SDC Weekly 63; GPHG Nominations; Dostoevsky’s Principles for Watch Collectors
Decoding the Downturn, Tissot tightrope, Ludovic Ballouard and the Swatch Group, Rolex theft, Huge diamond found, AI ancient texts, Quantum consciousness, Patek price drop, Michelin guide and more!
🚨 Welcome to another edition of SDC Weekly. Estimated reading time: ~30 mins
Quite a crazy start to the week! We had some watch dealer drama on Monday covered on Instagram, Phillips announced some banger lots coming up for auction later this year … and I had this edition pretty much done, only to see the GPHG nominations were announced on Tuesday morning - so had to shuffle things around… and of course Geneva Watch Days kicks off tomorrow! Let’s not waste any time and get into this. Here’s the GWD program if you’re interested1:
If you’re new here, welcome! Feel free to catch up on the older editions of SDC Weekly here.
PS. Moser is doing a collaboration with Studio Underd0g? Wild 😁
Small stuff
Decoding the Downturn
When it comes to luxury goods, few items carry the prestige, complexity, and perceived investment potential of high-end watches. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal sheds light on a shift in the luxury watch market…
At the heart of their analysis is the interplay between the primary market (new watch sales) and the secondary market (pre-owned sales). This relationship is hugely pronounced in the watch industry, where the secondary market accounts for 50% of the primary market’s value. For context, in the broader luxury goods sector, secondary sales typically represent only 12% of primary market sales.
This oversized secondary market has traditionally been dope for luxury watch brands. A robust resale value not only enhances the perceived worth of their products; it also creates a virtuous cycle of demand. As the article illustrates however, this symbiotic relationship can quickly turn into a double-edged sword when market dynamics shift.
The luxury watch market experienced an unprecedented boom during, and just after the pandemic - this was driven by a perfect storm of factors:
Excess savings among consumers
Limited spending opportunities in traditional luxury experiences (e.g., travel)
The rise of crypto wealth (they call it the “crypto bro” phenomenon)
This last point is particularly intriguing. The article notes that many cryptocurrency investors ‘diversified their portfolios’ by venturing into luxury watches, viewing them as an ‘alternative investment.’ This influx of speculative capital created a frenzied market where certain models could be flipped for massive profits, instantly.
As the bubble burst, the retreat of these speculative buyers left a glut of inventory in the secondary market, with watches now taking months to sell instead of weeks.
As an aside, this situation brings to mind a reverse application of Ben Thompson’s Aggregation Theory. In the traditional sense, Aggregation Theory describes how internet-based companies can dominate by owning the customer relationship and aggregating suppliers. In the luxury watch market, we’re seeing a form of “Disaggregation Theory” at play.
Disaggregation in the Luxury Watch Market - How it works:
Customer Relationship Fragmentation: Online resale platforms like Watchfinder or LoupeThis have inserted themselves between brands and customers, fragmenting the direct relationship.
Supply Democratisation: Platforms like these have made it easier for individual owners to become suppliers in the secondary market, democratising the supply side.
Information Symmetry: The increased transparency in the secondary market has reduced information asymmetry, traditionally a source of power for luxury brands.
So its simple; disaggregating the customer relationship from the brands, gives more power to consumers and speculators. Now, as the speculative fervour cools off, we’re perhaps seeing seeing a re-aggregation of sorts, with power potentially shifting back to brands that can maintain waiting lists and control supply.
The cooling of the secondary market will have knock-on effects on the primary market:
Decreased Speculative Demand: With the arbitrage opportunity diminishing, speculators exit the market (mostly done?).
Price Pressure: Brands may find it harder to raise prices in the face of declining secondary market values.
Inventory Glut: The flood of watches in the secondary market is depressing prices and extending sale times.
Brand Divergence: Established brands with strong waiting lists may weather the storm better than less coveted brands.
As the market recalibrates, we get to observe how brands adapt. Brands like AP seem to be doubling down on artificial scarcity to maintain exclusivity. Some might embrace the secondary market more, to regain control of the customer relationship (something I said Lange should have done ages ago).
