The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Today I stumbled across an article in the NY times that detailed a legal battle brewing in the swiss watch industry. The short of it is that the Swatch group is moving to limit parts and movements that it sells to the independent watch manufactures. The fear is that Swatch will some day completely cut the supply off.

How would this impact Breitling? I am not sure however one could speculate service parts would be limited or cut off for the older models. If this happened it may impact the value of any watch made with a Swatch movement. Apparently the move is blessed by the Swiss competition authority so it's not looking good.

Swatch, Supplier to Rivals, Now Aims to Cut Them Off

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Very old news.

Swatch first announced this more than 10 years ago and there have been legal battles going on ever since. It's one of the main reasons why many manufacturers have moved to become manufatcures. The issue is really around the provision of ebauches / movement kits which are then modified, they are still prepared to sell complete movements.

The impact is minimal for servicing because Swatch has never said that they wouldn't supply movement parts, the copyright on these movements is long expired so there are alternate suppliers to provide maintenance parts (Breitling has been producing ETA / Valjoux movements for several years), and many of the parts are from 3rd party suppliers anyway.

No real issue for servicing.

There are many supply houses who carry parts for swiss movements. The problems begin to surface when a movement is no longer in production. Then the high demand parts dry up.

For example, I recently purchased a bag of seven ladies wristwatches for less than $20 US. I figured I would fix the ones that are repairable and let my wife wear them. If she loses it, so what?

One of the movements was a FF59-21. It needed a set lever, stem and crown. When I went to get the parts, I noticed that some of the higher demand parts have been discontinued. The supplier had the parts I needed, but that might not be the case next time.

This has been a universal problem for as long as I have been doing this (over 50 years) and it will only get worse. Parts availability becomes a problem a few years after the movement is discontinued.

The current models e.g., 7750 series, 2824 series, etc. will be repairable for quite a while yet. Also, there will be parts movements available on the bay for many years to come.

The ability to resurrect an old one is what distinguishes the watchmaker from the watch repairman.

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