Hi EVBigMacMeal,

I agree with most of what you said. Just one tiny correction: It’s true that the watch business in general has been difficult after COVID, but this is not the case for high-end watches. I’ve been trying to buy a certain Rolex model and have had to wait for years to get it. It’s even more difficult with Patek Philippe: to buy a particular model which I loved, I had to be introduced by a friend (collector) at their headquarters in Geneva and I had to send them a handwritten application to be allowed to buy the watch for CHF 56,000 (stating, of course, that I would buy and keep the watch, and not sell it for CHF 100,000 the next day). I was rejected, with no explanation offered (I now wear a Samsung sports watch... :-).

Given Breguet’s history, they could have assumed this market position as a top luxury brand.

timeandwatches.com - The history of breguet part i

But you can buy a Breguet with no problem at Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich.

The failure of Swatch is even more troubling if you consider that the company has dominant or near-monopolistic control in specific important niches of the watch industry (mechanical movements, low-end Swiss-made quartz watches, and watch batteries) — they have had significant problems with regulatory authorities because of this.

The main reason for their failure is quite simple: poor management. You probably can’t read this article, since it’s in German:

blick.ch - Die wunderbatterie der swatch group hayek will tesla ueberholen

In this article from 2017, Hayek Jr. stated that he intended to achieve 10 to 15 billion CHF with batteries for cars by 2020 (the aforementioned Belenos project). As of now, I still have to find a car with a Belenos battery... Every other CEO would have been fired after this complete failure.

At the end of the article, Hayek mentioned that he was considering taking Swatch private with all the money he would make from the battery project... And maybe this explains it all: since he couldn’t make enough money with batteries to finance going private, he chose the other path — let the stock price drop, drop, drop... Honi soit qui mal y pense.