Mario Peserico is worried. The sales director of Eberhard, a small Swiss watchmaker, is wondering who will provide his company with vital mechanical components that constitute the basis of the company’s products.

“We have a problem here,” he says.
Behind Peserico’s concern is a decision by Swatch, the world’s largest watch producer, to stop supplying to other watchmakers in Switzerland with key components — part of a watch’s “movement” — without which mechanical watches cannot function.

And then the interesting part…

Although kits of parts sold by Swatch to others are thought to be worth only about $3 million a year, the companies that buy the parts use them for making watches worth hundreds of times more than this sum.

Sounds like the gravy train the lesser watchmakers have been riding is about to be derailed.

Time May Be Running Out - Los Angeles Times

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 16th, 2005 at 8:56 am and is filed under News Watch.