I suppose, more than anything, this situation serves as yet another cautionary tale for other luxury sectors that are tempted to court speculative buyers or rely too heavily on the perceived investment value of their products.
Tissot Walks a Tightrope
I don’t usually pay much attention to Tissot, but this interview with their CEO got me thinking. For starters, I hadn’t realised this was a brand with over 170 years of history! At the helm since 2020 is Sylvain Dolla, a CEO whose vision for the brand’s future seems to be unnaturally optimistic. In an industry facing disruption from smartwatches, changing consumer preferences, and faltering economies… I’m left wondering whether Dolla’s strategy is a masterstroke or a mirage.
Dolla’s emphasis on Tissot’s rich history2 forms a cornerstone of his strategy. “We can use all the historical riches of the brand to come back with strong commercial products for the future,” Dolla enthuses. This approach has yielded success with the PRX, a reissue of a 1970s design that has become unexpectedly popular.
The reliance on heritage designs is a well-worn path in the watch industry. While the PRX has found success, particularly among younger consumers, it’s worth noting how fickle fashion can be. The vintage aesthetic that seems to be popular today could easily fall out of favour tomorrow, leaving Tissot scrambling to adapt.
Moreover, Dolla’s claim that Tissot is “far from a one-trick pony” is somewhat undermined by the runaway success of the PRX. When a single line is selling “20 times more units than we originally planned,” it raises questions about the brand’s ability to replicate this success across its diverse range of products - and the more successful it continues to be, the less likely it is to be replicated. Remember AP’s Royal Oak?
Dolla’s background in consumer electronics brings a fresh perspective to Tissot, evident in projects like the T-Touch Connect Solar. The development of a proprietary Swiss OS for connected watches is ambitious, but it’s entering a market dominated by tech giants like Apple and Samsung. Is it even worth the investment to be doing this?
Tissot’s long-standing partnerships with cycling, basketball, and MotoGP are presented as key strengths. Dolla boasts, “We eat the cake, the others can have the crumbs,” - in reference to Tissot’s purportedly dominant position in these sports.
The thing is, these partnerships come at a significant cost, and their effectiveness in driving watch sales is, quite frankly, debatable! He may boost brand awareness, but the connection between watching a sport and purchasing a watch is not clear to me. Plus, as other brands enter these spaces, Tissot’s differentiation may diminish - this is more likely to me given the price range they’re targeting.
Dolla’s approach to retail, balancing mono-brand boutiques, multi-brand stores, and online selling, is presented as a strength. I am not so sure. Maintaining a presence across multiple channels is resource-intensive, and there’s the obvious risk of cannibalisation between these channels - reducing the return on investment across the board.
The idea of corporate stores as “laboratories” for merchandising concepts sounds promising, but it’s also worth questioning how effectively these concepts can be implemented across 11,000 diverse points of sale, many of which Tissot doesn’t directly control.
While Dolla unsurprisingly remains optimistic about Tissot’s future, his statement that “the brand should not change” seems at odds with the evolving watch market. The challenge of balancing heritage with innovation is real, and Tissot’s ability to figure out what this balance means for them, remains to be seen.
Dolla’s confidence in Tissot’s stability, even in challenging markets, seems to be overstated. The watch industry is facing significant headwinds, from changing consumer preferences to economic uncertainties. Tissot’s position as a volume leader in Swiss watches could make it particularly vulnerable to market shifts.
Tissot’s strategy under Dolla’s leadership essentially sees them trying to straddle multiple worlds simultaneously: traditional & smart watches, heritage & innovation, and luxury & accessibility.
In theory, this provides multiple avenues for growth, but clearly also risks spreading the brand too thin. Tissot’s efforts to be all things to all people could potentially dilute its identity and confuse consumers.
Why should you care?
Well, I think it’s always useful to see a watch brand from a CEO’s perspective. We don’t get these insights too often. Tissot’s journey under Dolla can serve as a case study of the struggles and aspirations in any watch brand - you just need the view everything with the right lens. Now that you’ve read this, you can evaluate every Tissot release with a new lens. How do they balance tradition and innovation? Is each launch a success or a setback? This sort of critical thinking offers valuable insights into how watch brands are run, and how the impact of executives’ visions play out in the real world.
