The president of Louis Erard – Mr. Alain Spinedi – believes that the era of ETA’s monopoly has come to an end.
Recently Mr. Spinedi said: “The industry where under different dials there is one and the same movement is not very attractive, but at the same time not tragic. For example, it’s known that in automobile industry there are about 5 giant producers, motors and platforms of which are used by the majority of other brands. And this is quite normal. So what is so problematic over watchmaking industry? There is basically only one such source for watchmaking brands. In the middle of the last century, if you remember, the situation was quite the opposite – practically every brand has its own manufactory that was engaged in production of movements. And such manufactories became first to suffer from the crisis”.
He also added: “It seems to me that now we can witness the same situation as investments in production of in-house movements are huge and this causes increase in the price for timepieces. Look at Chopard – the prices are absolutely unacceptable for the middle class. It would be better if in Switzerland there were several more manufactories that could compete with ETA. For example, we have already created several new models of watches on the basis of Sellita calibres and we are quite contented with the result. I personally would be happy to see the appearance of several new equivalent sources of movements”.
