Ticking Along Nicely

I find it fascinating that everyone thinks all watch dealers are based in London. We’ve received quite a number of similar emails now asking the same question and sadly, we have to let people down on both points.  Just to be clear, Armstrong&Co Ltd has no retail shop, and secondly, we are not based in London.

To me, London is like an incredible theme park. It’s a great place to visit but I’m afraid I have no desire to live anywhere near it, and even less desire to open a retail premises there.  I’m just thankful that we have such an effective ‘Virtual Shop’ and that we are able to service our many London based customers with a next day service that means they never have to sit in a traffic jam or enter the congestion zone in order to buy that cherished timepiece.

Long may this continue. We do of course recognise that many watch buyers prefer to deal face to face.  In this regard, although we can’t really offer this service in our present form, we do have to work harder than most dealers in providing the necessary quality pictures, accurate descriptions and communicative service that means that our customers won’t be disappointed in dealing with a remote company. 

The big challenge for trading on the web is no longer presence,  it’s about fulfilment.  The classic internet trading faux pas in my opinion being, a complete lack of communication once a product is ordered, leaving the customer not knowing whether his order was accepted, was even in stock or when it will be received.  We’ve worked jolly hard to make sure the customer is well informed at all stages and as a result, enjoy the loyal custom of many collectors and enthusiasts who trust us enough to make that very expensive online purchase without the hassle of visiting a city centre shop.

I’ve long been a fan of Accurist vintage mechanical watches.  Largely unknown outside the UK, the company was founded in 1946 in Clerkenwell, London, by Asher and Rebecca Loftus. Today, the company has offices in West Hampstead, London and La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland and unfortunately from the 80s onwards, followed many of it’s contempories into the descent into mass production of cheap quartz rubbish, that you were most likely to encounter in the Grattan catalogue or today, Argos or Amazon.  They produced some super quality watches in the 50s and 60s and 70s and although like many never made their own movements, they always used the best Swiss calibres available in the day from the likes of A Schild and ETA. 

In the 1960s, Accurist sponsored the variety show Sunday Night at the London Palladium on ITV, and the company’s watches were worn by celebrities such as Princess Anne, Twiggy and The Beatles, gaining worldwide publicity.

In the 1970s, the company signed a deal for their watches to be worn by pilots of Concorde. There were also those TV adverts in the late 70s featuring John Cleese.

Sadly after this it went rapidly downhill.

One of the crowning achievements was their super slim design cases, beautifully profiled mechanical watches not much more than 7mm thick.

One such watch came to us recently in it’s original box, a 1964 model with pristine solid 9ct gold case, mint dial and housing an ASchild calibre AS1525. 

Check out how slim that case is!

Losing a watch in Royal Mail’s Special Delivery Service is a thankfully rare but traumatic event for both the customer and us, and invokes into action the unwieldly and bureaucratic process of making a claim to Royal Mail.  Previously we would do this ourselves and refund the customer once the parcel was accepted by Royal Mail as being lost or stolen.

Unfortunately, there seems to have been a recent change in the ‘hidden’ Royal Mail’s terms and conditions of the service, despite no actual  written changes to the policy, whereby we, as the retailer are no longer able to claim the full value of the watch as paid by our customers. 

We’ve spent a long time looking at this issue and we think we have now a reasonable compromise which will ensure our customers get the fastest possible settlement and for the full price they paid. Royal Mail have stated in writing that if the recipient makes the claim, they will repay the full purchase price of the watch to the purchaser. To assist this process, we will send you a claim form pre filled and ask you to sign it and send it back to us. We will then send the claim to Royal Mail on your behalf with the necessary postal proofs and evidence of price paid.

Once the claim is investigated the claim will be repaid direct to the purchaser.  Please note that Royal Mail will only allow a claim for loss to be submitted, after 10 working days from the date of posting.  