Ludovic Ballouard and the Swatch Group
This is actually a old story about Harry Winston’s Opus XIII which was recently brought to my attention; One which I thought you’d enjoy hearing about.
Back in the day, Ludovic Ballouard, a watchmaker of no small repute (having cut his teeth with the likes of Franck Muller and the inimitable François-Paul Journe), finds himself entrusted with the task of creating the next instalment in Harry Winston’s vaunted Opus series. By all accounts, this would be commission that would set any watchmaker’s heart aflutter, since they’d be joining the pantheon of luminaries who’ve also lent their talents to this prestigious project.
Turns out, while Ballouard toiled away, burning the midnight oil, the sands were shifting beneath his feet. Harry Winston was about to be swallowed up by the Swatch Group.
At first, all seemed well. Ballouard, ever the optimist, pressed on. He expanded his team fourfold, dipping into his own pocket to fund the adventure. After all, the contract promised remuneration for each piece delivered. What could possibly go wrong?
Baselworld 2013 was apparently a turning point. Ballouard arrived with five Opus XIIIs, ready to dazzle everyone. For four days, he held court, demonstrating his creation with the pride of a new father. On the fifth day, he was unceremoniously shown the door!
“The tide started to turn at Baselworld 2013. I had to stay 10 days to promote Opus 13. After four days, I was asked to leave the salon. A nice first reward after a year of hard work by the four of us to be able to arrive in Basel with five pieces. I had already given dozens of demonstrations to customers, to the press, and four out of five pieces had worked perfectly during the entire show. By mutual agreement, I then continued to optimize this Opus, which was obviously not yet quite ready for its market launch. My goal was that Harry Winston and I would have no feedback to deal with afterwards.”
Ludovic Ballouard
Undeterred, he returned to his atelier, determined to refine the piece further. Little did he know, in the in the towers of the Swatch Group, gears of a different sort were turning.
The Swatch Group, it seems, had taken it upon themselves to put the Opus XIII through its paces in their own laboratories – never mind the contract stipulating independent testing. A damning thirty-page report of their own making declared the watch unfit for production. Ballouard, understandably gobsmacked, cried foul. He demanded to see these supposedly faulty parts, only to be met with a wall of Swiss silence.
“The parts delivered all work perfectly, I have even improved them even more compared to the initial plans, which had also been validated by Harry Winston. The report uses photos that I estimate to be magnified to 500 times to prove so-called fat deposits or imperfections. It’s absurd! When I ask for the return of the parts so that I can see these so-called defects for myself, they refuse to give them back to me. I’ve been waiting for them since November 2014. It is impossible for me to see them for myself, much less to remedy the defects, if they exist. However, I am responsible for them until they are settled. It’s not me who says it, it’s the contract that binds us!”
Ludovic Ballouard
As the days passed, a dreadful realisation began to dawn on him. Could it be that the Swatch Group was plotting to assemble his brainchild in-house, cutting costs (and him) out of the picture? It seemed like a wild conspiracy theory, and yet...
Harry Winston, now a pawn of the Swatch Group, terminated their contract! And they didn’t stop there; They demanded damages from Ballouard if he refused to relinquish everything – including, in a particularly Kafkaesque flourish, his own name!
The toll on Ballouard was severe. Over 600,000 francs in salary foregone. His carefully assembled team, trained to the exacting standards of the Opus project, scattered to the winds.
Of course, he survived, and went on to rebuild - but what a story! I already liked the guy, and now I like him even more. Check out his watches here.
Enough small talk. Let’s dig in!
GPHG 2024 Nominations
So, it’s squeaky bum time eh? I get to mark my own work, and compare my predictions from SDC Weekly 59 to the official nominations. I will place the official images first, followed by my selection. Let’s get to it!
