Openwork: Inside the Watch Industry

If you'd told Gabe and Asher on August 7th — the day the U.S. announced a 39% tariff on Switzerland — that the holding companies would close out 2025 with their watch businesses up, they wouldn't have believed it. But that's what happened. Richemont's watch division grew 7% year over year. Swatch Group posted 7.2%. LVMH's watches and jewelry held flat while fashion softened around it. The top line says remarkable resilience. The bottom line tells a more complicated story.

Profits are largely flat. Currency and tariff drag is real. And the recovery is being driven by a strategic shift toward what Richemont and LVMH call "permanent luxury" — fewer watches, made at the higher end, with more specialized supply chains. That shift is a tale of two cities for suppliers: brutal under $10K, a quiet boon at the high end. Gabe and Asher dig into what it means for independents, why the Sellita movement Asher saw in Geneva shows how the market adapts, and whether the grand reorganization of the industry is creating a system that's harder for new brands to break into.

The episode closes on Swatch Group, where ISS has backed activist Steven Wood for a board seat. Asher takes the hypothetical seat and lays out what he'd change: less obsession with covering price points, more focus on creative point of view, and real activation of the R&D and supplier capabilities Swatch already owns.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].

A grand reorganization of the luxury watch business is happening in front of us, and nowhere is it more visible than in the diverging strategies of two holding companies making opposite bets on the future. Gabe and Asher unpack the contrast between Breitling, which under Georges Kern has quietly reconstituted itself as a private-equity-backed challenger group — bulking up through the acquisitions of Universal Genève and Gallet — and Richemont, the industry stalwart now actively slimming down, shedding Baume & Mercier and quietly walking Montblanc away from serious watchmaking.

The conversation digs into what each move actually signals. Universal Genève's relaunch with full collections at Vacheron and Jaeger-LeCoultre price points, distributed through curated Breitling network partners, looks like a textbook play for cross-shop market share at the high end. Gallet's entry into the brutal sub-$5,000 segment is harder to explain — unless you read it as Kern building a fully diversified holding company with a long-term IPO in mind, willing to plant a flag in a difficult category before the cycle turns. Richemont's behavior reads as the inverse philosophy: get fit, exit segments where the math doesn't work, and protect margin around Cartier and the houses that still command pricing power.

Along the way, Gabe and Asher get into the JLC management buyout rumors swirling out of Geneva, why the Mark Newson Memovox travel clock is the most genuinely interesting thing the brand has done in years, what Monbtlanc's absence from Watches and Wonders actually means, and why the agility of a young holding company is a real strategic asset that the legacy giants can't easily replicate. Market share is up for grabs in a way it hasn't been in a generation — and the next few years are going to redraw the map.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].

Gabe and Asher are back from Geneva, lightly jet-lagged after roughly 30 meetings across three days at Watches and Wonders. Rather than rehash the releases everyone already covered, this episode is dedicated to the watches they think didn't get the attention they deserved. The rule: hands-on only. Four picks each, plus a few honorable mentions.

The list spans a revived historical brand delivering a striking jump hour in a Geneva-sealed movement, a sophomore release whose gearing is literally re-cut so the date numerals sit evenly on the dial instead of bunching up at the double digits, a beloved grand date finally scaled down to wear properly on a smaller wrist, and a half-million-dollar resonance minute repeater with a second chiming mode designed, essentially, to show off. Elsewhere: a cushion-cased diver that wears nothing like its spec sheet, a brand that took everything in-house and cut its average price by 30 to 40% — a direction almost no one else is moving — and a pilot's watch that refuses to follow the obvious template, with a gradient dial lifted straight from RAF aircraft livery.

Honorable mentions include a chaotic mainstream release neither of them can stop thinking about, and a side quest into neo-vintage territory.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].

Gabe and Asher bring a firsthand report from Watches and Wonders 2026 in Geneva, jet‑lagged but watch‑fueled. They walk listeners through the week’s key impressions: a general sense of underwhelming novelties from the big brands, alongside impressive investments in booth design and production value.

The episode zeroes in on Audemars Piguet’s controversial, fully walled booth and strict queuing system, a move the hosts find off‑putting in a community event. In contrast, they highlight the energy downtown — the Beau Rivage, Time to Watches, Chronopolis and one‑off brand showings — where independents are generating excitement.

Notable moments include Moser’s playful Reebok collaboration, Credor’s surprising standalone presence, and the growing prominence of independent makers in the Palexpo and around Geneva. The hosts also praise brands and spaces that created calm, focused environments for hands‑on encounters, such as Berneron’s art‑gallery meeting.

Overall the episode frames the week as a snapshot of an industry in flux: shifts in where the action takes place, evolving brand strategies, pressures from costs and logistics, and a renewed appetite for independent creativity. Gabe and Asher close by promising a follow‑up with their favorite unsung watches of the week.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].

Gabe and Asher conduct the first-ever Openwork Watch Brand Draft — a snake-style, six-pick fantasy exercise where each host selects watch brands they'd want to own and operate across three categories: independent, micro/challenger (under $5,000), and mainstream luxury. Ground rules exclude AP, Patek, Rolex, Richard Mille, and any brand Collective Horology carries, keeping the conversation free of commercial conflicts and full of candid business analysis.

The independent and micro picks reveal what Gabe and Asher value most in a watch business — from creative extensibility and succession planning to supply chain execution and untapped product categories. Some selections are love letters to brands already firing on all cylinders; others are driven by a conviction that the right operational changes could unlock serious growth. The hosts don't hold back on where they'd steer things differently if handed the keys.

The mainstream luxury round sparks the sharpest strategic debate, with one pick framed as a direct competitive threat to Patek Philippe and the other as a brand with world-class watchmaking credentials that just needs permission to break out of a self-imposed design box.

Plus, J.N. Shapiro joins the Collective Horology Open House lineup on June 6th in Hollywood — RSVP at collectivehorology.com/openhouse.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].