The Breitling Watch Blog

Swiss watchmaker Marc Jenni has launched his own brand of watches, with the first being the Prologue. The watch is available in 18K white and rose gold, and uses the Marc Jenni Caliber 2010 movement. The movement looks like a base movement of some sort, though I’m not sure.

There are some modifications to the mechanism as there is no crown. Instead, the black rubberized ring that encircles the entire watch can be gripped and rotated. Rotating the ring either winds the watch, sets the time, or sets the date – depending on the setting, which is determined by pushing the button at 4 o’clock. The mode is indicated on the dial.

Quite an interesting watch, with a unique difference.

Just posted a video review of the Daniel JeanRichard Chronograph watch. This is the TV Screen Chrono with the ETA 2824 with Chronograph Module movement. Its a pillow shaped 38mm watch, and looks great. Enjoy the review!

Curious as to how many fewer watches were imported from Switzerland to the USA in 2009? 37.9% less. That’s a lot of percent.

Now, most people would have thought that a lot of Swiss Watchmakers would have gone out of business because of this, but surprisingly, most of the bigger ones are still going strong. This either means that most of that drop was from smaller retailers, or these Watchmaking giants have HUGE mark-ups on their product!

At any rate, it is an enourmous blow to the Swiss Watch Industry and Watch Sales in the USA for sure. Makes me wonder how much retailers were lying to me when I walked into watch stores during the recession and when I asked “How’s Business?” every single one told me “Its Great! Like there is no recession! Amazing isn’t it?”. Kind of turns me off the salesmen there since they flat out lie to us.

Any way.. interesting states. Some countries, mainly ones in Europe, only had small decreases such as France, Italy and Germany, all hovering around 13-14%.

Hopefully 2010 will be a good year.

Well, even though last year was a hellish year for Swiss Watches, Ralph Lauren Watches picked that year to enter the market with their line of watches. Now with a year under their belt, they continue to expand their line of watches. They have three lines: Stirrup, Slim Classique and Sporting.

All of Ralph Lauren’s watches are Swiss Made, and feature some fairly unique movements such as the RL750 Chronograph movement designed by Jaeger LeCoultre for Ralph Lauren.

I was browing in my latest issue of Watch Time magazine, and noticed a new Zenith El Primero watch called the Striking 10th Chronograph, which has a new 1/10th second Chronograph timer. In addition to the remarkably accurate chronograph, the watch returns to Zenith’s roots as far as Style. While this is not new for companies such as Breitling and IWC as they have re-released vintage watch designs, this is a drastic change of direction for Zenith, who went the complete opposite direction by dropping their old style completely when they went with the Chronomaster and Defy watches.

See the video!