Score: 3/6. Unsurprisingly, they went with Hermes, Parmigiani, and Van Cleef over the lesser known brands and Dior. I had the VC&A as a close runner up, so no debates there. Winner prediction: Chopard - although I would pick Faberge for the win.
Score: 4/6. Happy to admit I think I would agree with their inclusion of the Chaumet, but their pick of Trilobe over Celadon or Vanguart does not align with their own definition of the criteria in this category. Not bad. Winner prediction: Louis Vuitton, and I would probably agree. I actually dig that pink watch.
Score: 2/6. Now we’re into bullshit territory. How the fvck is Ming not in here. but Czapek and Parmigiani made the cut? This is a great example of why the GPHG is so full of sh1t. I knew Berneron would get the nod, and I said as much, but the rest are absolute nonsense. Winner prediction: Berneron, but I would go with the Lederer from those options.
Score: 4/6. At this point if you don’t think Parmigiani greased some palms to get all these nominations, you are too naive to be reading this newsletter. And … Grand Seiko? 🤣 Winner prediction: Bulgari, and my pick would be Voutilainen.
Score: 3/6. I noted previously that I regretted doing this - and this resonates yet again. I feel obliged to finish what I started, so we will do this only once more, when the winners are announced. After this year, GPHG can fvck off. Winner prediction: De Bethune, and I’d have to pick the same.
Score: 4/6. How the fvck are they including the LV watch as ‘iconic’ - please explain this? Can you tell this is annoying me? What a circus. Winner prediction: Louis Vuitton, and I would pick the IWC or even the Hublot instead; if that doesn’t say something to you, then please unsubscribe.
Score: 4/6. Why is Remy Cools in this list? Is it not more impressive to create a Batman-themed tourbillon for 6,200 CHF over an overpriced outsourced watch which seems rather ordinary? Winner prediction: Tough one, depends how much LV paid them, but if they pick the LV Tambour in the previous section then perhaps they can overlook the Daniel Roth in favour of the Voutilainen… but maybe not. I’ll go with Daniel Roth - which of course, I disagree with. My pick would be between the Voutilainen or my buddy Armand Billard’s day/night piece.
Score: 6/6. Because there was such garbage it was simply too easy. Winner prediction: IWC, which I’d agree with. If they pick anything else, people should riot and throw eggs on stage. Seriously.
Score: 3/6. Of course it was wishful thinking to expect they’d pick a Chinese watch (and maybe they also hate Hublot?!). Winner prediction: Bulgari (if they don’t win the other one above) or MB&F if Bulgari wins the one above. My pick would be the MB&F despite it being something I’d never buy. Props when they’re due.
Score: 5/6. They picked a Zenith over the IWC... Yeah, fair enough! Winner prediction: LV x RR. I’d pick the same. Straightforward for a change, but this does make me rethink the LV situation for the picks I made above, but the pain of revisiting them urges me to press forward. So I will.
Score: 4/6. Oh so NOW they include Ming? With a very ordinary watch? Imbeciles. Why Czapek again? Another one definitely greasing palms. They are being nominated in slots they absolutely do not deserve. It’s a crime, really. Winner prediction: This one is tough, but the cynic in me says Parmigiani. My pick would be the IWC.
Edit (28 Aug 2024): A reader pointed out my folly. I have now crossed out my error, and extend my apologies to Czapek fans too 😅!
Score: 6/6. There were only 6 to begin with. Winner prediction: Who cares. This is nonsense anyway, but I’d pick the Dior. Looks cool.
Score: 3/6. This is really infuriating again. We see once more, the usual suspects of ‘favoured brands’ - they pick Hermes, Piaget and Van Cleef over other really fantastic watches. Winner prediction: Hermes, because I suppose they must win something based on these rules. I’d pick the Chopard or the Andersen - personal taste would swing it towards Andersen, but both look fantastic.
Score: 4/6. Very very surprised to see the Toledano and Chan NOT get picked. I guess Phil didn’t pay the invoice they sent him! Good on you mate. Fvck them. Winner prediction: Tudor, because they seem to always win. My pick would be Christiaan Van Der Klaauw. Seriously, how do they pick an Amida reissue over the Toledano and Chan? Absolute circus, I swear.
