Why can't they manage to make the easiest details right?

[Smab]

After some years into this hobby, it has come to my mind, why do they never manage to make the easiest details right?

They make superb cases, crowns and pushers, also dials are very often pretty spot on, but the bracelets or straps are more or less allways crap, and there are allways some minor details they never manage to get right.

Example: wrong shaped bezel pearls - misaligned bezels or bezel pearls - misaligned hour markers - wrong shape hour markers - missing AR, or wrong color AR - misaligned text - wrong font on datewheel or bezel numerals - poor applied lume, or no lume at all - lume is ok, but is missing in some areas, compared to gen (missing rehaut lume on earlier versions of AP Diver, SOSF, Hublot Oceanographic 4000m i.e.), different color lume on hands than dial markers, or different lume color on bezel pearl, the list goes on and on. I will go so far to say I suspect they deliberately put in some minor defects and flaws - Things that would be easy to avoid, even so are still aparant. Finger prints and dust on hands and dials, on movement parts (I have a PAM359 with some fingerprints on the rotor). Why on earth did they not use glowes???:-)

My theory (and probably many of you have come to the same conclusion): They simply will not make everything right, even on the Ultimate, Super, Final editions. Reason is, if they make a REP too close to GEN (and believe me, I know they are able to make it, so one must use a microscope or lupe to see the difference), they will have massive trouble from the GEN manufacturers, problably from the authorities as well.

Since they currently make 90-95 % REPS, it is allways possible to compare to GEN and find the weak spots, at least for the trained eyes. I think factories like Rolex, Breitling and Omega and others, would try much harder to get this business to an end, if they risked having their customers choosing REP models over GENS, because they were so good even the AD would have trouble to see the differences at first sight and items were sold as GENS on EBAY without the geeks like us beeing able to tell them out (still some stupid **** try to put some add and say it is GEN, but these are often really bad REPS and they get reported to EBAY and other sales forums and get banned).

The only way to have a near 100 % REP, is to mod the crap out of it, using GEN parts. But then, you really cannot call it a REP anymore, it is more like a hybrid. But the market for Frankens is so little, only a small percentage of the REP buyers go to the extend of dooing this to get as close as possible. Many of the Franken makers, spend thousands of dollars, this is not the market loss for the GEN manufactures. The marked loss is from those with enough buying strenght to afford a GEN, but still they buy REPS (or both REPS and GENS), because they think they are good enough to pull off to their social network without beeing busted. The majority of the REP buyers are people on holiday, or people like us, getting into the wonderful art of mechanical watches, without having the buying strenght to get all those GENS, but still have a small taste of it. Also it is more convenient, as you can have lots of REPS and if you, like myself, get easily bored by one watch or a few alone, you can aquire 10-15 pcs, you tend to use 2-3 watches a week, then change to another 2-3 the next and so on.

But the quality of the REPS have improved greatly over the last 5 years, still the same mistakes are made over and over again. Why is there not a proper REP DSSD on the market yet, with proper pearl, proper hour markers and superlume all over? And a properly finished bracelet. If they can manage to make such a nicely finished case and bezel, why can't they make a nicely finished bracelet and deployment clasp as well?

The DSSD seems to be a great seller since it was introduced, but they have not made it with superlume yet. I guess the people here liking DSSD would be all over it and it would be another DSSD craze. Plenty of opportunity to earn more cash for the makers and dealers. No superlumed Daytona or Submariner (or have they?) No superlumed Omega PO? And why not any superlumed AP ROO, other than the AP Diver? Instead, they make a superlumed SD and Explorer II.The market for those, I reckon, is far less than the market for DSSD.

The bonus is, we have started to have lots of superlumed PAMS. The PAMS have gotten really good over the last years. Maybe Panerai is not such a big treath to the makers as Rolex, Breitling or Omega?

[triplehd]

My theory (and probably many of you have come to the same conclusion): They simply will not make everything right, even on the Ultimate, Super, Final editions. Reason is, if they make a REP too close to GEN (and believe me, I know they are able to make it, so one must use a microscope or lupe to see the difference), they will have massive trouble from the GEN manufacturers, problably from the authorities as well.

Dont you think they do get in trouble now with authorities and Gen manufacturers ? Every once in a while, websites are shut down and they do have raids here and there with certain factories.

There can be various reasons why they dont get the details right. SOmetimes, when a new watch comes out - factories will rush a quick version out because, its cheap to made and they know people will buy it. Then, they come out with a v2, v3, etc. Do they do this because they know there still improvements to be made or do they do this because with each new version, they know people will buy it?

