Credits: Article and images by Wei Koh @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/patek-philippe-high-watchmaking/
But then the question was, how to add a hand such that it would not disrupt the reading of all the other crucial world-time information? Barat explains, “We decided to use a glass hand that was almost invisible to the eye with a red hammer-shaped indicator. In order to do this, we had to learn how to weld the glass to a small tube that is coaxial to the cannon pinion.”
But that was far from the most complex technical feat required by the Ref. 5330G. Barat continues, “We realized we would have to deal with the International Date Line and that you could end up in a destination where the date was the day before when you travel east to west.” An example of this is a flight from Singapore to New York. In this scenario, you land the day before you departed. Amazingly, the Ref. 5330G understands this and compensates for it. But there is one more problem.
Barat says, “There is one hour a day where every one of the 24 zones is in the same date. So even when you cross the International Date Line, the date doesn’t change. We created a system with a differential mechanism to compensate for this. Actually, this is the second system we created, because in the first version we realized that the hand still wanted to change and you could see a sort of backwards and forwards tug of war on this hand during the one-hour period. Thierry immediately stopped production and had us rework the system to get it exactly right.”
This is a testament to how Patek Philippe never launches anything but a fully resolved timepiece. Ref. 5330G is exactly that and represents both transcendent beauty and, as always, real, functional innovation.
So now you understand the motivation behind Patek Philippe’s Grand Exhibition. As I pointed out earlier, this undertaking is both Herculean and extremely costly, but Patek Philippe clearly feels that it is worth everything — and I, for one, agree. It’s funny because, of late, it has been very fashionable to discuss the performance in terms of revenue of the world’s top watch brands. And many online pundits have discussed Patek Philippe’s ranking as the fifth biggest brand in the world at CHF 1.8 billion based on 68,000 units sold in 2022.
But, first of all, you need to understand something. Patek Philippe’s revenue is at the wholesale level. Patek Philippe — like Rolex, as opposed to Audemars Piguet and Richard Mille — believes in partnerships and always has. Could it shift to the model espoused by the latter to keep all revenue to itself and massively increase profit? Yes, easily. But Patek Philippe doesn’t because it is a family-owned company and thus makes decisions for the long term.
If you were to calculate Patek Philippe’s revenue at the retail level, it would probably exceed that of Cartier’s 2.75 billion — making it the number one high-luxury watch brand in the world. But Patek Philippe doesn’t need to, because it is already the number one watch brand in terms of desirability based on real authenticity and not marketing hype.
In many ways, even though they will never admit it, there is always a competition among the industry’s top CEOs to say that they make more revenue than the others. But Patek Philippe doesn’t think this way. Imagine if you were to go to a country where you don’t speak the language and perhaps the cultural differences there make you feel lost and confused.
Yet if you mention the name “Patek Philippe”, the vast majority of people around you, certainly in affluent circles, would immediately light up and want to talk to you. That is the power of Patek Philippe: it transcends language, culture, religion, and is the universal symbol for the very best when it comes to watchmaking. It has been for the last 100 years, and I am sure it will be so for the next 100.
So when people say, “Oh, but Patek Philippe doesn’t rank as high as this brand or that brand in terms of revenue,” tell them that it is because Patek Philippe is not playing this game. They are not motivated by revenue. They are motivated only by one thing: the preservation of their immortality as the very best.
I will say one last thing as a sort of warning to the rest of the industry. It is clear that with the completion of its new manufacture, Patek Philippe, which was previously restrained by the number of watches it could physically produce, is now capable of expansion. While the official statement is that this manufacture was created to “streamline production”, etc., the very brilliant Stern family is not going to invest CHF 600 million without a great reason.
With an already insurmountable delta between demand and supply, increasing production by, say, 30 percent, would do nothing to damage the desirability of Patek Philippe. It will, however, definitely take market share away from brands and groups that have profited all the times when a Patek Philippe was not available.
Credits: Article and images by Wei Koh @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/patek-philippe-high-watchmaking/