Score: 5/6. Wow, proud of my score here. The Furlan Marri is an inevitable choice, because they pay their GPHG invoices on time, unlike many others 😂 - Winner prediction: Kollokium, which would be my own pick too. I just think the GPHG would look too stupid not to pick this one - not to say they don’t look stupid all the time anyway, but this one has deeper implications because the men who started the brand are industry insiders, and their peers in the GPHG have a point to prove about their own ‘objectivity’ - not picking Kollokium would be an own goal to such a large degree, they’re kinda left with no choice. Of course, I probably jinxed it now. Too bad.
What’s your take?
🧘♀️ Dostoevsky’s Principles for Watch Collectors
In the dimly lit corners of our watch boxes, nestled among the ticking and tocking cases housing our obsession, lies a truth as profound as any penned by a favourite of mine: Fyodor Dostoevsky. The Russian literary giant, who once faced a firing squad only to be granted a last-minute reprieve, offers some unexpected wisdom for collectors.
Find Meaning in the Moment
Dostoevsky speculated that Columbus reached “the culminating point of his happiness three days before he saw the New World with his actual eyes.” He goes on to ask, “What is any ‘discovery’ whatever compared with the incessant, eternal discovery of life?”
For any watch collector, this rings true with a resonance as clear as a minute repeater chiming. The thrill of the hunt - researching obscure references, debating the merits of different escapements, or tracking down that random piece nobody’s even heard of - often surpasses the actual joy of acquisition.
Consider a collector who spends years pursuing a specific configuration of a specific watch. The moment they secure the piece may feel like victory, but it’s the years of learning, searching, and dreaming that truly define the collecting experience. This is not necessarily about having the watch, but about becoming the sort of person who understands and appreciates it. The journey, with its highs and lows, is where the real value lies.
Embrace the Complexity of Beauty
Dostoevsky writes, “The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
Is this not true for watches, too? Take, for instance, the Henry Graves Supercomplication. Its beauty is undeniable, and yet, it’s also a battleground of complexity and simplicity, of tradition and innovation. Any collector who truly appreciates such a piece understands that its allure goes beyond the aesthetic appeal; it extends to the tension between its sublime craftsmanship and the overwhelming intricacy of the mechanism inside.
The pursuit of horological beauty is not for the faint of heart. It requires a willingness to grapple with the mysterious and the terrible – be it the moral quandaries of luxury consumption or the existential questions raised by our attempts to measure and control time itself.
Question the Status Quo
Another gem: “It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most....”
In our hobby, this fear of the new often manifests as a slavish devotion to established brands and conventional designs. Enlightened folks, such as SDC readers, know that innovation and creativity are the lifeblood of the industry.
Consider the rise of independent watchmakers like F.P. Journe or Urwerk. These brands dared to challenge the Swiss establishment, writing new chapters in the history of horology. Their success reminds us that in watches, as in life, the path less travelled often leads to the most rewarding destinations.
Confront Your Own Mortality
Here’s another great line, “life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we won’t see it, if we would, we should have heaven on earth the next day.”
What is a watch if not a constant reminder of our own mortality? Each beat of the escapement marks another moment passed… never to return. Yet paradoxically, it’s this very awareness of passing time which ought to drive us toward living fully.
A collector who truly understands this is not just buying and hoarding watches; they use their collection as a form of memento mori3, a reminder to seize each day. A Patek 5531r, for instance, becomes more than a beautiful object; it transforms into a portal to contemplating one’s place in the archive of space and time.
Seek Transcendence in the Mundane
We end with something epic; He writes: “Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all‐ embracing love.”
For us, this translates to an appreciation for every aspect of a watch, perhaps from an overall grand complication down to the smallest screw. This is a little more spiritual or philosophical in nature, and relates to finding joy in the daily ritual of winding a manual watch, or just contemplatively staring at a pulsing jumping seconds disc - tell me this isn’t captivating?
