Mike, I’ve been watching your videos since the very early days of the channel. Back then I followed a lot of different watch YouTubers, but over time I’ve narrowed it down to just a few — mainly because your content consistently sets such a high bar that many others started to feel less engaging by comparison. You’ve really carved out your own niche, and it shows. Your channel is one of the very few where I genuinely learn something new with every video. Keep up the great work.

Seems like consulting firms have sold the same strategy to every brand : go upmarket. So like in the car industry lots of manufacturers will suffer with an average product costing too much and a dacia/cw emerges.

It is the ever increasing prices that is causing the primary decline.

In a world of endless listicles and reviews, analysis videos like this are great to see.

How are you not a 1 Million Subs. Your content is the best!

So many shiny
So little money
So little time (ironically)

I barely made it through high school. But it seems to me the conglomerates are their own worst enemies. They want more profit so all their brands just keep going upmarket and they end up their own competition. They want it to be ‘luxury’ and ‘exclusive’ but just cannibalize each other.

The amount of overlap in the Swatch portfolio is pretty wild.

In a world where "affordability" is a very real problem, I think we're all second guessing new watch purchases. My Planet Ocean retained for £2200 in 2007 and was attainable with a clear conscience. To think I'd have to pay over £9k for new  model is unthinkable for me and unjustifiable to my Wife.

20+ years ago I started to think that there were too many brands when GG, Bertolucci, UG, Blu, Daniel Roth, and several others all went away and there were several other brands that seemed like they could be next. And then, once the day and age of social media really got going it only polarized things even further.

Always interesting Mike. There's all out war around £500-1k ATM, so many micros and indies competing for the same slice. I'm enjoying it!

only people who bitch about the CW logo are those who haven't seen the previous 47 logos

The 'too many brands' is only a problem for watchmakers, we as consumers couldn't be more delighted.

But that is the way post compagnies are run today. Investors want quick returns and leaders bonuses are linked to stock performance…which leads to the skewed effect of no longer focussing on the growth strategy but profit improvement tactics on the short/medium term. Very few companies focus today on growth….

I see plenty of potential Rolex customers head to the Omega boutique. These guys want a nice watch to celebrate a specific date birth/birthday/marriage etc. In general they are not collectors and simply don't want to play the Rolex AD game. Their purchases are keepers so future value is less important. They want, for example, to pass on a watch to their son saying I bought this in your birth year not I was put on the list in your birth year

I would pay good money for a buddy-cop detective miniseries starring Mike and Nico as they roam Northern Europe solving crimes and debating watch preferences. Call it "On the Watch."

Hey Mike - always enjoy your watch market analysis videos. Your reviews are great but it’s commentary like this that keeps me subscribed to your channel. Keep it up

Love the shadow analogy!

There is so much out there. It’s really hard to track, great point. Also if I could make one small suggestion when you have text boxes that pop up on the screen with lots of information if they could be up a little bit longer, they’re hard to read without pausing the video sometimes maybe I’m just a really slow reader.  😆 . One or two lines I can usually read it in the time it’s up there but more than about two or three lines and only like two seconds on screen makes it pretty hard to read.

The relentless push to go upmarket might turn around bite certain brands in the ass. We're in a different era now, the AI space is so deep in bubble territory any S&P 500 ETF has become a ticking time bomb because the "Magnificent Seven" tech companies are now something like 40%  of the S&P index value. Two, crypto currencies are crashing in value. So what I'm getting at is there are less ballers out there who are going to be splashing cash for a stainless steel Daytona, when the world is on the eve of a possible deep recession. Put on top of that criminal gangs in major cities who focus on stealing Rolexes, Pateks, and Richard Mille's off the wrist of some tourist or business traveller who isn't practicing situational awareness. Hear enough stories, consumer habits change.