SDC Weekly 97; Indies and Succession Planning; Lange’s Bundling Lies; Rolex’s New Crown Patent; Lessons from Leaders
When Luxury Brands Abuse Loyal Customers, What Happens After Founders Die, Crown Innovation Without Pushers, and Why We've Lost the Art of Taking Chances
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Estimated reading time: ~29 mins
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Lange’s Bundling Lies
You know those forum posts which make you laugh and cringe at the same time? This is a two-part story which starts with someone pouring their heart out about a luxury brand treating them like dirt, and then the same person going back for more. To me, this was like reading the most comprehensive case study in Stockholm syndrome the watch world has ever produced.
The story comes from a Lange ‘superfan’ who goes by Andreas on the forum. This guy had, at the time of his original post, bought 43 Lange watches (since 2005); he’s also got microscopes specifically for photographing movements, he attends every Munichtime event, and even visited Walter Lange at his family home. He speaks in his post about how people at watch fairs literally thought he worked for the brand because they didn’t think any regular person could talk about Lange with such knowledge and passion.
Now, guess how Lange rewards this man’s dedication? Well… they don’t! You can read the post linked above (it’s in German, will require translation) - but I will cover the key details here anyway. When Andreas ordered the steel Odysseus in 2019 (blind, before public announcement), he was told it was boutique-only. Fair enough, he thought… brands do this. So he waited 2.5 years for that piece after ordering from the boutique, and he got the watch. While he was waiting for that piece, other games began.
First, he was invited to buy a second Zeitwerk Lumen but because it was boutique-only, his AD wasn’t able to sell it to him (just to inform him about the allocation coming soon). By the time it arrived at the boutique for him, the price had jumped from €114,000 to €150,000. Just because. He makes a good point that raising prices like this on a limited edition piece is preposterous, especially because these limited editions are usually delivered over the course of 2-3 years from the release date and this isn’t a small inflationary adjustment… it’s over 30%!
Then came the Odysseus in Titanium - they hint that buying another watch would “certainly have a very positive effect” on his chances of getting the Odysseus. So he orders a Richard Lange in white gold and immediately pays a 30% deposit (ignore the bundle behaviour from Lange for a moment). Over a few months, he is promised the Odysseus and notices the price has risen from €55,000 to €61,900. Eventually, he gets told his Richard Lange is ready to collect, but not his Odysseus. So he asks about further price increases, and they tell him he’d have to pay whatever the new price is, whenever it arrives.
It gets better… When he offers to pay for both watches in full immediately just to lock in the current prices, Lange refuses! Their reasoning was that it would be “preferential treatment” because other customers might have to pay higher prices later.
I’m sorry, what? 😂🤣 The stupidity here is … Olympic-level!
As it happens, after Andreas posed this story in watch forums and cancelled both orders, Wilhelm Schmid (CEO of Lange) personally called him to smooth things over. Suddenly, price guarantees were possible and the Odysseus was ready to collect immediately! All it took was some public shaming and the threat of permanently losing one of their most devoted collectors. The intervention worked, Andreas got his titanium Odysseus at the original price, and they celebrated his NWA for three hours with appetizers. Happy ending, right?
Wrong!
This story captures everything wrong with how certain luxury brands operate today. If someone who’s bought 43 watches and is known by name at headquarters gets treated this badly, what chance do ‘regular people’ have?
To be clear these are the specific red flags in this story:
Forced bundling (buy X to get Y)
Arbitrary price increases after orders are placed
Moving goalposts on availability (despite promises in the bundle)
Zero transparency in allocation
Treatment only improves after public shaming
The saddest part about this story is how Andreas still loves Lange watches. I mean, fair play to him for his deep love of the brand and their watches; even after all this, he was already planning to buy two more complications from his dealer. He frames it as the watches “can’t help it” that the company treats customers poorly. He’s right, but the sad thing is, him returning to them is exactly why brands like Lange still continue these ridiculous practices. Their watches are exceptional - the finishing, the movements, the design are all world-class. But the company culture? The retail experience? The customer treatment? Fvcked.
Andreas also mentions that most buyers at his jeweller have switched to other brands. Another dealer, Oeding-Erdel, has apparently lost certain customers who owned over 100 Lange watches. One is liquidating their entire collection.
Great watches, terrible company. It’s really that simple. The fact that it took a public forum meltdown and CEO intervention to treat a nearly 20-year-long customer who owns 43 watches fairly, tells you everything you need to know. If you are considering your first Lange, ask yourself whether you have any self-respect and whether you have the time or the money to play these silly games. The moral of this story is that unless you’ve got old Wilhelm Schmid on speed dial, you’re probably going to need deep pockets and suffer fools gladly.
👨💼 Lessons from Leaders
This felt like an unusual thing to write about, but I don’t want SDC to become predictable, so I went with it! It started with this article: Life’s Work Leaders: a directory of leaders building singular companies across industries; it was straightforward to learn that all these leaders are impressive in terms of what they’ve achieved, but my natural tendency is to look for patterns. What do all these people have in common (other than being very successful)? And more importantly, can we as collectors do anything with this information? Perhaps.
Solving for their own needs
Many of these leaders seem to have started by solving a problem they personally experienced; the Shopify founder basically made a ‘Shopify shop’ for his own snowboards before pivoting to making the same thing for everyone else! For you as a collector, this seems logical: don’t collect by copying what others admire; solve your own collecting challenges. Maybe you can’t find the perfect travel watch, or perhaps there’s a complication you wish existed. Start hunting for one, speak to an independent watchmaker, or heck, start a brand; it seems like everyone is doing that, you might as well make something useful1.
“Always stick to what makes you weird, odd, strange, different. That’s your source of power.”
Robert Greene
Outsiders have an advantage
Several leaders on this list succeeded precisely because they came from outside their eventual industry. Sean Feeney’s section explicitly states it too: “…attributes success to his position as an outsider - applying his finance background to rethink standard restaurant practices.” In that sense, being new to watch collecting doesn’t have to be a disadvantage - this is measurable for those who started collecting before social media, because they have a better understanding of their own tastes. The same applies to SDC, to be honest. A ‘traditional’ watch publication would not be expected to go anywhere by criticising the industry, but ultimately SDC was started because of a frustration with the ‘traditional’ methods and so far, it seems many of you agree that it was worth doing… so here we are! (Thanks for being here, btw!)