https://deadbeat.watch/ Watch industry. No filter. Sharp, sourced analysis with no brand access. en https://deadbeat.watch/articles/gold-price-arithmetic/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/gold-price-arithmetic/ Mon, 10 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Market Rolex raised prices on its gold watches by about 5% on 1 June 2026, a rare second increase in a single year, and the trade explained it as the cost of gold. On the LBMA's own benchmark, gold reached an all-time high of $5,405 an ounce on 29 January and had fallen 17.7% by the day the new list took effect. This is the arithmetic on what the metal costs and what the increase recovers — including the two figures nobody publishes, which is why the explanation cannot be checked. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/chronometer-certification/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/chronometer-certification/ Sun, 09 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Guide "Chronometer" is printed on three different kinds of test: an independent Swiss body that tests a bare movement to one published number, a government metrology institute whose own rulebook sets three different numbers and lets the brand run the test itself under audit, and a layer of in-house standards that are sometimes stricter than both and sometimes just a name. A working guide to what each one actually checks, from the standards themselves. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/swatch-reports-by-segment/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/swatch-reports-by-segment/ Sat, 08 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Industry Swatch Group reports two operating segments, and the entire watch business is a single line in them. Its brands are described in adjectives. Then in February 2026 it published brand-level margins, growth rates, retail shares and average selling prices — not in a report, but in an open letter correcting a Morgan Stanley estimate. Morgan Stanley's reply confirms the detail had never been disclosed publicly. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/swiss-made-arithmetic/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/swiss-made-arithmetic/ Fri, 07 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Guide "Swiss made is not a description of where a watch was built. It is a test with five conditions, four of which are about process and one of which is a percentage — and the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry publishes a worked example in which the same watch, with the same components at the same costs, comes out at 75% or 87% depending on which of two permitted methods the manufacturer picks. Both are legal. Neither is a secret. Almost nobody buying a watch has seen either." https://deadbeat.watch/articles/yema-superman-honest-in-house/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/yema-superman-honest-in-house/ Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Profile Yema publishes what most brands work hard to avoid saying: which parts of its movements are bought, which are made, and where. That candour is the most interesting thing about a 78-year-old French diver — more interesting than the heritage, and more useful than the price. It also raises the question the brand has not answered, about a Superman that now runs from $1,004 to $13,000. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/microbrand-record-closed/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/microbrand-record-closed/ Wed, 05 Aug 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Market We commissioned a survival count of the microbrands that launched in the 2020 boom. It cannot be written. Kickstarter and Indiegogo have closed their project directories to inspection, Kickstarter's statistics page has become a marketing post, and no register anywhere records a watch brand quietly stopping. The absence is the story. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/seiko-cannot-explain-itself/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/seiko-cannot-explain-itself/ Thu, 30 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Profile Seiko builds its own movements, hairsprings, dials and cases — a degree of integration almost nobody else has — and sells the results across a hundred-fold price range under Seiko, Presage, Prospex, King Seiko and Grand Seiko. Grand Seiko's separation was the right decision. It also exposed the question the company still cannot answer. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/nivarox-dependency/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/nivarox-dependency/ Thu, 30 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Industry A hairspring is a few micrograms of alloy that has to stay elastic across temperature, magnetism and a decade of flexing ten times a second. One company dominates their supply in Switzerland, and Swatch Group owns it. A look at the industry's most consequential dependency, and why almost nobody has escaped it. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/cartier-refused-the-terms/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/cartier-refused-the-terms/ Thu, 30 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Profile Every brand that set out to compete with Rolex built a steel sports watch on an integrated bracelet. Cartier took buyers off Rolex with shaped gold cases, bought movements and no diving credentials — by refusing the terms of the competition entirely. What that took, and where the position is fragile. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/dial-makers-nobody-names/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/dial-makers-nobody-names/ Wed, 29 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Industry "In-house" has no agreed definition and no legal one. Meanwhile the dials, hands, cases, crowns and crystals in watches at every price point come from a small number of specialists — and Swatch Group names most of them on its own website. A look at what the marketing language actually obscures, and the one part of it worth caring about. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/longines-brand-to-beat/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/longines-brand-to-beat/ Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Profile Longines spent a decade doing the opposite of what the industry rewarded — no allocation, no waiting lists, no scarcity theatre — and ended up with the strongest value position in Swiss watchmaking. A profile of how it got there, what it costs, and the one way it could lose it. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/eta-movement-tap/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/eta-movement-tap/ Tue, 28 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Industry The movement supply squeeze forced a generation of brands onto Sellita, Miyota and in-house programmes, and forced their marketing to make a virtue of it. The regulator lifted the squeeze in 2020. The marketing built on it is still here. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/mbf-two-decades/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/mbf-two-decades/ Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Profile MB&F gets filed under "independent watchmaking," but Max Büsser never sold his own hands — he sold his imagination, and built the most scalable business model in the independent world. Profile two in our series. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/lug-to-lug/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/lug-to-lug/ Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Guide Every brand publishes case diameter and almost none publish lug-to-lug, which is the measurement that actually decides whether a watch fits. A working guide to the numbers that govern fit, and how to take the one that counts yourself. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/laurent-ferrier-quiet-giant/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/laurent-ferrier-quiet-giant/ Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Profile No hype strategy, no waitlist theatre, colder auction results than its peers — and, almost unnoticed, the soundest succession structure in independent watchmaking. Profile four in our series. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/akrivia-promise/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/akrivia-promise/ Mon, 27 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Profile A $3.8 million steel AK-06, a Louis Vuitton collaboration, and craft nobody disputes. Rexhep Rexhepi has everything the field guide asks for except the one thing it weighs most. Profile three in our series. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/waiting-list-is-dead/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/waiting-list-is-dead/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Industry The artificial-scarcity model that defined a decade of watch retail is unwinding from the edges — while the handful of watches that invented it remain as unbuyable as ever. What that gap tells you. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/swiss-export-data/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/swiss-export-data/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Industry The FHS export statistics are the industry's most-quoted and most-misread numbers. A working guide to reading them properly, using the freshly published first-half 2026 data as the worked example. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/superfakes/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/superfakes/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Authentication The best counterfeits now defeat every check a buyer can do at arm's length — and most of the checks dealers do too. What actually still works, from someone who opens movements for a living. https://deadbeat.watch/articles/independent-boom/ https://deadbeat.watch/articles/independent-boom/ Sun, 26 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0000 Independents Auction season 2026 crowned independent watchmaking — a $13.9M Journe, a $3.8M Akrivia, a record $235M Phillips season. Here's why those numbers say almost nothing about whether today's crop of new independents will exist in ten years.