At the end of the 1970s, a Chinese peasant from the Datang zone, in the Zhejiang province, recuperates old abandoned machines destined for the junkyard. He installs them on his farm, and secretly – since the nation is still fully in the Maoist era – he begins to make socks that he sells from under his coat, along the roads.
Today, the Datang zone produces a third of the socks sold around the world (for a potential market of 12 billion feet). That’s a lot of socks, ranging from the least expensive to those bearing the label of some of the world’s most prestigious brands, for which the price of one pair can be more or less a month’s salary for the worker who makes them.
Far be it for me to compare a sock, even an ‘haute couture’ sock made of the finest Scottish wool, to a ‘grand watch complication’, but you must admit that the parable of the sock is food for thought. It is indeed strange how China, in a very short time, has passed from being considered the ‘promised land’ to an industrial ‘bogey man’.
Today, it is estimated that China produces about 85 percent of the watches sold in the world. But, the problem is not only quantitative, it is also qualitative. While in Datang they make authentic and excellent Pierre Cardin socks, in Shenzen and elsewhere they are making tourbillons… excellent tourbillonsı Our colleague of Business Montres reports on a test that was recently conducted on a Chinese tourbillon made by the brand, Farrere. This was a flying tourbillon, finely finished, which advanced 30 to 45 seconds a day. This amount is really excessive and would lead Swiss watchmakers to simply smirk. However, “after taking it to a watchmaker” who was able to adjust it correctly, it only advanced 9 seconds a day. When you know that the Swiss standard is 0 to 12 seconds a day, the smirk fades. The Chinese tourbillon is ‘within the standard range’ and its problem is not the design or the fabrication. Rather, it is finding a qualified technician to regulate it correctly. If this qualified workforce is missing, it is simply because no ‘social standard’ or ‘work standard’ rules the activities of the ‘world’s factory’ that China has become.
Workers in China effectively still live in the era of Charles Dickens. The owners are often former peasants or former Party leaders, and the workers are migrants from the poorest provinces. This cocktail becomes particularly explosive, in terms of industrial power, when a third element – foreign or national capital – is added to the mix. The frontiers of the possible are then seriously pushed back, yet there is one barrier that is hard to violate, that of the sacred ‘brand’.
Will the prestige of the ‘brand’ soon be the last rampart of Swiss watchmaking against this irreversible tidal waveı To look at the increasingly generous marketing and advertising budgets, we don’t hesitate to believe it. Yet, there are other lines of defence. Research and development should be carried out on a continuous basis. The mid-range sector, progressively abandoned by Swiss watchmakers, should be reconstituted. François Thiébaud, President of Tissot, which makes up to 2 million watches a year, sounded the alarm in an article in the newspaper, Le Temps. He used a different parable, not the sock, but the baker. “A baker makes bread every day, but he makes cakes only on Sunday,” explains Thiébaud. “In the watch industry, it is the same thing. We cannot live by making only haut de gamme cakes. Switzerland needs the daily bread of the mid-range.” A warning – and good luck – to those who fancy industrial adventures.


Source: August -September 2005 Issue

Click here to subscribe to Europa Star Magazine.