talk to the factories

[Pix]

Noone will ever have figures on market shares but... whereas I have no difficulty imagining the rep market is 100 times bigger than what 10-15.000 boards members represent, when you separate the segments "crappy reps" and "high end reps", I'm sure that this percentage will drastically change in "our" favour. How much of the population is :

- ready to put that much in a watch ?

- ready to put that much in a rep ?

[archibald]

Strange

I would have thought nowhere near as much as that.

.

I was thinking of the so called custom runs of super reps. Here is some math: If they sell 200 $800+ HBB's to forum members @ $300 profit that's $60,000 in the bank. If 200 represents 1% that's a 6 million profit on on the HBB alone which is I bet more profitable than Hublot. I guess we're all living in the wrong Hemisphere, and I'm shocked our collectors would even bother to return the emails of us picky bastards, reply in threads, etc! If we're talking reps in the $100-$150 dollar range, then I'd say the forum represents far less than 1% of the reps sold on a single streetcorner in NYC.

[sssurfer]

I was thinking of the so called custom runs of super reps. Here is some math: If they sell 200 $800+ HBB's to forum members @ $300 profit that's $60,000 in the bank. If 200 represents 1% that's a 6 million profit on on the HBB alone which is I bet more profitable than Hublot. I guess we're all living in the wrong Hemisphere, and I'm shocked our collectors would even bother to return the emails of us picky bastards, reply in threads, etc! If we're talking reps in the $100-$150 dollar range, then I'd say the forum represents far less than 1% of the reps sold on a single streetcorner in NYC.

Exactly.

So the true mean figure should stay middlepoint between those two extremes, and 1-5% might be not so far from reality.

Most likely near the lower limit, though.

[fotoman]

That's why I like my $400 "super reps" to go on sale at $275 (Silix 2006 Cousteau Diver)...

your avatar is outstanding

[archibald]

Exactly.

So the true mean figure should stay middlepoint between those two extremes, and 1-5% might be not so far from reality.

Most likely near the lower limit, though.

With respect to the super-reps sold by forum dealers, I'm thinking we need to put a 0 after the 5 and before the percent sign. But I actually don't think they have much to do w/ the pricing....

[Pugwash]

With respect to the super-reps sold by forum dealers, I'm thinking we need to put a 0 after the 5 and before the percent sign.

Seriously? You thing we're half of the market for HBBs or SFSOs?

[mezzanine]

As recently as six months ago, I would've believed that the whole 'super rep' pricing phenomenon was here to stay, and that we had very little ability to influence prices.

Now, I'm not so sure. I perceive that there HAS been a bit of a backlash about paying crazy prices for debatable asian movements. I could accept that there is a market outside of these boards that represents a larger % of sales, but we are the only source of feedback for the rep makers. Chances are that if we're not going to pay a particular price, the more general market will also resist paying that price.

The 'dealers' who I perceived to rely heavily on the replica watch communities for their sales seem to have become less prominent and visible.

The biggest factor I believe is working in our direction is the passage of time.

When the super reps were fresh on the scene, and there wasn't really an precedent to use to anticipate how their price or value would change as time progressed, it was more believable that the inflated prices could stay 'fixed'.

The reality of the market has started to re-assert itself. Enough time has gone by that the 'super rep' is becoming more of a regular rep, by quality standards that are evolving.

You can't release new watches at the old prices and expect to keep the old watches selling at the same premium as they were when they were the new releases. That's why about 6 months ago I sold off almost all of my chinese reps, and focused on building a couple of project watches using genuine parts.

My plan is to wait until some of the older generation of super-reps start to become available in the used market at reasonable prices. No longer will I pay the premium for newer reps that people don't realize are going to depreciate at a rapid rate. I'll wait for watches like the SFSO, 3717, etc..

The dynamics have changed, and buying the latest and greatest release is no longer a winning proposition in most cases. There are exceptions, like with the 3717 whereby those that were late picking one up were unable to get a decent quality watch...but for the most part they're no longer worth it.

It's amazing to me that people forget we're dealing with reps. People start applying gen standards or beliefs about their value-retention to these 'super reps' under the pretense they're going to be different than previous generations of reps. That's an error of judgment, in my estimation. They're more expensive, but they still depreciate like other reps...

[KB]

My main concern with so called super reps are that many just are not that super.

When you take in the cost of manufacturing in China one needs to ask why all super reps are not in fact damn near perfect.

Especially those that you pay 700/800/1000 bucks for.

Ken

[Ztech]

For $1,000 USD, you could feed a family of 10 for a year in China. Probably including their cousins!!!

[KB]

Exactly!

The average wage for an office worker in Gaungzhou is only about $200 USD a Month, the HBB's are returning more profit than that per sale!!

Ken

[Ztech]

Although I agree that we won't make any of these guys change their business practices, I bet money that if we collectively stopped buying reps for say, a few months, they'd sit up and take notice. Sure, there's a much bigger populace out there that buy reps, but we, here on these forums, probably constitute the bulk of the returning buyers. And those who are in business know, these are the customers you want to please. Not the buy one and never return type of customers.

