SDC Weekly 147; Royal Pop or Royal Flop?; Thierry Stern, again; Georges Kern, snippets
Stumpers and the riddles your brain uses against you, On Aristotle's three friendships, Anti-shock as a parenting metaphor, AP x Swatch launch-day chaos round-up, and more!
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Estimated reading time: ~35 mins
🤡 Stern, again
As I started this section, I realised it’s been a busy few months for Patek content. In April, Stern scolded anyone who’d drawn a Rolex/Bucherer parallel to his Beyer acquisition. And then quite recently, he claimed 100% of the Cubitus design and confirmed that the perpetual calendar would go to existing VIPs and not to the much-advertised ‘next generation’ of collectors. Now Robin Swithinbank has had his turn for the FT...
“I don’t want anybody going down, either, but a lot of people will be out of business.”
Kinda cool to see Stern is stating the hard truth publicly like this; the top four privately-owned Swiss watchmakers (Rolex, Patek, AP, RM) controlled about half of the luxury Swiss watch market in 2025, up from 37% in 2019. The other half is being divided among everyone else, and Stern is more or less confirming he believes that a fair chunk of that ‘everyone else’ is not going to make it.
The old multi-brand AD model that propped up so much of the mid-tier worked, in part, because of bundling. If you wanted a hot Patek (or any ‘blue chip’ watches), the dealer could make you ‘force buy’ your way to earn the privilege; a Zenith here, a Carl F. Bucherer there... which is how many brands hit their numbers without really earning true customers on product merit.
To me, this is carriage collapsing in real time; you may recall we spoke about carriage not too long ago. Patek is opening its fourth directly-owned salon at Beyer; the global point-of-sale count is down from 500 at Stern’s accession to 259 today; US retailers have been cut by two-thirds to 38 (and yet still produce 16% of revenue, which tells you the bundling game was worth a fair chunk).
On certified pre-owned, Patek’s position seems to have drifted from ‘never’ to ‘maybe one day’:
“I’m thinking about something, but it’s too early to talk about it. It will take years.”
Sure, he’s not saying it’s definitely happening, but it’s not a straight denial either, and given how much they’ve rejected the idea in the past, even this tepid framing is a step in a particular direction. EveryWatch (per the FT article) reckons Rolex CPO did roughly $600m last year, or about 10% of the global secondary Rolex market - a side business larger than the primary sales of most Swiss brands. Stern saying “they realised it’s not that easy” is fair, but the maths is the maths. If you’re Patek, you eventually must capture some of that yourself or just watch the grey market hoover it up.
Him saying “it will take years” tells us that the spreadsheet has already been built, he’s just figuring out the mechanics of making it work. So, for me, it’s now a ‘when’ not an ‘if’ for Patek CPO.
When asked about following the rest of the industry into the world’s fastest-growing luxury market, Stern said:
“Why should I go there? It’s too early. Most of the Indian clients that want Patek are living in London or travelling to Geneva and the Middle East. So it’s not my priority.”
And then, almost in the same breath, he says:
“The tourist doesn’t really have the chance to buy a Patek. The retailer has to sell to the local client.”
So how does that work? You don’t need to go to India because Indian customers are buying when they travel… but tourists can’t really buy because allocation has to go to locals. As far as I’m concerned, Stern is openly saying he doesn’t care about Indian customers - despite the fact that India makes up roughly 18% of the world’s population and is arguably the single biggest long-term opportunity in luxury watches. Indians aren’t, in his words, “my priority.”
Now to be fair, Patek definitely doesn’t need India today; they sell everything they make. But in my mind, this is the sort of thinking that lets a brand sleepwalk through a generational shift in where wealth is being created. Hermès, Cartier, and others are making moves into India because a fair chunk of future watch collectors (young, globally mobile, legacy-minded, urbanising fast) live there. If you’re Patek, sure, you can ignore that today and the customers will still find their way to you. But will they feel the same way in 20 years’ time… about a brand that couldn’t be bothered to show up?
Stern closes the interview with “there is still a lot of pleasure and possibility for the watchmaking industry.” Sure, for Patek there is. As for the brands Stern has just casually consigned to closure… perhaps a little less so.