Look, I realise you didn’t expect to find yourself at the nexus of Russian literature and Swiss watchmaking when you started reading this newsletter - indeed, for any other publication it would be as unlikely as finding a highly finished tourbillon inside a G-Shock. Yet here we are, our watches ticking away like little Dostoyevskian novels.
It’s funny because each sweep of the seconds hand is like another line in our own version of “Crime and Punishment” - the crime being the obscene amount we spend on watches, and the punishment our wives’ rolling eyes and accountants’ despondent sighs 😂
The punishment is worth it though, let’s be honest! Nowadays, when every screen screams for our attention and every ping promises false urgency, our mechanical watches whisper a different story. We don’t fear the financial ruin or the raised eyebrows of the uninformed peasants! We are basically the disciples of Dostoevsky and Daniels, we know true wealth has nothing to do with the fullness of our watch boxes; We’re here for the experiences. Every scratch on the case tells a story, every faded bezel a memoir of adventures had and risks taken.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I hear the call of a certain AD. There’s a waitlist with my name on it, and a grail watch calling my name. The journey continues, the story unfolds, and somewhere, in the great watch atelier in the sky, Fyodor Dostoevsky is checking the time on his celestial Patek, cackling at our ridiculous obsession.
📌 Links of interest
📉 Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet lead pre-owned watch prices to 3-year low.
📈 How Rolex built and maintained its dominant position in the luxury watch market.
😯 Seized Patek Philippe Green Nautilus to be Offered At Auction Unreserved.
🧐 Check out how the CIA observed Russian watchmaking developments, as well as the Chinese (unsurprisingly!).
🤡 Mainland Chinese man arrested after allegedly stealing HK$330,000 Rolex on Hong Kong flight. Genius.
🤓 In-Depth: The Prestige and Patents of the Rolex Oyster Perpetual Day-Date.
🚀 First Rolex Rainbow Daytona Could Fetch $3.5 Million at Auction.
🦹♀️ 'Rolex ripper' who broke his own elbow trying to steal a £50,000 Patek Phillipe watch walks free from court because of prison overcrowding.
💎 One Grail To Rule Them All - Patek Philippe Reference 2524 In Platinum.
🆕 Couple of new Rolex Patents: One for a new dial and another for a new device and testing method. I found these less interesting, and while the dial patent may offer aesthetic and functional benefits, it wasn’t worth a deeper look.
⚾ Babe Ruth's 'called shot' jersey sells for $24.1m (£18.1m) at auction.
🤪 Israel Is Buying Google Ads to Discredit the UN’s Top Gaza Aid Agency - The UNRWA calls Israel’s strategy of promoting misinformation “destructive.”
⚒ The Green Economy Is Hungry for Copper - and People Are Stealing, Fighting, and Dying to Feed It.
🎇 Quantum entanglement may generate consciousness. Based on this journal article.
💹 AI Is Helping Transform Unreadable 3,000-Year-Old ‘Chunks of Charcoal’ into Rediscovered Ancient Texts.
👩⚖️ The House Judiciary released Zuckerberg’s letter detailing the Biden admin’s role in Meta’s content censorship.
📚 ‘We all read like hell!’ How Ireland became the world’s literary powerhouse.
😇 10 Reasons Why Technological Progress Is Now Reversing by
.💀 Is the image editor on the Pixel 9 too good? No one’s ready for this.
🦌 How AI could help us talk to animals.
🗺 View the world from a completely new perspective with this thread of cool maps.
💎 Second-Biggest Diamond Ever Is Found in a Botswana Mine.
🕵️♀️ Is that glass bottle of OJ better for the planet than a plastic container?
👶 Diaper brands are being challenged by the greying of the globe.
🥑 History of the MICHELIN Guide - in case you didn’t know, it was originally conceived to encourage more tourists to take to the road and use more tyres!
🌍 wordassociation.org began as an experimental game by Simon Holliday, and has now become the world’s largest database of word associations.
