… in Boston. All crazy and craggly, cooped up in remote provincial towns tinkering away with mechanisms, like John B. McLemore. Oh wait, he was in Alabama. Whatever, same thing. The point is, it doesn’t matter where you are in America today. Conversations around watchmaking, and the industry and marketing that’s supposed to shroud it, suck. Trying to be like the core international watch industry, but in a bulldozer in a China shop way.
Nevertheless, since the European watch industry has been running out of money and ideas for a while now, there have been attempts to scurry back and forth between the skirts of Lady Liberty. Attempts, I will emphasize. A lot of hype being generated between two or three Americans and the rest of the watchmaking industry abroad, consisting of Europe, and Europe’s neocolonies that permit alcohol.
But are these attempts genuine signs of a promising, fruitful marriage between knowledge and capitalism? Or simply the usual self-serving Prima-noctuals (you know how I feel about those) that are far and few?
I could put this post in a way that I would have been harassed to while working in the industry, so that anyone potentially interested in watchmaking is scared off and back to minding their own business:
“This sputtering watchmaking boom in America looks promising, it indicates that there are still Americans out there capable of repressing rage with a nice hobby.” *Jerking hand* Those of you who are happy with this neat little explanation, you’ve read far enough. Excuse yourself.
Those who want to know how to let more than one or two Americans know that there is more to fine watchmaking than Apple watch, you’re welcome to keep reading.
Today’s post is about the grind versus savoir faire.
Come sit on my knee for a second and listen to this fun fact I once heard:
During wartime, apparently the French army were judged by the quality of their penmanship during battle. With cannon balls whizzing over their heads, they supposedly whipped out their quills, hunched over dead comrades bodies, perhaps using dearly departed Jean Jacque’s back for support, and performed perfect calligraphy while alerting their bosses back home what was going on. The combatant who killed more people was pushed aside over the better calligrapher (who, mind you, was also good at killing), regardless of the chaos ensuing. It was vital that this standard of civility and poise was maintained in order to la la la la la
That’s how the rest of that sentence played out to your target audience: someone trying to make it in America. You have bored them to death with your voluntary-ice bath-in-the-morning Mission Civilisatrise. Especially the people who actually would be interested to learn about watches.
Whether this wartime French calligraphy story is accurate or not, I find it encapsulates the work ethic that pulses through the watch industry. How becoming an artful, knowledgeable person who prefers literature to food is its own grind.
To the general audience here in America that are not involved in the niche-st industry in the world, the grind means something slightly different.
Let me describe to you my average day here, in Los Angeles. I wake up and think about my student debt. I live in a nice, leafy white-picket fence-y type of neighborhood in the suburbs, where front yards are filled with fruit trees and glaring guard dogs. Muttering the mantra that we’re lucky, I roll my infant to the grocery store, past broken glass, used condoms, and transactions going on in parked tinted cars, cutting through the parking lot since it’s faster. I don’t mind the thwoking of helicopters hovering overhead when a fugitive is on the loose, as long as we’re not outside cutting an afternoon walk short. When we experience the occasional police visit to the neighbors across the road, the neighbors next door and the neighbors next next door, the exchanges are short, sweet, and don’t take more than five minutes. Apart from that one time they got the snipers out and set up shop like in your average hostage situation.
That is all to say the need to quit the faff and make money is real.
It is no doubt a great feat, being able to put everything aside and draw curly shapes in the air mid-battle. Or enjoy a bottle of wine with your colleagues in the middle of a crazy deadline. I do see the advantage of not losing your head over basic things like salary and transcending (Brooker, 1994) to a higher level, remembering to enjoy the quality of each other’s opinions, smell the roses etc.
But toiling every day, doing things you don’t necessarily want to do, but have to do, over and over and over again, until you’re moving and functioning as seamlessly and efficiently as a machine? That’s a grind.
My Armenian mother knew how to turn the art of living into a grind. In the summers growing up, she would make us walk through these tiny, viciously snobbish villages in the south of France. One of these times, we had been walking all day, as usual. I was thirteen years old, and newly cognizant of my Geneva code rights. Exhausted and dying to eat something other than Tomme, we arrived at a lively little bistro where my mother was meeting some locals.
By now, it was early evening, and her French friends were impatiently Ho-la-la-ing at the restaurant entrance. They obviously didn’t spend the day walking like us losers, and naturally were barely able to hide their disgust at our visible fatigue.
As we limped up to the tiny entrance area, my sisters and I shuffled to the side, my feet aching on the cobblestones. After their standard 100-year-old greeting, my mother and her friends flicked their cigarettes and filed inside. Imagining a pink slab of Filet mignon, I stepped after them.
All of a sudden, I was halted in my tracks. I looked down. It was my mother’s hand, pressing against my chest.
“Wait here,” she snapped.
I obstinately pressed forward. “Wait. Outside” --she hissed again in Armenian-- “Children are not allowed.” She turned on her heel and made her way inside.
