SDC Weekly 88; Watch Marketing with Rory Sutherland + AI; Morgan Stanley Report Pt 2
Farewell to J.P. Hagmann, False Info About Romain Gauthier, Krayon Anyday, Rolex New Trademarks + Leaks + Patents, Daylight Saving Time, How To Use LLMs, Big Dreams and more!
🚨 Welcome back. This quote will make sense at the end:
“Spend a handful of hours a day going fast. Crush a gym session. Do deep work on a project you care about. Spend the rest of the day going slow. Take walks. Read books. Get a long dinner with friends. Either way, avoid the anxious middle where you never truly relax or truly move forward.”
Charles Miller
Estimated reading time: ~30 mins (Getting there 😉)
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If you’re new to SDC, welcome! If you have time to kill, skim the older editions of SDC Weekly here.
Disclaimer: There will be lots of mistakes because my unofficial editor is busy. Soz.
Farewell to J.P. Hagmann
An industry legend passed away yesterday.
The late Mr. Hagmann came up fairly recently after the GPHG awarded him a special prize, and what I wrote back then feels quite poignant today:
At 83, Hagmann kind of represents a bridge between watchmaking’s artisanal past and its industrial present. In an era where watch cases are largely made by machines, he represents a dying breed - a master who could translate a simple line drawing into a three-dimensional masterpiece of precious metal. His cases are not just containers; they are instruments of music for minute repeaters, with walls precisely 0.5mm thick and specially engineered channels for sliding mechanisms that the entire industry now copies.
For a craftsman who lived by the principle “simple is better but quality is important,” this recognition was quite befitting - simple in its gesture, but profound in its meaning. The standing ovation he received at the ceremony wasn’t really for the cases he made; it was for the standards he set, the knowledge he shares, and the legacy he’s created, one case at a time.
And that smirk on his face as he held his prize? That’s the look of a man who knows that while he may have made thousands of cases over six decades, this is one moment that will forever remain uncased - pure, precious, and preserved in time.
Here’s a great story on Hodinkee about JPH - complete with images from Instagram’s favourite watch photographer, @waitlisted. (If you don’t already follow this guy, you should!1)
False Info About Romain Gauthier
I have a problem with this post on Esquire, not because they misspell Romain and Gauthier in two separate instances, but because they are simply making things up!
As it happens, Romain does have some prior experience making watch-related cuff links for other brands (I can’t say more about this), but RG has never, and currently does not, have a line of cuff links. I have no clue why they would say this, but there you go. I mean, it’s cool that RG is getting random ‘mainstream’ publicity like this (I asked RG directly - they didn’t ask for this feature, and obviously didn’t pay for it) - but it doesn’t help the brand if the reporting is factually incorrect!
Rolex Leaks, Trademarks, and Patents
Everyone who follows watches online, has been talking about the Rolex ‘leaks’ over the past 36 hours… let’s join the party, shall we?