End note
In case you missed it… here’s a fun post from last week:
And another on the MB&F news:
Following this, Max did an interview with Europastar. Apparently MB&F doubled in size during the pandemic, jumping from 30 to 60 employees. Now, with Chanel on board, they’re hitting the brakes. Hard. Büsser is supposedly planning zero growth for the next four years. He reckons thisdeal isn’t about immediate expansion, but about long-term sustainability, or succession planning as it were.
Speaking of succession, Büsser’s got his eyes on a potential family handover down the line. The Chanel deal makes this more feasible, giving the next generation (his daughters are 11 and 7) time to grow up and potentially step in.
Perhaps most interesting, MB&F is not changing its distribution strategy, and sticking with its retail partners4. It also was news to me, that the Chanel connection itself isn’t new. It supposedly goes back 19 years, to when Chanel’s G&F Châtelain manufacture was one of the original “Friends” in MB&F.
Will we see Chanel x MB&F collabs in the future? Büsser’s got ideas, but he’s keeping them close to the chest for now.
I will add one final note: The Chanel deal was a result of MB&F approaching Chanel, not the other way around, as Max would have us believe:
“We talked about it very naturally two years ago and they asked me how they could help our company. We’ve spent these past two years getting to know one another to confirm our partnership.”
I’m told MB&F were struggling financially, which surprises me even less after hearing they have 60 employees. This deal was a fantastic bailout for MB&F; as for Chanel… we’ll have to wait and see - but given their track record, we have to foresee good things.
Moving on… the Atelier Wen post on their guilloche saga is taking a little longer than expected - but given the person I am collaborating with is stickler for detail, I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait - so stay tuned for that.
Just yesterday, an SDC subscriber and friend reached out to say he was taking a break from the hobby. I wasn’t having it.
Let’s face it - life isn’t some straight-laced, buttoned-up conveyor belt of productivity. It’s more like a psychedelic merry-go-round, spinning us through ups and downs, ins and outs… soaks and squeezes. Our ancestors, those dirt-under-the-fingernails agrarian types, understood this instinctively. They lived and died by the seasons, planting their spuds when Mother Nature winked at them, and twiddling their thumbs when she turned a cold shoulder.
We’ve traded the gentle ebb and flow of natural rhythms for the harsh glare of LED lights and the incessant ping of notifications. We’re like hamsters on a wheel, except the wheel is made of Instagram Reels and Teams calls, and we’re not so much running as we are frantically trying not to fall off.
Friedrich Nietzsche, in his idea of the eternal recurrence5, explored the concept of life repeating in cycles, albeit on a metaphysical level. For us regular folk, it’s a more simple matter of embracing the natural cycles of our energy and creativity.
Which brings me to Sponge Time and Squeeze Time.
Madeleine Dore, author of I Didn’t Do the Thing Today, introduces a helpful framework; a framework so simple, so elegant, it makes Marie Kondo look like a hoarder. Dore’s metaphor captures the cyclical nature of productivity, where we alternate between absorbing and executing.
Picture yourself as a giant, anthropomorphic sponge (stay with me here). You’re lounging around, cocktail in hand, soaking up ideas like they’re going out of fashion. This is Sponge Time, when your brain is absorbing every morsel of inspiration that floats by. You’re reading, pondering, and staring off into space like a lobotomised goldfish - and it’s all epic.
This is the time when your unconscious mind is working overtime, like a sneaky little elf in the back of your skull, piecing together the puzzle of your next big idea. Carl Jung would have a field day with this - he’d probably say something profound about the collective unconscious, but let’s be honest, he would be too busy taking notes on your dream about riding a unicorn through a field of talking daisies.
Squeeze time, on the other hand, is when you take all that juicy knowledge you’ve absorbed and wring it out like a wet flannel. It’s showtime, baby! This is when you’re firing on all cylinders, churning out work like a factory on steroids.
Squeeze Time is when you’re in the zone. You’re so focused, you wouldn’t notice if a brass band marched through your living room playing the theme from Star Wars. This is deep work, this is flow, this is you showing the world what you’re made of (hopefully not actual sponge, but you get the idea).
Both phases are necessary and mutually reinforcing. You cannot have meaningful output without first taking the time to absorb; likewise, all the information and insight in the world is useless if it’s never put into action.