I yelled out, “You’re so selfish!”
Well. I don’t need to go into detail about what happened after that. For the rest of the evening, my sisters eyed me with disdain while I sobbed, tucked into a small doorway, cheek stinging. Hunger forgotten.
Spin the headline from “Mother smacks hungry daughter,” to “Mother teaches daughter a valuable lesson,” and you’ve got yourself a grind. Or at least, a more relatable version than how the essence of the watch is so beautiful it’s almost too much to bear. Think about that before the next bullshit marketing campaign.
Now, let’s walk through the work culture of the watch industry:
Watchmakers/creatives: Grinding away (literally). These understand the grind.
Management: Bullshit. These don’t understand the grind.
I’m not sure how to write this without someone going, Dominique, that’s racist, but the art of conversation is not valued as a skill alone in itself by your average American. This is not Beaujolais. An artful conversation here is being rung up at Trader Joe’s, talking about the latest Netflix documentary with the cashier. It’s quick and easy, and able to be tied up in a neat bow the second the machine spits out the receipt. The artful part is mutually enjoying an exchange and not wasting your, or the cashier’s time, while on a clock.
Also, instead of talking for ages, ever heard of showing instead? Get well versed with this too. SHOW that it is work to get to know a watch. Make a Spectacle (Dayan and Katz, 1992) out of the grind.
I know not all Americans are the same. There are different Americans. Kind, benevolent, jovial ones, like Joe Biden. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m talking about how if you want to make it in America and get beyond the same five likes on social media. The grind is something that can not only be universally understood but happily related to. Even by the rich Americans. Hell, especially them. How you bled for something, and earned it. I’m not saying announce you were once poor, I’m saying make the grind relatable to savoir faire.
Let me finish with another story:
I was on the phone with an admin from the local college that I’m attending here, in Los Angeles. Trying to jot down some notes on what she was saying, I was breaking a sweat while juggling my shrieking baby on my hip at the same time.
“I’m sorry?” I kept repeating, baby trying to rip my phone, hair, and ear off.
“Ma’am, the information is on the website.”
“Yes, but I’m not sure I understand it. Can you just tell it to me?”
“Your baby is screaming in the background,” she replied.
Almost in tears, I choked, “Ma’am, I know that. I have a baby, and I’m trying to get my degree, so I would appreciate some grace.”
“Sure, ma’am,” she replied even more dryly.
I learned a valuable lesson, as valuable as the one my mother taught when she starved and beat savoir faire into me: Everyone has a baby. While trying to do the dishes. And getting shit done. And making money. And going to school. Or work. It’s not personal. It’s work ethic. The grind.
If you can get someone to pay attention to you in all that, enough to want to buy something from you, then you have made it in America.
Anyways… everyone in this equation likes to suffer one way or another, so it should be feasible to find a middle ground where everyone can find joy in suffering.
Or, you could also just strip yourself of your identity and culture, put on a polite corporate smile, throw in a pleasantry, and get down to business.
That’s what I think of watchmaking, or I should say Chinese-made, Swiss-assembled watchmaking in America.
You obviously can also say that Jan. 6th is your favorite American holiday, too.
Those are great points, Ariel however I'm talking about something else entirely. Make American watchmaking less isolated to Americans if you’re doing business in America. That simple.
You might appreciate some additional context and perspective. The phenomenon of Americans making their own startup watch brands today is not at all isolated to the United States. It is actually happening pretty much everywhere that people like enthusiast watches. As you pointed out, most of these brands rely on parts that are made in China. The recent start-up small brand trend probably started out there in places such as Hong Kong and Singapore - and from there it moved out to the United States and Europe. There is another commonality in those places - watch enthusiasts have witnessed what appeared to be large profits by Swiss watchmakers that did not appear to be shared with many outsiders. People in these locations saw the Swiss selling watches in their market and what they felt were corresponding large margins. The Swiss also don't freely let in anyone to share profits with them, and only do so relatively begrudgingly. Thus, a large number of people who wanted to make money with watches A) where not able to profit with the Swiss (either by having the Swiss make their watches or sell Swiss watches) , B) noticed what appeared to be attractive margin structure, and C) had ready access to manufacturing in China, much of which was the same supplier bass as those who supply to the Swiss. All of this is to say that competing with the Swiss at their own game in the US and many other markets is what this new crop of small brand entrepreneurs is attempting to do. It's a very rapidly evolving space and many of these brands won't last or make it. But it just goes to show how easy many people believe it to compete with the Swiss today, and how Swiss business insularity has probably done them a lot of harm as well as good. Let's also not forget how Switzerland's watch industry feels about America, which is a feeling of mostly discreet distrust and apprehension going back over 100 years to when the American watch industry was beating the Swiss and forced them to shape up their operations. It is easy to be annoyed about all the new brands and folly around them, but it's just an organic bloom in action. I'm interested to see how it all settles down in a few years.