Joe Thompson (Editor-At-Large, HODINKEE)¶
Published on Mon, 22 Apr 2019 10:00:27 +0000
The man, the myth, the legend. It's Joe T time, everybody.
Synopsis¶
This episode marks the first in Hodinkee Radio's Editor Interviews series, featuring legendary watch journalist Joe Thompson. With over four decades covering the watch industry since the late 1970s, Thompson shares his remarkable journey from a small-town newspaper reporter to becoming one of the most respected voices in horology. His career began serendipitously when he answered an ad for Jewelers Circular Keystone magazine, initially uncertain about covering watches but quickly becoming fascinated by the Quartz Crisis unfolding in real-time.
Throughout the conversation, Thompson recounts extraordinary encounters with industry titans including Ernst Tomke, Nicolas G. Hayek Sr., and Patrick Heiniger of Rolex. He describes securing the first-ever interview with a Rolex CEO, nearly being thrown out of Jiro's legendary sushi restaurant for improper etiquette, and witnessing the transformation of the Swiss watch industry through multiple revolutions. Thompson's American-style journalism—characterized by direct questioning, multi-source reporting, and focusing on people rather than just products—set him apart in an industry accustomed to more reverential coverage. His stories reveal a deep curiosity about not just watches themselves, but the systems, personalities, and historical forces that shaped the industry through the Quartz Crisis, the mechanical watch renaissance, and into the smartwatch era.
Links¶
Transcript¶
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| Unknown | So this week on Hoodinky Radio, we're gonna do something a little bit different. We're gonna introduce the first episode in something we're informally calling our editor interviews. We thought it'd be a nice thing to give you an inside look at the people who bring you Hodinki. Uh so my co-host for these episodes is gonna be our illustrious executive producer, Mr. Greg Warhonan. Hello everybody. Thanks for uh having me on, SJPZ. Any time. The show doesn't happen without this guy. It's good to have him on the mic. Yeah, I'm I'm along for the ride and happy to be here. So up first, we thought there was only one possible person we could do this with. That's Mr. Joe Thompson. Joe Thompson. The man, the myth, the legend. Yeah, and and our listeners don't know it yet, but that is the first of three uh instances where we use that expression in this episode. Oh man, that's true. Oh. I gotta get a new shtick. Uh how about this? Uh they don't make 'em like they used to. Yeah, that's true. They definitely do not. I mean I think, we all kind of take it for granted here at the office that that we get to sit down and talk to Joe pretty frequently. But Joe is a real legend. I mean, he knows everyone, and everyone knows him in this industry. He's he's been working in the industry since the late 1970s. Uh his coverage has spanned four decades. He's ridden the waves from the you know depths of the Quartz crisis if you were in Switzerland, the Quartz Revolution if you were in Japan, up through the renaissance of mechanical watches, he's seen the evolution of smartwatches. I mean, he's he's really been following this industry through through peaks and valleys for the better part of half a century. I don't think there's a person, at least in the English speaking world, who has as much knowledge and inside access as Mr. Joe Thompson. And that comes across in this episode. I think we we went for around two hours, Steven. Yeah, I think a little over two hours and you know the other thing that comes across to me in this episode that I I think is really important for everyone to notice is Joe is not just brilliant, Joe is also so nice and so thoughtful and so respectful with how he approaches this. Uh and whether you're a journalist or anything else, uh, I think there's something we can we can all take away from that. Yep, couldn't agree more. Joe's the best. And I think it's safe to say this is also not the last time you guys will be hearing from Joe Thompson. Joe's amazing on the microphone, and uh as you as you'll hear, uh I I could sit and listen to Joe talk for hours. In fact, you did. Uh two of them. Fair. Okay. So I'm not gonna babble on anymore, and I'm gonna cut gray here, and we're just gonna get right into our chat with Joe Thompson. I'm your host, Stephen Pulverin, and this is Hodinky Radio. Alright, Joe, it's good to have you here. Great to be here, Steven. The man, the myth, the legend. Yeah, we also got Mr. Gray fully on mic today. Uh not fully on mic. I'm gonna lean back the entire episode, but cool. Yes, hello. Sort of on mic. Yeah. So this is the first of our editors interviews series. We thought it'd be fun to kind of profile some members of our team and who better to start with than Mr. Joe Thompson? Seriously. Thank you for joining us, Joe. My pleasure, guys. The man, the myth, the uh the legend. The most humble legend. Does that grow tiresome at these various trade shows when we follow you around and we just see people come up to you that we've never met uh as mostly people trade insiders, yeah, and then we realize that the real industry insider is Mr. Joe Thompson. Aaron Powell It's ridiculous. I'm on board. So you know we'll we'll talk plenty about the industry in scare quotes and and being an industry insider, but I think it's better to start before that. I think we'll keep this pretty chronological. So who was Joe Thompson before Joe Thompson watchwriter? Oh that's a good question. I |