We’ve seen a disturbing trend over the last 6 months. The wanton destruction of hundreds of perfectly serviceable vintage watches by collectors, dealers and joe public alike. What’s going on?, you may ask. Well it’s gold prices.  With trade in prices of more than £19 per gramme now being offered for 18ct gold by the ‘Rob me of my gold.com ‘ fraternity, vintage watches are heading for the smelters at a rate of knots.  The first casualties are the stylistically challenged 70s solid gold ladies watches with integral gold bracelets.  These are unlikely to ever make more than scrap on the secondhand market, so the best return is to melt them. Thus they will soon be consigned to history or the collection of the dedicated enthusiast.  Unfortunately the phenomena is spreading to far more seemingly collectable pieces and  even dealers are doing it with some unlikely watches.  We heard the other day of a dealer scrapping the 18ct President bracelet on a Rolex Datejust and selling the watch on a leather strap as the return was much better. Crazy, given the workmanship and value of the brand.  I’m afraid if Gold Rolexes can’t survive the current trend then no watch can.

There is some good news though, if you are a collector or dealer then an opportunity still exists, although closing rapidly, to buy and squirrel away all the solid gold watches you can.  In the sure knowledge of long term price rises, due to our uncertain economic future and the fact that your purchases will be getting rarer by the day, I’m not sure you can lose.

Solid gold Constellation 18ct.  Sold for £1795 on this site in 2008.   Current scrap value £2100.  Thankfully the retail price has also raised as a result, saving too many of these from reaching the smelter.  Lesser watches won’t be so lucky.

Following much deliberation, mostly over what to call ourselves, we’ve formed a limited company. The whole procedure is rather simple, sadly the forming new bank accounts and changing your card processing provider is less straightforward, sigh.

Anyway from the April 1st, ‘R&L Armstrong’ becomes ‘Armstrong & Co Ltd’ company no. 07207411.  Within the small empire lies PoshTime and Madaboutwatches and maybe a few other variations on a theme along the way.  Despite the naming confusion we have now created, we hope it will serve to reinforce our position as a proper business looking to expand our presence in the vintage and prestige watch business.  The two different shops will offer everything from a cheap quartz, entry level vintage watch right up to high end prestigious Swiss time pieces. 

As of the 12th February 2010, Madaboutwatches.co.uk will be incorporated into the R&L Armstrong watch selling empire.  My father Rod has retired from the selling side but will still be sourcing and repairing watches in the background.  Linda and myself will now run Madaboutwatches.co.uk and PoshTime.co.uk which which we hope to formalise under a new limited company very soon.

I built Madaboutwatches.co.uk back in 2002 and after successfully trading with Rod as father and son for a few years, started my own site PoshTime.co.uk.  Rod continued to expand Madaboutwatches to new heights making it the premier site on the internet for vintage watches in the sub £300 category.  In November 2009, I decided to leave my full time career in the water industry to run PoshTime in a full time capacity with my wife Linda.  We have been rushed off our feet ever since.  Co-inciding with these events was Rod’s desire to wind down from the sales side of things and try and enjoy some well deserved retirement after a long career in the Defence Electronics industry.  I suspect he’s going to be just as busy but with less emails to contend with!

The running of two independant sites leaves us with some complications and opportunities.  We rejected the option to merge the two sites into one quite early as we felt, both brands had established their own customer bases, brands and style of operation.  To make the day to day running easily we’ve amalgamated the back end operation and database management of stock and one immediate advantage to the customer is we can now offer credit card payments on watches bought from Madaboutwatches.   To the user, the two sites will look and feel very different and this will be maintained into the future. 

Madaboutwatches.co.uk is clearly showing it’s old age in terms of web technology but this will be changed as time allows.   There are big changes planned to PoshTime too, not least of which is how we present the watches.  We are experimenting at the moment in this area and hope to formalise some changes soon.

