Size of the Rep industry

[abat]

Since I discovered RWG and similar forums I've been trying to get a sense of scale of the Rep Industry. I've done some searching around and I haven't come up with anything. Apologies if this kind of question comes up alot but it's hard to think of search terms to try. This kind of thing could also be considered sensitive so I guess answers might not be forthcoming.

How big is the rep industry? It's kind of a hard question answer because the standard metrics are probably very hard to get hold of but I thought I'd ask anyway. For a really popular rep like the SFSO I'd guess there may be many more reps in the wild than gens but does anyone have any data to support that view? For less popular reps I can imagine that only a few are sold which makes you question the economics of producing some models. Another way to look at this is considering the size of the customer-base. RWG, RWI, Watch-Geek etc represent a fairly small number of peopler and I find it hard to see how they are sustaining the industry so there must be some much bigger numbers out there. Who and where are these people?

Kind of a rambling post but I hope my question(s) come out ok.

[jfreeman420]

NObody aactually buys them. All the discussion is replica as well. Replica industry is all a myth.

[FxrAndy]

I think as a whole is is pretty big, got to worth billions a year.

[Chicken Manny]

I would think the market for all reps including a ton of junk watches is very large. If you look at the high-end rep market it is like much, much smaller.