Did You Know
Three Things You Probably Didn’t Know About the Watch Industry
The world of watches runs deeper than dials and bracelets. Here are three facts that put the industry — and the little machines on our wrists — in perspective.
1. Switzerland sells very few watches — and most of the money
Of the billion-plus watches made worldwide each year, Switzerland produces only around 2% by volume. Yet those few million pieces account for more than half of the entire industry’s total value. In watchmaking, it isn’t how many you sell — it’s what each one is worth.
2. A single quartz watch nearly ended Swiss watchmaking
When Seiko unveiled the Astron — the world’s first quartz wristwatch — in 1969, it set off a revolution. Cheap, battery-powered and astonishingly accurate, quartz gutted the traditional Swiss trade: watchmaking employment fell from roughly 90,000 to 30,000 in little more than a decade. The comeback arrived from an unlikely hero in 1983 — the cheerful plastic Swatch.
3. Your mechanical watch ticks 250 million times a year
A modern automatic movement keeps time with a balance wheel that swings about eight times every second — 28,800 beats per hour. That works out to roughly 700,000 ticks a day and more than 250 million a year, all driven by a coiled mainspring with no battery in sight.
And at Spot.Watch — that’s always worth noticing.