I'm certain, that if everyone on the multiple forums implemented a buying ban for a few months, they'd take notice and possible do more.

[mezzanine]

I agree with you guys- and believe it or not I think we *may* have already had an impact, but I could be off-base.

It seems to me like a lot of the 'major' dealers have been supplanted by smaller collectors. There seems to be more access to reps. I think that's part of the effect of the 'super reps'. I agree with Ken that they're not even that 'super' in the sense of quality control, etc.. but I believe that they have popularized reps in a way that they weren't before the 'super reps' arrived. Am I wrong on that? It could just be that my own participation has evolved in parallel with that time period...and I'm generalizing as a result.

Point being that the average person on the street is becoming aware that there are high end reps.

I think that the average person is probably more apt to drop money without considering relative value. It wouldn't surprise me if there ends up being a different price for us, vs. the average guy on the street or the average person on the net.

We can even potentially see this happening right now with the new dealer Watchmark and the HBB's that he's undercutting the other dealers on. I could see the community evolving so that supporting members of RWG can access discounted new release watches, but the majority of the folks who actually buy these things are paying 30% more.

That's what I would like to see happen.

[archibald]

Seriously? You thing we're half of the market for HBBs or SFSOs?

From the "Big Three" dealers I think maybe we are closer to 50% than 5%...or they have much larger access to much larger runs than I've been led to believe. But what's a forum buyer, anyway? A guy who finds a dealer's site and then stumbles uopn us while trying to figure out if Andrew is legit? A guy who comes here after googling"Fake Breitling" figures out where to buy and then is never seen again? Or just us die hards? Like I said in my first post...we'll never know the gross and we'll never know the net, and if we did we'd be powerless to change a dime of prices...but it sure would be interesting to know.

[KB]

Mezz I tend to believe it more a case of greater access to the internet that is educating people on the quality of reps.

It used to be a wide spread belief that rep Rolex had plastic parts and quartz motors but as people search around the Net they are coming across better and better reproductions, whether that is on eBay/ iOffer/ Cqout or one of our boards the general public are learning to search for what they want before they buy.

I don't think it's a stretch to believe we are an important part of the dealers client base, but yes they will always deny this as knowledge is power, but ask yourself why they are always extremely careful to keep us in the loop when they change URL and the such....ask in fact why they even bother dealing with us if we are such a small part of their business.

Ken

[archibald]

...ask yourself why they are always extremely careful to keep us in the loop when they change URL and the such....ask in fact why they even bother dealing with us if we are such a small part of their business.

Ken

That says it all.

Just apply the math I did earlier and decide for yourself what level porofit from the boards would keep them coming back, freaking out when people post that they've changed websites, etc. If it's 1-5%, looks like they're sprending an inordinate amount of time getting and trying to reatain a very very small part of their customer base.

[Ztech]

I don't know if has any pertinence here, but I few years ago I helped a friend of mine establish a business in China so I visited there a few times with him. There I got in touch with a few manufacturers and left my info. From time to time I get a slew of e-mails from reps that represent rep watch manufacturers. I've even had them e-mail me a price guide and an e catalog of reps they make. I never went anywhere with it cause till recently I wasn't into reps. If I recall the prices I got quoted for mass orders was very cheap, but did require "mass" purchase. Those prices were nowhere close to what we pay. Thought I'd throw this tidbit of info here.

Now back to your regularly scheduled program...

[DemonSlayer]

This is basically what I said in the HBB movement and price theread HERE

I seriously doubt the dealers on this board are dealing directly with the factories, that requires huge MOQ as Ztech just pointed out above.

Imagine what would happen if some of the guangzhou watch market sellers heard about these boards and signed on as dealers. We would have price wars which would hopefully start to bring prices down to what they should be.

[Ztech]

The reason why I posted what I did is because for most of the reps the prices were in the range of $50 to $75 USD for mass orders. If I was a dealer in China, had access to sites like RWG and had a bit of business sense. I would purchase some reps directly from the manufacturers, do a bit of QC and upgrading so I can offer them for sale here for 4 to 5 times the his/her purchase price. If I sold say... 10 pieces a month I could have a more lucrative enterprise than if I were to find a 9 to 5 anywhere else.

Heck, recently, I've even thought about contacting these guys back at the manufacturing level to see if I could get a container over here full of say 1k reps to market here on RWG. The math...

$75 X 10,000 = $75,000 USD invested

If I sold 375 pieces from that batch I could recoupe my original investment and the rest would be total profit. I'd guess I could do this as I'd most likely be able to sell 375 pieces in the first few months.

Food for thought ain't it?

[DemonSlayer]

The more dealers we get on board, the more competition there is. The more competition there is the more prices will go down

Seriously though I think it's a shame that other sellers in Guangzhou are not selling here, they might offer us more realistic pricing (as watchmark is doing with his HBB's).

[EDIT TO ADD] - In regards to the topic title, most if not all the dealers on this board can't ask the factories to do anything as they're very likely dealing with wholesalers and even retailers who sell in the markets. Those are the people we need to be speaking too.