simply have to adopt a ‘braking’ policy that consists of preventing a star model from taking over the entire brand and its other references.

The price of impatience, costs of desire

But waiting times and longer delivery deadlines are synonymous with ” impatience funding “. Since the most fortunate, at the expense of true enthusiasts, are ready to pay the price to avoid queuing. Thus, it is not unusual to observe a sought-after watch leaving the boutique at its price list and immediately gaining three times its value, or even much more, as soon as it leaves the door. This phenomenon is generating crazy amounts of money! And it has to be said that this “inflationary” money is completely escaping the brands, which have done all the job (design, manufacture, promotion, iconization, etc.). In fact, it is other players who are filling their pockets, in particular the major watch auction houses, or the pre-owned market operators…

it has to be said that this “inflationary” money is completely escaping the brands, which have done all the job

In addition to this ” inequity “, the long-term effects of which may be harmful for the reputation of the brands concerned, there is a new fact that JSH Magazine highlighted in its June 2021 ” Market ” dossier. Written by the expert Thierry Huron, a master of statistical surveys and trend analyses, the article verbalised for the first time a reality of today’s market, namely that

the main competitor of the new Swiss watch is now the Swiss watch that has already been worn or resold as soon as it is purchased.

Except that, in that case, it is no longer the brand that benefits from these colossal new financial flows. No longuer the one who’s the owner of the model, of its name and its history, the player at the origin of all investments in charge of its manufacturing. It is players whose headquarters are mostly outside Switzerland, whose jobs and fortune benefit from Swiss Made label without contributing anything to it in return.

The magnitude of the phenomenon overshadowed Nick Hayek’s totally innovative solution

By achieving his disruptive action, the “son of” has won his place in history. For, apart from the worldwide media coverage he has just given his company on top of the unhoped-for economic success achieved by two of his group’s brands, he has succeeded in establishing a world premiere in watchmaking: redirecting a part of the “value of waiting” to his own benefit. He was able to bring back into his group’s treasury mountains of cash that had been promised to enrich other operators.

Nick Hayek enters the history books. He succeeds in introducing a world first: redirecting the “surplus value of waiting” to his own benefit”

This way of giving a reinvigorating vigour to this Swiss Made that some sullen people never cease to chip away at, consecrates above all the establishment of a solution that can no longer be ignored: at last, money that stops for a moment benefiting the seasonal speculators, the exploiters of the “waiting time”, and goes back to square one. Back to where it all began, where it was all done. Where a few watchmakers and entrepreneurs of yesteryear set out to conquer the world and space.

The famous Omega Speedmaster Moonwatch, which first appeared in 1957 under the code name CK 2915, aka “Broad Arrow”, is back in the cradle, its pockets legitimately filled with the fruit of its heritage… It brings in its wake, fair return of things, its little plastic sister, the same one that, a few years earlier, had saved its life…

PS_ PS_ The cherry on the cake is that the Moonswatch campaign, which, by a clever twist of fate, took place the week before the start of the March-April 2022 watch exhibitions (see our list of exhibitors), will have attracted more people than ever before to the Swatch and Omega boutiques around the world. And this at a time when face-to-face sales seemed to be losing ground!