The hidden cost of time: The eye-watering servicing charges mechanical watch makers would rather you didn't know about
You may have spent a small fortune on the watch of your dreams — but the costs don't stop there.
If you want to make a bet with yourself, or with someone else about to buy a mechanical watch, make this one: that the sales assistant will not mention that, in addition to the price you pay for the watch, you’re also committing to spending several hundreds of pounds every few years just to keep the thing going.
Like any mechanical device — your car, for example — a watch needs routine maintenance. It needs servicing.
“Unfortunately servicing is a necessity, essentially because a mechanical watch requires oil to function — to reduce friction between moving parts — and even different types of oil for different parts. And these oils have a finite lifespan,” explains the world-class independent watchmaker Konstantin Chaykin, who recently devised and built the world’s thinnest mechanical watch.
“Servicing a watch is really like changing the oil in your car. It has to be done”.
The question is whether it has to be done with the regularity that watch brands suggest: around every five years, and more often still every three years, with vintage pieces. Then secondly, why it takes so long: anywhere between a month and sometimes six months. And finally why it costs so much: anywhere between £200 and £1800, depending on the brand and the complexity of the model. Essentially the more expensive the retail price, the higher the servicing costs you can expect.
Servicing a watch is really like changing the oil in your car. It has to be done.
Konstantin Chaykin
As for ‘cheaper’ watches, there’s even an ongoing debate about whether, for more mass and mid-market watches at least, it would be more efficient for watch companies to simply swap out the entire movement for a new one. If only that wasn’t less sustainable, and if only doing so didn’t cut dangerously against their public image as makers of artisanal products…
A low-profile money maker
So it’s no surprise that servicing is a lucrative part of what the watch industry does: according to data from the Watches of Switzerland Group, after-sales and servicing accounts for around 7% of the global luxury watch market’s total value every year, something like US$6bn, and this is expected to climb to around $8bn by the end of the decade.
That said, the watch industry typically doesn’t think of servicing as a net profit centre, because servicing requires brands to train and maintain watchmakers, operate expensive diagnostic machinery, have access to an inventory of official parts and so on, such that invariably they claim that there is no profit in it. It’s all the tests required of more complex watches — as well as disassembly, regulation of the movement and refinishing — that takes so long with the official manufacturers, though because they’re also much busier than third party watchmakers that only adds to the terrible inconvenience that going bare-wristed for many weeks might entail for you.
(A side note: if your watch is full of character, and you like it just so, you’d best ensure your service does not include refinishing, since most watch brands aim to return your watch looking as close to new as possible. Many a vintage watch owner has seen the value of their timepiece ruined by some unwanted polishing).
Yet it’s no surprise either, at least to anyone with a more conspiratorial mindset, that getting your watch serviced by a reputable, properly trained third party — which might cut your outlay by 40%, not least because they can use non-branded parts of equal quality — invariably voids any warranty. Some might say the watch world is rather like the modern car industry this way too: not only sealing engines off from those owners who might prefer to tinker under the bonnet, or who’d prefer to take their car to their trusted local garage, but making troubleshooting possible only by hooking said engines up to software systems that only the manufacturers and their designated agents have access to.
“Servicing remains a hidden cost of mechanical watch ownership, because it’s neither inexpensive nor quick. We accept the additional inconveniences with, say, cars in part because we’re more knowledgeable about them [through the requirement of legal safety checks, for example] but also because we tend to need our cars in the way we definitely don’t need mechanical watches,” says David Sharp, the COO of Horage, a watch calibre design and research company.
He even wonders whether the escalation in warranties being offered lately (Hublot, for instance, now offers a 10-year warranty) is more about distracting customers at the point of purchase from asking awkward questions about the burden of servicing.
“But I think most people who own a mechanical watch are actually in the fix-it-when-you-need-to [servicing] business and not in the mitigating-risk business, like most wait until they’re ill to see their doctor,” he laughs.
In other words, while the industry firmly recommend owners get their watches serviced every few years — which, again, like a regular car service, may be to head off more expensive troubles down the road — the hefty outlay persuades many owners to wait for a tell-take sign before taking action. These might include time-drift (your watch losing more than 30 seconds a day, especially in a relatively new watch) the dial fogging up with moisture, or grinding noises when the crown is turned.
What's in an oil change?
Yet change is afoot that might make questions around servicing moot, and not just because the latest synthetic oils degrade much more slowly (here's a fun fact for you: old-fashioned oils were typically organic, made from boiling the fat glands in cow’s feet and so were more likely to oxidise, coagulate, evaporate and/or work like a dust magnet). Progressive watch designers are finding innovative ways — through engineering, through materials — to reduce wear and tear from friction between parts, thus requiring less use of lubricants.
Cartier, Panerai and Jaeger LeCoultre are among those big brands to have produced ‘oil-free’ or ‘nearly oil-free’ concept watches, while brands from Sinn to Ulysee Nardin have experimented with parts in silicon or with diamond-like coatings, with ceramic ball-bearings, special alloys or magnetic pivots to the same end too.
The tech is already with us to allow the doubling of the time between servicing.
Konstantin Chaykin
Roger Smith, another superstar of independent watchmaking, says his latest movement design, using a nano-tech coating, will only need servicing around once every 15 years and reckons watches that go 25 years between services are entirely possible. Rather than keep quiet about servicing, this extended service gap may even prove to be a competitive advantage that watchmakers use to promote their watches. But then the more advanced movements and their materials get, the more a specialist service centre will be needed when service time does eventually come around — just like those computerised cars. Smith also says he doesn’t think there’s much incentive for the wider watch industry to push for such bold advances anyway.
Nonetheless, Konstantin Chaykin is hopeful. “The tech is already with us to allow the doubling of the time between servicing [though making this tech available on a commercial scale is still another matter],” he says, “and eventually we may be able to do away with the use of oil in mechanical watch movements altogether. That’s the dream: to have an oil-free and so service-free watch, because servicing is so expensive and takes so long now”.
Sadly, other watchmakers — the likes of Urwerk’s Felix Baumgartner — suggest it’s just that: a dream. Many can’t foresee a time when a mechanical watch will require no lubrication at all. And as long as there’s lubrication, there will remain the need to occasionally open up your watch and give it some TLC.
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