Rolex sold 4.7 billion
Omega is 1.6 billion
Cartier is 1.2 billion
Longines is 1.2 billion
Patek Philippe is is 1 billion
Total comes to 9.6 billion.
Rolex launched in 1915
Omega was 1952
Cartier was 1903
Longings was 1832
Patek Philippe was 1839
And the Apple Watch came out in 2015.
Best part is the margins, where most fashion companies are known for averaging high margins, Apple joined in that, where the estimated margin on Apple Watches is 60%, holding with the industry norm on luxury products.
Apple became bigger over every other watch maker and the top five combined in under five years and the reason is one word.
Utility
Watches since creation have always been a utility to tell time on the go.
During the 2000s, with the rise of cell/smart phones, watch makers on all price levels saw some drop.
The word utility was completely gone from the conversation and now watches were 100% about fashion.
Apple being the biggest producer of phones and before that MP3’s was an obvious factor in reducing watch sales for a lot of consumers and even having some magazines say they were becoming out of style.
Only so in 2015, the company that was destroying the watch industry would go out and launch a watch.
They did that, but brought back the word utility to the conversation.
GPS tracking
Fitness tracking
Heart rate
Messages
News alerts
It even told time!
And the best part is every indicator suggested consumers wanted a product like this.
FitBit launched in 2007, raised a ton of money and was gaining traction.
Pebble also launched their 2012 Kickstarter campaign, raising 10 million dollars for a simple smart watch.
The larger watch companies didn’t catch onto this and largely focused on fashion and abandoning the idea their products can be a utility.
Apple came in and won.
It’s sort of an amusing story where Apple just came in and took the utility of watches away, forced every watch maker to say this is 100% about fashion and ended up beating everyone with Apple saying it’s 50% fashion and 50% utility.
And that’s a 14 billion dollar a year product which I think is still sort of a ripoff.