[panerai153]

Here is what I believe:

1. the rep manufacturers don't give a whit about the major companies i.e. Rolex, Swatch group, etc. Until the Chinese govt really cracks down, nothing will change.Oh, they will have a few raids. a few websites will close for a day or two, but business as usual. And with the Chinese economy starting to stall a bit, don't look for any real crackdowns that affect jobs.

2. They make them like they do because they can! They don't need them to be perfect to sell. As someone said above, they sell watches to folks on vacation. I would bet that there are more reps sold in Chinatown NYC in one average month than all the reps bought by forum members in a year. So the law of averages works here, they are selling a lot more to a buyer group that are by and large pretty ignorant about watches. They do make v2,v3,v4 ,etc. but I believe that this is just a normal progression.

3. possibly there are some small shops in China sort of like the small watchmakers here, that do give a fair amount of attention to detail, but i would suspect that they are in the minority.

4. Quality Control is pretty non existent. I'm sure that there are some folks over in China who are assembling watches, that are very talented, motivated, and have great pride in their work, others are just assemblers. Maybe last week, they were putting together cell phones or Laptops. Because of this there may be a great deal of difference from one watch to the next. the biggest reasons are simply the manufacturer doesn't care, there is no recourse. Do any of you know the toll free number of a rep factory, email address, even the location of the factory, right, no one knows any of these. the manufacturers work deep in the shadow economy, and no one really knows where they are

[cougar1]

I think trip and Pan covered it, just to add, the little finicky things that bug us, they don't really care, if it looks good enough to them and they think it will sell then the 'jobs a good one' as far as they're concerned, they only make improvements if they get enough feedback about an issue to think it's worthy of changing so that they can cash in on version 2 etc.

Also things have to be taken into account like if they bought the gen for a 1:1 type project, the limited movements available to fit a certain watch etc, who takes on the job i.e. a big producer like noob or a smaller more specialised factory, ...the experience that particular factory has with the features of the watch being repped (Have they a good track record with similar for instance).

We invariably see the 1:1 craze over the past while has produced much better fare (plenty still with flaws but on the whole much better efforts) than the average picture copied watch that the rep scene is flooded with. Still a long way to go but for the price and the poor QC that is so dominant in this game, we are getting some very good stuff.

I've heard the talk before that if they produced a true 1:1 99% quality rep then the gen factories would go ape on them...I don't believe that for a second, the truth seems to be that if they had some of the better rep experts from the forums or people more intimate with the small details doing QC and managing the finicky flaws then we would get a bloody next to perfect rep. But why bother, extra expense for them, extra prototyping and too much attention to detail that they don't want to take on or couldn't be bothered. It's more interesting for them to get it good and watch it sell than analysing and prototyping for ages and missing out!

[tode1640]

The vast majority of reps have flaws in the details as a result of poor QC for all of the reasons mentioned here. If a factory does produce a near perfect rep (and I'm sure that they do from time to time) then what sense would it make to sell it to the TDs for a few hundred dollars? If it is that good, they could easily sell it as a grey-market gen for, say, 50% the price of the gen. I'm sure that this happens. In fact, you can see hints of it on this forum. Take the Yachtmaster that TC has been offering recently. I haven't seen one, but people rave about it and how close it is to a gen. Now TC gets them because he goes to China and knows the watchmakers personally. If you read his blog, it is fairly obvious that they are quite reluctant to sell them - even TC has to do a lot of wheeling and dealing. Why do you think this is? I am fairly sure that it is because these same factories are making fake grey-market gens. The watches that end up with the TDs are either going to be the ones that aren't good enough to cut it on the grey market, or else made at the lowest possible cost with cheap materials and non-existent QC.

[Adeodatus]

What you are suggesting, Smab, is that rep factories and gen companies are working closely together, in agreement to produce "lesser" reps. Although not entirely implausible, I find it highly unlikely. I believe that gen companies are working towards eliminating the rep market in every way possible, by limiting parts, raising prices, working directly with Chinese govt., and much more.

I think that the case with producing quality reps is driven by market forces. While the market, or the buyers, demand higher quality, producing a true 1:1 watches would limit the market to new buyers, of that specific model, only. Similar to automobile industry, which introduces slightly upgraded or "face-lifted" version of the same car, the rep factories are utilizing their loyal and satisfied customer base to resell the same watches over and over again, parallel to acquiring new customers into the circle. It's, simply, a much smarter business plan than finding new customers in such a limited, in the first place, market.

