Ben Gilbert: evaluation

Transcript context

…Sometimes I think it works really well. I don’t know sales numbers. Nobody does. But the relaunch of the Milgauss, awesome. Great decision. Totally. It’s also funny the way that they do product naming. Man, the Milgauss used to basically be a Submariner, and when they relaunched it, it was basically an Explorer. The only thing it has in common is the name and the fact that it can go up to 1000 gauss. Similar to the Explorer II. Completely new watch, different than the Explorer. The GMT-Master II. Basically A GMT-Master exactly. What does II mean when they release a sequel to a watch? How come, the Deep Sea Sea-Dweller is both a Deep Sea and a Sea-Dweller? Their product naming is confusing. All right. We touched on smart watches a little bit. It’s worth a minute of analysis here. The Apple Watch comes out in 2014. Fascinatingly, and I’m not sure if this is counterintuitive or not, I don’t remember 2014 thinking about the watch industry because I didn’t, but it was the best thing to ever happen to Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Patek, et cetera. A huge amount of awareness raised for the category. Oh, now I wear a thing on my wrist. Oh, I spent hundreds of dollars on the thing. Would I be open to spending thousands of dollars on the thing? Huh, I never even thought about that before. I’ve had a smartphone for a long time, so I haven’t been wearing anything on my wrist. Yeah, sure. Maybe. Oh, other people I look up to are doing that? Okay. Yeah. I guess I’m potentially into going up one level, even from a smartwatch. It was this very strange progression that definitely helped them. However, it destroyed low-end luxury. [...], Tissot, TAG Heuer, anybody that was making a “luxury” mechanical watch between $500 and $1000, why? Toast.…

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