Tradition & Technology
Differentiating Mechanical Watches in a Digital World
Photo by Daniel Romero on Unsplash
In the realm of watchmaking, smartwatches are both a challenge and an opportunity. Smartwatches offer a seamless experience — charge them up, connect to your phone, and you’re ready to go. It is critical that the watch industry learn from this ease of ownership that smartwatches provide.
My piece, The Opportunity for Watchmakers, focused on how smartwatches provide a seamless user experience. As an industry, it is our responsibility to educate first-time buyers and seasoned collectors about how to take care of their mechanical watches, and ensure they know when, where, and how to get their watch serviced. Service, finding new straps, whether or not to use watch winders — some of the most basic topics of taking care of your watch often get overlooked. Ensuring that first time or second time buyers know their options is crucial.
Yet, smartwatches remain the only option that provides a seamless experience. And this is where an interesting discussion begins: Can we integrate smartwatch features into mechanical watches?
IWC attempted to integrate connected features of a smartwatch in the strap of their Big Pilot with their IWC Connect idea back in 2015, but it never really came to fruition. In essence, it looked like an Apple AirTag was bolted to the strap. Needless to say it did not offer much visual appeal. However, this method seems like this would be magic and would get watch collectors the best of both worlds. Despite the allure of having the best of both worlds, the road to integrated smartwatch features in mechanical watches is fraught with trouble.
The first question is the total addressable market and the appeal of a mechanical watch with integrated smartwatch features. Most folks are probably already married to a smart watch brand, or fitness tracker of their choice. Convincing them to switch would require exceptional interoperability between watches, and a compelling user experience on the app side that rivaled Apple Health or Google Fit.
The second major hurdle is the development of the smart device itself. Developing something from the ground up would be cost prohibitive for a watch manufacturer. Any smartwatch integration would likely require a partnership most likely with Apple, Fitbit, Garmin, Google, Suunto, Whoop, or any other smartwatch maker. That would be a hard sell. Would smartwatch manufacturers be willing to collaborate, risking cannibalizing their own sales?
The technical challenges further complicate the integration of smart features into mechanical watches. How much functionality could realistically be integrated into the strap or the clasp without sacrificing comfort or aesthetics? Could an optical sensor read HR and other data from the underside of your wrist? The strap would need to be tight, it might work on a NATO strap, but would likely be uncomfortable all day long and impossible for sleep. Would the integration of this technology damage a brand’s reputation for craft?
The concept is alluring, but practicality remains an issue. Integrating smart features seamlessly and discreetly, without compromising the design, aesthetics, and technical excellence of these watches remains an incredible challenge.
Nevertheless, there is a broader lesson to be learned from the rise of the smartwatch. The allure of mechanical watches and their timeless design and craftsmanship will not soon be replaced by smartwatches. What does need to change in the watch industry is how we talk about watches and how we market them to consumers who might be coming from a smartwatch, or considering their first mechanical watch against a smartwatch.
Storytelling becomes paramount in this endeavor. Sharing a brand’s history and what a watch conveys is no longer enough. It’s about immersing collectors in the history of the brand, the emotion of owning a piece of mechanical art, and the emotion of the creators and craftspeople behind the watches. It’s also about providing exceptional customer service, from first interaction through the full lifecycle of being a client.
Exceptional customer service isn’t just the retail associates in a boutique or store, it’s ensuring that the buyer of a mechanical wristwatch feels both the value of the product, and valued as a customer. This looks like offering additional straps in leather or rubber, a travel pouch, and ensuring the customer knows that they can always contact the brand for support, fostering a sense of trust and loyalty.
Smartwatches may represent the future, but mechanical watches are not stuck in the past. They are timeless design icons that have an appeal and a soul, they can be repaired, restored, and brought back to life time and time again. By telling the story of how a watchmaker imparts not only their time, energy, and soul into a watch, watchmakers can thrive by reaching the smartwatch audience who have burnt out on constant notifications. In a world where tradition intersects with technology, watchmaking remains one of the last bastions of analog connection to the people, time, and the world around us.
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