[Watchmeister]

I am with A on is one. They make what they can sell. We get better reps today because there are better factories and better component suppliers. And some reps are virtually perfect other than QC as a result. If a factory could get it right the first time for the same price as our typical V1 they would. V2's and V3's happen because that factory or the next one believes they can sell that quantity. The genius of the rep world today is that the factories have greater control than ever. They do a better job of controlling the prices than gen companies and how many gen watch companies can Pre-sell an entire run?

[freddy333]

[frankt]

Because they don't need to to sell their wares to 95% of their market...

Why should they go all "jiggy" trying to get them perfect just for us geeks...???

And. Do you really want to pay BK type prices for all your reps...???..I certainly don't!!! :pimp:

[Guest Carl]

The last thing rep makers worry about are the gen companies. They have plenty of customers. New ones are born every minute.

Ponder this: if reps were 100% accurate they would not require modding, would they? What would that do to the value of this board? It would be the worst possible thing that could happen to it.

[Smab]

Now, this caused some hefty and interesting debate, just what I had in mind .I think all of you are more or less right! On the other hand, some of the stuff I observe, makes the "conspiracy train" start running when I am in a "weak moment"

One great example is the PAM243, in both Noob and H-Factory editions. Both of them have flaws, but not the same flaws. If you were to purchase both, then combining the parts from both, you would get one hell of a great REP. Almost like they were thinking "if we improve the flaws from the other maker, maybe some customers will aquire both watches and put the best parts from both togheter, and we are both earning on it".

Of course I don't honestly beleive this, since most "mainstreem" buyers, pick up their models on impulse, and those are the biggest market for this industry (guy above mentioned sales in Chinatown NYC), but it is rather a lot of coinsidence that all flaws on each editions "complements" each other so well What about the Noob DSSD, and the Trevor V6/V7? Take the dial and pearl (perhaps also bezel) from one, the case and the rest from the other, and you have a nearly spot on model..

Other examples are when they make a V2, when they improve on some previous flaws. If they just used the V1 and made the changes, it would probably not add any new flaws, just eliminating the old flaws, would it not? But, if V1 is made by one maker, and V2 by another, that is a totally different thing. We see this all the time, when the makers do improvements on the models, they allways tend to add a couple of new flaws on the latest editions.

I think I have come to the conclusion and it is a rather philosofic and diplomatic answer - There are many truths out there, but only one of them is relative to each individual's standpoint .

You are all entitled to believe whatever you want, as long as it makes you happy, that is the best truth that is suitable for you. Remember when you were a child and believed in Santa Claus? When you finally learned something else, childhood luck maybe came to an end and the naked truth of adulthood engulfed the innocence and worryless time of no sceptisism. Maybe the source of unhappyness is not to beleive?

If you believe in something fully and wholeheartedly, you have tossed the diabolic sceptisism aboard and has less worries. The source to many worries are sceptisism and not trusting something or someone.

But then again, that is maybe the price mankind had to pay when tasting the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. To aquire knowledge, man had to start beeing sceptic, and start not believing everything beeing told.

If all mankind believed the earth was flat and that there was nothing on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the great historic explorers, like Colombus, Vasco Da Gama and Marco Polo, would not have traveled the worlds oceans, discovering new worlds, and the development of modern civilasations would be much different that the world we see today. I guess they would not have invented the Tourbillon or the chinese replicas either .

Thank you very much.

[indywatchguy]

I was told the H factory version of the PAM243 is the best. Can you enlighten me on the differences between the NOOB and H Factory versions?

[foottty]

why cure cancer when treating it is so much more profitable. don't want to write more, cause the last time I voiced my opinion I was banned by a "different" site. For those of you who wrote stuff like it's not cost effective for them to make them more accuarte due to cost are pretty much retards or better yet, you my friend are getting paid. Hope I don't get banned.

[cougar1]

You won't get banned, but you should really tell us how you feel. Calling people retards and not putting your arguments across just means you won't be taken very seriously.

[panerai153]

I suspect he will get banned at some future point in time, not because of this remark, but for his attitude, which certainly shows a lack of courtesy, Here is someone who has been here for a whopping one week with 6 posts and he is calling folks, who have been here for a whole lot longer and who have made meaningful contributions to the forum, retards? Im sure with an attitude of disrespect like this, he's not going to be around long!