In terms of marketing,  you will find Madaboutwatches.co.uk will continue to offer the best selection of sub £100 vintage watches available anywhere on the internet, but will continue to offer vintage pocket watches, modern quartz models and wacky watches that you wouldn’t find anywhere else.

PoshTime.co.uk will concentrate on the higher end watches but also continue to promote our specialism in Omega watches from the 40s to present day and vintage American pieces from the 20s to 50s.   There will inevitably be some blurring of the boundaries and you will find that the same watch could appear on both sites.  This won’t be a mistake but a conscious decision where we feel it has appeal to both markets. 

So, there we have it, onwards and upwards.   

Here are few pointers to prepare the newcomer for vintage mechanical watch ownership:

The Bad Stuff: 

1) Vintage mechanical watches are less reliable than modern quartz watches.  Don’t confuse Quality with Reliability.  Rolex and Jaeger Le Coultre represent quality but please don’t expect these watches to work any more reliably than a battery powered Timex or a Casio for a few pounds.  There are many good reasons why vintage watches are worth many times the value of a modern quartz but dependability in all situations isn’t one of them. 

2) Vintage watches are less accurate than modern quartz watches.  The average £5 quartz LCD watch bought from a garage forecourt will be more accurate than a Rolex from the 70s or 80s.  Again if you can accept this point and the previous one you are well on your way to being able to enjoy vintage watches. If you are the sort of person that becomes apoplectic when your watch has lost a second in one day, then you need to move on, there’s nothing for you here.

3) Vintage watches need care and attention.  I’m afraid if you want your watch to last a lifetime, swimming, surfing, rock climbing and other activities are not a good idea. Expensive old pieces are very easily broken. Inappropriate force to the crown, dropping the watch to a hard surface, water, magnetic sources, inappropriate storage, damp, humidity and numerous other environmental factors will conspire to harm your pride and joy.  You also need to wind them, sometimes everyday! 

The Good Stuff:

4) Vintage watches will generally increase in value over time, especially those from prestige makers such as Omega and Rolex.

5) Vintage watches can be worn and enjoyed everyday.  Be sensible about where you use it and keep it away from harmful environments. Don’t buy a vintage Rolex Submariner expecting to use it for diving and don’t wash the car wearing a vintage 1930s Art Deco Bulova. It’s easily possible to buy one vintage piece, use it everyday of your life then pass it on to your kids so they can do the same.  Try that with a £5 Casio.  You will need to budget for a handful of services, numerous straps and a few glasses and other repairs.

6) Owning a vintage watch is satisfying and rewarding experience. The appreciation of fine craftmanship, marvelling at the mechanical intricacy of the movement and knowing you have something of worth.

Despite trading watches on the internet for the last 9 years, this has been my first week spent fulltime in the role (reasons in my last blog post).  It’s been hard work and I’ve learnt some new things, not least of which is the fact that there are some jolly nice people in this business.  It seems when you meet a watch trader, they usually have a story to tell, and a common thread is folk that have had long and fulfilled careers in industry that decide there is life outside getting up at 7.00am each morning and joining a queue of traffic for an hour or worse hanging onto to grab handle on a fast moving train to go and sit in a very dull office for a very very long time.  At some point you say enough is enough and you decide to indulge your hobbies and improve your life/work balance at bit more.

Also this week, I did the unthinkable and for the first time in 7 years, bought a couple of watches from Ebay.  It’s a jungle out there, literally.  Fakes, ripoffs, blatant lies and the kind of service you can expect from BT or one of the energy companies.  It’s no longer a place that the amateur watch collector can frequent without serious risk of getting royally shafted.  Even the pros make mistakes, trust me.  I doubt I will be back and neither should you.

When you find a watch dealer you can trust, stick with them. Loyalty pays because we can often go buying with our best customers in mind, thinking that so and so might like this Omega.  Hopefully we can offer you a preferential deal, just ask! and if there is one particular piece you’ve always wanted, we may just find it on our travels.

