This post is a companion to the latest 3DLANES podcast episode, and derived from its transcript. Last episode was Volkswagen. This one is Zodiac. Different industries, different scale of disaster, but the same underlying exercise: pull apart the timeline, listen to what leadership actually said versus what the analysts and the enthusiast community said after
The Choices Behind Zodiac’s Comeback Read More »
This post is a companion to the latest 3DLANES podcast episode. This is the second half of a topic discussed on the last post. The first half was about manufacturers who built things for other brands and eventually decided to build their own. This half is different. This is about brands that actually died, but
Back From the Dead: How Enthusiast Brands Get Resurrected Read More »
This post is a companion to the latest 3DLANES podcast episode. This topic made sense for a single podcast episode but not for a single website article. This is one half of it: manufacturers who spent decades building things for somebody else’s name, then decided they wanted their name on the dial, the hood, or
Tractors to Supercars, From OEM To Full Fledge Brands Read More »
This post is a companion to the latest 3DLANES podcast episode. I picked three brands for this one: Rolex, Omega, and Ming. Not because they’re my favorites, not because they’re more interesting than anyone else out there, they just happened to be the three that popped into my head when I started thinking about the
Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Watch Industry Read More »
How Luxury Brands Change You For Better or For Worse The term “luxury” can of be interpreted very differently and can vary person to person, even its definition being vague in and of itself, and for each of us ever changing. In my own journey, I believe luxury can be found in watches of over
The Watch That Changed Everything Read More »
This post is a companion to the latest 3DLANES podcast episode. This was supposed to be a Collective Horology weekend. I had the trip planned with my wife, hotel booked and everything, and Sunday morning was going to be Morning Motors, the Cars and Coffee that Driving While Awesome puts together. Instead I spent the
Kodak, Jaguar, Zenith: Brands That Had Every Ingredient For Higher Success Read More »
This post is a companion to the 3DLANES podcast episode. I was walking around Windup SF and something happened. It was not about a watch I wanted to buy, not about a brand I hadn’t seen before. It was more of a personal and “business” thought. A “wait, how does any of this make sense?”
The Trade Show Problem Nobody in Watches Wants to Talk About Read More »
This post is a companion to the latest 3DLANES podcast episode. IWC was founded in 1868 by an American. An engineer and watchmaker, Florentine Ariosto Jones, at 27 years of age, decided to combine American industrialization techniques with Swiss craftsmanship. As the former manager of E. Howard Watch and Clock Company in Boston, he observed
The IWC Schaffhausen Brand Analysis Read More »
A Solution Without a Problem This post is a companion to the latest 3DLANES podcast episode. The deadbeat seconds complication did not start as a luxury feature. It started as a fix. In 1675, English astronomer Richard Towneley introduced the deadbeat escapement to eliminate recoil in precision clocks at the Greenwich Observatory. Recoil created inconsistencies.
The Deadbeat Seconds Complication Read More »
This post accompanies the latest 3DLANES podcast episode discussing DOXA, its origins, its place in dive watch history, and the competitive landscape the brand operates in today. Brief Origin Story DOXA was founded in 1889 in Le Locle, Switzerland by Georges Ducommun. One of 13 children, Ducommun began his watchmaking apprenticeship at the age of
DOXA Watches: The Story and the Strategy That Keeps the Brand Niche Read More »
