The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I apologize if this isn't an allowed topic but I'm new to higher end watches and currently thinking about a Breitling. I'm torn between the Super Avenger (if I can ever find one!) and the Skyland. My local AD has offered me 15% off any Breitling and was wondering how that compared to other ADs? Should I go ahead and pull the trigger or should I continue to shop around (only 1 AD for Breitling here in Charlotte though).

I've seen discounts upwards of 30% if your lucky and shop around.

Hmmm, I guess it pays to be patient...

I would have loved doing business locally when I purchased my Rolex Submariner, but my local AD wouldn't budge off of the $5300 price. Plus, I would have had to pay an additional 9.25% sales tax on the purchase price. If I had purchased here, it would have cost me $5790.25

I did purchase from an AD abroad for $4075 and saved $1715.25 with no sales tax.

I would rather purchase abroad or online from a trusted company because I can find discounts up to 20-30% and I don't have to pay sales tax.

~Brian

_________________
Breitling Super Avenger
Fortis Flieger Chronograph
Rolex Submariner Date

I received 20% off my Super Avenger without bickering on price at all. This was also my first purchase from this dealer. I hope the deals will keep getting better as I do more business with them. Most dealers in my area say they can't come off that much on a Rolex though. Note, the appraisal they gave me for insurance was for full retail. I read some online advice stating that you should be prepared to walk away from the deal if you don't get 30%. Don't know how much to believe that though? I feel I got a great deal and I know I will always be well taken care of by my dealer!

Here in Canada the gross margin at La Swiss, is 45% - i.e the MSRP is 145% of the AD invoice price. This translates into the equivalent of a 31% discount. That may not make much sense on first reading, but here's what I mean. If list price is $1,450, the dealer invoice is $1,000 - hence 45% margin (1,000 + 45%). Starting from list if the dealer sold to you for $1,000 then you are getting a 31% discount from list (1,000/1,450). La Swiss has a lot of stores and so sells a lot of watches so they may have a better deal than some smaller dealers, I don't know.

Of course there are other factors to take into account - commissions, operating costs, etc, although I also suspect that dealers have delayed payment in much the same way as car deaers do - i.e. they don't have to pay for the watch until x months after they receive it.

Where did you get the information that the gross margin is 45% for La Swiss? Its not that I don't believe it, but La Swiss is owned by Gigoros Canada, which is also the Canadian Distributor for Breitling. Some dealers liquidate old models out at 40% off which would be below cost, I'm very surprised that the Canadian distributor of Breitling has such narrow margins to work with... but it might be true... glad I'm not in that business!

When I ordered my wife's Cockpit Lady they had to create a custom model number for it and the lady I was dealing with had not done that before. She therefore got one of her colleagues to help her and they turned the screen to the point that I could see what was being entered. They also had a few problems with he system so entered things several times.

One of the screens required the entry of gross margin and they immediately put in 45% - you could see from the way that they were doing it that it was standard for all of the models.

I'm not that surprised that dealers liquidate below cost in some cases - costs may have been incurred in previous fiscal years and the cost is therefore less of an issue. Also if an old model is not moving then they need to discount it in order to free up cash to buy more current inventory - the car dealer analogy works well again. Finally you may find that Breitling and / or distributors offer ADs special pricing on less popular / discontinued models in order to move the remaining inventory.

Those of you in Canada will be familiar with Canadian Tire and they use that approach for their heavily discounted items - the couple of things each week that are advertised as 80% off are actually sold to the stores at a different price than when they are regularly priced.