The problem arises when we get stuck in one phase or the other. This can happen for a variety of reasons, but it often stems from our cultural obsession with productivity. We’re led to believe that progress only happens when we’re in squeeze time - when we’re creating, producing, and moving forward. As David Allen famously puts it in Getting Things Done, “You can do anything, but not everything.” We try and defy this logic, staying perpetually in execution mode, trying to squeeze every last drop of creativity from an empty sponge.
This relentless drive to be always productive can lead to burnout, and more than that, to diminishing returns. If we don’t allow ourselves time to recharge, to be receptive rather than active, our attempts at continuous output become less effective. As the sponge metaphor illustrates, if you never take the time to soak, there’s nothing left to squeeze.
Of course, we can also find ourselves trapped in sponge time - endlessly researching, planning, and gathering information without ever pulling the trigger. This is often a symptom of analysis paralysis. Tim Ferriss, in The 4-Hour Workweek, argues that over-researching or over-planning can be just as debilitating as under-preparing - it’s just fear or perfectionism holding us back.
So it’s easy right? Embrace the cycle between absorption and execution. When it’s time to soak, we should fully engage in sponge time - allowing ourselves to be open, curious, and reflective. We must give ourselves permission to rest, read, ponder, and gather ideas without feeling guilty about not “producing” something tangible.
When it’s time to squeeze, we should focus on execution - bringing those gathered ideas to life, pushing through resistance, and turning potential into reality. This phase is about taking action and committing to the work, trusting that the insights we’ve absorbed will guide us to the right outcomes.
Well, it isn’t so easy at all. We find ourselves in a culture that celebrates constant productivity and forward motion - a situation in which it’s easy to forget the feeling of progress comes in cycles.
Now, I don’t know if this means anything to anyone, but it means a lot to me, especially now. I’ve been debating throwing in the towel on SDC as it places more onerous demands on my time… but I haven’t reached any firm conclusions yet.
I will say, to my friend who was trying to quit the hobby… take a beat. Maybe you just need to wait for the tide to come in again. Like death and taxes, it surely will, soon enough.
Until next time ✌
F
😊 Bonus: We Are NOT Living in a Simulation. Probably.
This covers a podcast conversation with Dr. David Kipping, discussing the simulation hypothesis - the idea that reality as we know it could be a simulated experience, akin to a computer program. The conversation explores different perspectives on the likelihood of this being true. Unlikely, he says.
Believe it or not, that “❤️ Like” button is a big deal – it serves as a proxy to new visitors of this publication’s value. If you enjoyed this post, please let others know. Thanks for reading!
Cheers PD!
Embodied by an archive of 7,000 restored watches
Wikipedia: Memento mori (Latin for “remember (that you have) to die”) is an artistic or symbolic trope acting as a reminder of the inevitability of death. The concept has its roots in the philosophers of classical antiquity and Christianity, and appeared in funerary art and architecture from the medieval period onward.
They will open a fifth “Lab” in two months’ time – which will make 14 points of sale, half of which are single-brand. Apart from the historical M.A.D. Gallery in Geneva, these are all franchises.
Wikipedia: Eternal return (or eternal recurrence) is a philosophical concept which states that time repeats itself in an infinite loop, and that exactly the same events will continue to occur in exactly the same way, over and over again, for eternity.
“It’s funny because each sweep of the seconds hand is like another line in our own version of “Crime and Punishment” - the crime being the obscene amount we spend on watches, and the punishment our wives’ rolling eyes and accountants’ despondent sighs 😂”
Dostoyevsky references were all apropos 🫡
Sponge and Squeeze …..☝🏼🙌🏼yup!
Another well done edition
Cheers 🥂 and 🙇🏼♂️thanks
" I noted previously that I regretted doing this - and this resonates yet again. I feel obliged to finish what I started, so we will do this only once more, when the winners are announced"
It's nice to see someone else reach the same conclusions you have... doing round-by-round GPHG predictions was exhausting last year and I vowed not to do it again :-D