| Unknown | you've caught me off guard. Well, I was born in Philadelphia, grew up in the Philadelphia area. Um went to school at Villanova University and was sort of destined for a career in academics. That was my first choice, uh, guys, uh to tell you the truth. What subject? It was uh I've got um an advanced degree, I've got a master's uh, you know, in in literature and I have a second master's in theology, actually. And I was about to go, I was accepted to Emory University to go for the doctorate in religion and literature. It was going to combine those two master's degrees when an opportunity came to become a reporter just on a small town newspaper in South Jersey, the Cape May County, the Cape May County Gazette. And it was a tough choice. The choice was, oh well, now, you know, another four or five years of study and debt, or, you know, maybe maybe be a reporter, which I had always wanted to be. I mean I always had this this little writing skill. I was the kid that won the you know the fifth grade essay on fire prevention and that was me. I was that kid, you know, one skill and I and I I was looking to use it. And so um I did take a job uh on the Cape McCounty Gazette. Was fascinating, was wonderful. I really loved being a reporter. And you just learned, you know, everything and I you worked oh my god uh how how long you worked. But uh did you have a beep then or were you kind of doing everything? General assignment reporter. Okay. You know you covered fires, you covered the various municipal meetings. But uh it so happens that in nineteen seventy six when I was I just started this job, I start in March of seventy six, but uh I got to cover the Democratic National Convention in New York City. I met the the governor of New Jersey, Brendan Byrne, interviewed uh the senator uh who got involved in ABBSCAM later, Pete Williams. Um and uh so it went well. I covered the Carter inauguration. I was really loving this actually. Um but I was uh sort of uh not making enough, you know. It was five thousand eight hundred dollars a year. It was time to improve my situation. So I literally answered an ad on a uh for a trade magazine in the Philadelphia area called Jewelers Circular Keystone. Bizarro name. Didn't really know what it meant. And bottom line is, uh, I got the job, and on the first day of work, the editor-in-chief said to me, You're gonna cover watches. Sorry, what was the name of the publication? Jewelers Circular Keystone is now JCK. J C K Magazine that has the big show. And it was a combination of the Jewelers Circular, which was a magazine, and the Jewelers Keystone, which w was a magazine in Pennsylvania. And they were trade magazines and they went back to the eighteen hundreds, uh which merged during the Depression and they became jeweler circular keystone. So I show up uh and uh How kind of pay raise did you get? Uh oh it was big, big I I cracked the the five figures. Oh there we go. Right. That's a big that's a big race to Joe. Right. One zero comma zero zero zero. So um but I can still remember driving home from work that first day, thinking to myself, man, what did you just do? You were going places, baby, you met the governor, you interviewed the senator. And now you cover watches. What the heck can you write once a month about watches? It's nineteen seventy-seven. And you didn't have to be Woodward or Bernstein to figure out that there was a big, big story going on. And this was the this is where this is where I get hooked. Um it's the court's watch revolution, which Switzerland calls the court's watch crisis. We'll talk about that, I think, in a minute. Yeah, we will. Um and it's a huge story. Um I'm sent to Switzerland for the first time in nineteen seventy-nine, I go to Japan for the first time in nineteen eighty-one. Um And so uh I and I've got kind of got destroyed on mys |
| Unknown | elf, which was a a bit weird. It's kind of crazy, right? Like it's it's a whole national industry is being completely upended by another nation making it their national industry. And weirdly like there's not that much at |
