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!