I managed to acquire a stonking Breitling Datora 2031 yesterday, and since then I’ve done little work.  I just keeping staring at it!  Look out for it soon on the site.

Rob

It’s with somewhat mixed feelings that I have to report that I have prematurely ended my career in the Water Industry.  Unlike most escapees, I only had to endure a mere 19 years of captivity but nonetheless it represents a bigger chunk of my life’s work than is comfortable to recall.

Sadly, the present economic climate coupled with the 5 year Water Industry periodic review conspired to threaten our business to such an extent that we were forced to make some very serious decisions about how we took the company forward.  I therefore decided to stand down as a Director, allowing the remaining management team enough reduced overhead to prepare the business for the future.

The decision wasn’t taken lightly but was also partly fuelled by my growing frustration with the industry, in particular the procurement departments, now seemingly running our Water companies and the hopeless waste of time and effort in bidding for work where ability and track record were at best secondary considerations to Carbon, H&S, CSR and other worthless policy statements.

At some recent point in the last 19 years, someone took the decision to replace common sense with corporate buyers who’s sole purpose is to carry a clipboard with a sharpened pencil, ticking boxes to check compliance with their own warped vision of company standards.  The outcome is that the winners are those companies with huge turnovers, incredible insurance indemnities, overhead generating QA and Project Management systems, and little in the way of ability, experience, innovation or ultimately ability to deliver.   Meanwhile the small companies with their innovative systems, talented staff, genuine focus on delivery and customer satisfaction get marginalised.  All of this because our water companies would prefer to waste hundreds of thousands of pounds designing and evaluating the credentials of those that are prepared and can afford to jump through the circus hoops of the tender process.  The result is the hideously convoluted and protracted evaluation process that often costs more than the value of the job being tendered. 

Once the tender bunfight is over and a poory delivered project is delivered hugely over budget, it is often the small specialists that have to pick up the pieces as we had done several times recently.  Inexperienced staff seconded from other sections of the business, poor management and ultimately a worthless deliverable is what you get if you screw your suppliers down with the wonders of reverse bid e-auctions and the like.    Does the fact that the procurement process has clearly failed to produce cost effective results ever influence future decisions?  Seemingly not.

‘Mitchell and Webb’ would make a fine satire from it, perhaps a man going into his local newsagent to ’evaluate’ his ability to deliver his paper in the morning, demanding that his paper boys should all attend bicycle safety courses, all have a calculated statement of their carbon frontprints, and all wear safety gloves to ensure they don’t receive any nasty paper cuts. This is of course in addition to the mandatory project management system reports and KPI statements that would need to be submitted each month to evaluate paper delivery progress.       

The irony is that if Mr or Mrs Procurement had simply stuck a pin in the suppliers list, they would have not only saved the company hundreds of thousands in navel contemplating but would also have stood a better chance in getting something worthwhile at the end of it.  To do so would of course threaten their own raison d’etre.  Better still would have been to do what NASA did when faced with the issue of providing a timepiece with which to support the Space programme in the 1960s.

They didn’t send out Pre Qualification Questionaires, demand endless empty policy statements on the environment, health and safety policy and carbon footprints. No, the brains that landed two men on the moon had a much better plan. They sent a guy out to the local jewellery store to buy as many different high end chronographs as they could find.  Then they tested them to destruction.  The eventual winner, Omega didn’t even know the process was going on.   

The secret of procurement is to buy the best product or service available, not the one from the company that makes the biggest promises, covers the most indemnity, or has the largest turnover.  Establishing frameworks based on these criteria is a surefire way to end up wondering why you spent millions and got nothing for it.

When I started in the industry you could turn up on a client’s doorstep on Monday and receive an order for a £100K contract by Friday.  Sadly those days are long gone.  It now takes 9-24 months to ’procure’ the same services.   Meanwhile in 2009 the daily consultancy charge out rates have remained consistent with rates being charged back in the early 1990s, and they were ludicrously cheap then compared to the likes of Accountants, solicitors and Garage Technicians. 

