Family vs corporate - SS Shortage

[vladamir15]

Hello everyone,

Like many i was thinking about the watch shortage across the many brands. I think I have an idea - it’s the mostly the family owned shops that are playing this game. Think about it. Patek with the 5711, Audemars with the Royal oak and Rolex with SS sports model. All brands that aren’t owned by corporations but rather families/trusts. If you look at like the Swatch group or Richemont group, their brands aren’t centered around shortages and waitlists. I am sure there are some exceptions, but for the most part. What watches from Omega, Lange, Cartier, Panerai, Breguet or Vacheron have huge waitlists?

The families care more about status/respect in the horology rather than pure sales. The Swatch group isn’t (normally) going to lose out on a sale because some guy gets tired of the waitlist. They are a publicly traded company that want to actually sell watches and make a profit.

I’m not saying one or the other is clearly better, but what do you guys think about my idea? Do you think family vs corporation is the deciding factor? Would you rather have these brands be family owned or have pp, AP and rolex be owned by a corporation where you can get any SS model you want?

[s.m.b.]

I'm fine with waiting for the watches I want to own, as I have other watches to wear in the interim. I'll take private over public at every opportunity.

[beshannon]

High end luxury items need to be rare or they lose their desirability.

Not worth even worrying about, ever.

[J!m]

I've mentioned it several times that Rolex is a non-profit.

Therefore, their driver is NOT profit.

They are so prevalent sponsoring high profile gigs because they need to burn through all that money they collect each year. I'm sure they dump a lot into "R&D", but still have to burn through a huge amount of cash each year.

[bayerische]

Rolex is far from family owned.

[AK797]

When most large city ADs have wait lists of hot Rolexes in the hundreds, fiddling with supply is really going to make no difference.

[tyler1980]

independent vs publicly traded has different constraints, mainly shareholders.

My wife's publicly traded company was doing a project and delayed some construction work for a year. The construction workers in that country were entitled to 1 year of pay. So they stopped construction for a year, paid them their 1 year severance, and started building again the next year with the same workers. it was thousands of workers here, not like a couple. Make sense? no. Could they classify the expenses differently and make it look better? absolutely. They paid a lot more money at the end of the day to do the same thing. No way an independent company would need to do that.

Reichmont has to sell as many watches as possible to meet profit and revenue targets. Independent companies can chose to not meet demand and there is no shareholder revolt. Looking to the next earnings season tends to hurt long term strategies.