Openwork: Inside the Watch Industry

Seiko, Citizen, and Casio each pulled in over a billion dollars in revenue last year — in most cases record-breaking, and all three landing neck and neck around $1.3 billion with healthy 9–14% net margins. That's remarkable on its own. It's stunning when you remember it happened in the same sub-$5,000 segment that's been punishing the Swiss. While Swatch Group struggles and the broader industry hunts for its footing, Japan's big three are quietly having their strongest year in decades.

We dig into why. The short version: they're counter-positioned to everything that's currently working against Swiss luxury. A weak yen against a punishingly strong franc, a value-and-reliability pitch instead of a luxury-and-heritage one, a technology focus (spring drive, solar, high-accuracy quartz, the entire G-Shock universe) at the exact moment tastes drift away from vintage reissues, and diversified distribution into markets like Latin America and India that the Swiss lean on far less. We also get into how different these three businesses actually are under the hood — Casio's pivot to watches as a majority of revenue, and Citizen's sprawling structure spanning La Joux-Perret, Miyota, Bulova, Frédéric Constant, Alpina, Arnold & Son, and Angelus — and why Seiko still doesn't get half the respect it deserves.

Before all that, we welcome Niton and the Niton Prima to Collective, and put a final cap on the AP x Swatch launch — the crowds, the resellers, the injuries, and Nick Hayek's remarkably flip BBC interview — a moment that revealed real cultural relevance for AP and a real crisis-management failure for Swatch.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].

We recorded today's episode on May 13, just a few days before the AP Swatch Royal Pop went on sale. We discuss the decision-making and implications of this project for both companies' brands and businesses, and for many reasons, we consistently question why AP in particular would partner with Swatch on this project. On the positive side, we do point out Swatch's competencies in production, distribution, marketing, and retail of these kinds of products. Sadly though, today's events — store closures, out-of-control crowds, and even fist fights — undermine that case, and only serve to underscore our skepticism in this project and the points we discuss on today's episode. In sum, the botched on-sale has turned this project from an exercise in brand building to one in crisis management — certainly not what AP or Swatch had in mind.

Across the conversation, we work through the collaboration from three angles: brand, product, and business. We dig into Ilaria Resta's stated rationale — putting watchmaking into mainstream culture and protecting "rare watchmaking savoir-faire" — and the curious decision to direct the donated proceeds to AP's own foundation rather than a third party. We examine the form factor itself (a pendant rather than a wristwatch), what it says about AP's attempt to protect the Royal Oak while capitalizing on its cultural cachet, and whether this project actually solves a problem AP has — or whether it amplifies the access issues that already define the brand's relationship with potential customers.

We also turn the lens on Swatch. Unlike Moonswatch and the Blancpain Scuba, the Royal Pop is the first time Swatch has borrowed equity from outside the group, and we unpack why this looks like a near-perfect outcome for Swatch and a much harder calculus for AP. Along the way we draw comparisons to Moonswatch's cultural footprint, debate which direction "borrowed interest" actually flows in these collaborations, and float a few alternative ideas — including an AP-coded Flick Flack — that might have served the stated mission better than what landed on shelves this weekend.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].

Why do some watches always seem to go to the same people? Listener Terry wrote in with a question we hear constantly: how do brands and authorized dealers actually decide who gets the most in-demand pieces? Is it spend, celebrity, genuine interest, or something else? Gabe and Asher walk through the five allocation models that govern how hot watches move from manufacturer to wrist — closed-door allocations, customer pre-sales, first come first serve, lotteries, and order windows — and the trade-offs each one creates.

The conversation starts upstream. Decisions about how many Breitling Cosmonauts or MING Starfields a given retailer receives are made long before any customer walks in the door. From there, Gabe and Asher get into the human factors most cynical takes on this stuff miss: taste fit, follow-through on prior commitments, how someone treats the staff, whether they refer other clients, and yes — purchase history, but as one input among several. They share Collective's own framework for allocating limited pieces, where 10% of a 20-piece run still means saying no to most of the people who want one, and they're honest about why none of the five models really solves the underlying problem.

Also: Collective Horology's third annual Open House is Saturday, June 6 in Hollywood, with 14 independent brands in attendance — register at collectivehorology.com/openhouse.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].

If you'd told Gabe and Asher on August 7th — the day the U.S. announced a 39% tariff on Switzerland — that the holding companies would close out 2025 with their watch businesses up, they wouldn't have believed it. But that's what happened. Richemont's watch division grew 7% year over year. Swatch Group posted 7.2%. LVMH's watches and jewelry held flat while fashion softened around it. The top line says remarkable resilience. The bottom line tells a more complicated story.

Profits are largely flat. Currency and tariff drag is real. And the recovery is being driven by a strategic shift toward what Richemont and LVMH call "permanent luxury" — fewer watches, made at the higher end, with more specialized supply chains. That shift is a tale of two cities for suppliers: brutal under $10K, a quiet boon at the high end. Gabe and Asher dig into what it means for independents, why the Sellita movement Asher saw in Geneva shows how the market adapts, and whether the grand reorganization of the industry is creating a system that's harder for new brands to break into.

The episode closes on Swatch Group, where ISS has backed activist Steven Wood for a board seat. Asher takes the hypothetical seat and lays out what he'd change: less obsession with covering price points, more focus on creative point of view, and real activation of the R&D and supplier capabilities Swatch already owns.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].

A grand reorganization of the luxury watch business is happening in front of us, and nowhere is it more visible than in the diverging strategies of two holding companies making opposite bets on the future. Gabe and Asher unpack the contrast between Breitling, which under Georges Kern has quietly reconstituted itself as a private-equity-backed challenger group — bulking up through the acquisitions of Universal Genève and Gallet — and Richemont, the industry stalwart now actively slimming down, shedding Baume & Mercier and quietly walking Montblanc away from serious watchmaking.

The conversation digs into what each move actually signals. Universal Genève's relaunch with full collections at Vacheron and Jaeger-LeCoultre price points, distributed through curated Breitling network partners, looks like a textbook play for cross-shop market share at the high end. Gallet's entry into the brutal sub-$5,000 segment is harder to explain — unless you read it as Kern building a fully diversified holding company with a long-term IPO in mind, willing to plant a flag in a difficult category before the cycle turns. Richemont's behavior reads as the inverse philosophy: get fit, exit segments where the math doesn't work, and protect margin around Cartier and the houses that still command pricing power.

Along the way, Gabe and Asher get into the JLC management buyout rumors swirling out of Geneva, why the Mark Newson Memovox travel clock is the most genuinely interesting thing the brand has done in years, what Monbtlanc's absence from Watches and Wonders actually means, and why the agility of a young holding company is a real strategic asset that the legacy giants can't easily replicate. Market share is up for grabs in a way it hasn't been in a generation — and the next few years are going to redraw the map.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].