It’s not all been bad.  Five of the last seven years in the industry were the most professionally rewarding I’ve had.  Taking the initial embryo of us 4 Principal Engineers to a staff of 16 with £500,000 turnover was a valuable and rewarding learning experience.  Nothing is really wasted. 

Moving on, I shall be pursuing other business interests, initially concentrating on building PoshTime to new heights.  I’ll still be keeping a close eye on what the industry is up to and maybe return one day once it has learned a few lessons from it’s mistakes.

Regards

Robin Armstrong IEng MIWO

(former) Director

HydroCo Ltd.
       

I think it’s  a well documented phenomenon that as you get older you get wiser.  The flip side of your new found understanding of the world however, is cynicism and general grumpiness.  I’m just shy of 40, and now rather fearful of just how bitter and twisted I will be by the time I’m 70.  Hopefully the joy of actually reaching this goal might help to offset things.

This week’s irritations are Swiftcover.com (owned by AXA) and Sony’s Memory Stick format.

The insurance giants have to be very inventive these days to compete in such a fierce market but some feel the need to verge on the most devious of tactics to get new business or keep existing customers.  Whilst many are spending millions with pun laden Meerkats, and nodding dogs, Swiftcover have a new sales tactic.  You make it as hard as possible for the customer to leave. 

You receive the renewal quote, do the confused.com bit then find a cheaper insurance company.  No problem, but… on the renewal notice it says No claims bonus ’5 or more years’ .  Hold On! . I’m damn sure when I joined you last year I brought 10 years with me.   You can see where this is going….. You see some companies are now discounting policies further for drivers with up to 10 years NCB.   By refusing to recognise any more than the 5 year maximum on their renewal notice, Swiftcover.com can artificially make their premium more attractive.  Clever eh?

Well I’ ve kicked up a big fuss about it and ordered a separate statement letter of NCB from them.  It’s not been easy though. The company that has ‘won’ countless customer service awards doesn’t have a phone number, at least, not one that is visible within my surfing attention span.   They prefer you to converse via their ‘Chat’ system with trained chimpanzees that are equipped with a wonderful computer (provided by Fisher Price or Vtech)  that has an answer for any question you ask it.  It’s the same answer each time of course but you have to admire their preparedness.

It transpires I have in fact got 11 years NCB but I’m still waiting for that letter to arrive…..

Meanwhile I have taken ownership of a new Digital camera, a Sony one.  All was well until I ran out of storage space on it.  Two words,   Memory Stick! After years of being quite settled in the knowledge that any digital device worth it’s salt will come equipped with an SD card slot, I’ve been thrown a curveball, in fact several of varying sizes.  You see Sony seriously screwed up when they made the Memory stick.  Being the size of a chewing gum it was clearly useless for smaller camera devices.  So they made it smaller.  It was still too big so they made it smaller again.  By now, the chaps at Secure Digital must have been laughing their formats off.

 So now we have:

Memory Stick
Memory Stick Select
Memory Stick PRO
Memory Stick Duo
Memory Stick PRO Duo
Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo
Memory Stick Micro (M2)
Memory Stick XC

Confused?, I am.  After much head scratching I purchased a Memory Stick Pro Duo.  It comes with the daftest adapter you’ve ever seen to allow it to be used in some of the older generation Sony card readers.  An exact copy of what you are plugging into it, same no. of terminals, same spacing, except the plastic is slightly chunkier.   In order to talk to my new memory card with anything other than a Sony PC, I also bought a USB ‘140 into 1′ card reader for the princely sum of £1.74 inc post from Ebay.  It arrived yesterday, but it’s baffling to fathom what economic tomfoolery has ocurred for such an incredible bit of kit to have a retail value less than two litres of petrol.

So there you have it.  It seems, it costs millions to goof up standardising on digital formats but only £1.74 to fix it.