The Endless supply

Very often you will hear a veteran watchmaker bragging about the good old days. The golden era when every Swiss watch spare parts supplier was competing and chasing his business.  A time where Swiss watch brands where busy making watches and had no interest repairing them.

In the late 60's and early 70's, the demand for mechanical watches was diminishing fast. Inexpensive yet highly accurate battery operated watches became the new cool thing. I clearly remember the days in the 1970's where Swiss spare part reps where knocking on the doors of even the smallest watch repair shops and begging for business. It was quite an amusing sight for a 12 year old kid. Watchmakers were buying stems, mainsprings, winding crowns, spring loaded bars, crystals and plexi glasses in the dozens per size at a time. Here is just one example of a typical order containing over 500 winding crowns, most of them still in sealed bags. No Swiss supplier would ever dare to say - not even to the smallest independent watchmaker – ‘no spare parts for you’.  

The plexi glass supply business was brutally competitive, with countless numbers of generic brands supplying watch crystals. Again, not being able to source a replacement plexi of any dimension, height, thickness, waterproof or not, was absolutely unheard of. Even today, our stock pile contains crystals not only made in Switzerland and Germany but also Australian made glass by J W Handley from Melbourne, Dean plexi, Beta, and G Jenssen from Sydney. One thing that they all had in common: they all called their product unbreakable! 

The good old days!