| Unknown | tention. Well in my not not in our market because a couple things that were really, really lucky for me. One was that I was in a neutral country, the United States was no longer a watchmaker. For one brief shining moment there in the 1970s, uh, at the beginning of the courts crisis, with the LED watch, the light-emitting diode watch, and with the LCD as well, with the digital electronic watch, a hoard of American electronics firms got into the watch industry, but it was very brief. And by kind of the end of the 70s it was already ending. There were still some brands around, National Semiconductor, Texas Instruments, and they were making watches. Uh but the the scene had pretty much passed, and so it became uh the the great production centers at that point were three Switzerland, Japan, and Hong Kong, which was emerging as a result of the court's revolution. And so one break was I was a neutral. So I could go to Switzerland and I could go to Japan and it wasn't like anybody's divulging any secrets. Second lucky break for me is this America is the largest watch market in the world. And then the third thing for me was that as a reporter, I was bringing an American style of reporting to this. And this is what was a bit different from the reporting that was going on in Europe at the time. I was used to sort of independent, objective, uh often multi-sourced. I was a feature writer, long-formed uh journalism. And um you could just write about the product in those days if you want. I mean, if my first Basel Fair, everybody would go over. They were wonderful with the press kits, all the information was in the press kits. And so you could cover the fact that let's say Omega has blue dials. The fact that Omega was going bankrupt was a much bigger story, but wasn't going to be in the press kit.. Right My reporter the reporter side of me f found that strip was not very hard to find this out, to be quite honest. Um I mean that's the other thing I found out. People want to talk. Good for me. Yeah. And you know, if you do your job right, they'll tell you plenty. And so I became fascinated by the courts crisis. And when I say I had it to myself, because you know, in those days nobody really specialized in this. I had other beats. Everybody had other beats. And so you would pick up the press kit and rely on that if you wanted. But this was really kind of interesting to me |
| Unknown | . Let's let's talk more about this idea of the the sort of American style journalism, right? Like, you know, I remember, you know, the first time you go to Switzerland, there's a very particular, not just sort of Swiss culture, but a very particular sort of Swiss business culture, the way that you treat uh colleagues, the way that you treat executives, the way that you talk about watches with watch executives is very idiosyncratic. It's very reverential. It's sort of like everyone's buying their own hype. Um it's a very different way of doing things. And what you're describing, and if you can tell us a little bit more about this, is is a very different way of not just approaching stories, but of approaching these people, of of interacting with these people who you you need to have good relationships with to do your job. That's right. And I I wasn't even |
| Unknown | aware that there was any difference uh when I first go over there. Um and but I I perhaps the best example of this for me was that the the great Swiss strongman at the time was a man named Ernst Tumke. And he was uh this is before Mr. Hayek comes along, and Mr. Hayek really doesn't go public until the mid-1980s, after SMH is created and after he has taken the position of CEO, and after he has the controlling shares through the Hayek. Prior to that, he was the consultant. He was never the spokesperson. He was and and and never in front. |
| Unknown | And for people who might not know SMH went on to become the SWAT group. Right? Exactly |
| Unknown | . And then so the guy you needed to talk to, and this was my sort of American naivete as as well, that that helped me a lot. My my deal was like, okay, um, how does this system work? Uh you know, who's in charge here? The who, what, when, where, and why? And the biggest question for me was the why. And to find that out, I needed to get to the who. And who, who's in charge? And so I just as as a young, relatively young reporter, uh didn't realize that you n you know that you needed that there are hierarchies. I just I just tried to get to Tomkey. Uh had a hard time. Tomke hated the press, did not like to talk to the press. Didn't really create anything, or wasted paper, more more appropriate. But I was able to uh to work a connection, who said who that vouched for me and said, No, you should talk to him. But but so I do get this sort of just prize interview with Tom Keys because he didn't talk to the press. And I can still remember just asking him. And we we're just very Americans are just very direct. And so I can say and and everybody had talked to me about Tomkey, they were they you love, could love him or hate him, and a lot of people hated him because of all the changes he was making. I just remember saying to him, why do they call you Ayatoa Tomke? And he just took a fit of laugh. I'm sure nobody had ever asked him that. And he just started to laugh. And it just gives it. I didn't in the beginning. I mean it wasn't, but but in the course of things, you know, if you you you're trying to just get guys to talk. That's the skill. You have to have this skill. And um and then at the right moment you can do that. He just took a fit of laughing and just said, oh, he said, well this is my bad character. And he said he started to talk about why why he's he he's impatient, he he should be actually more but it was very, very interesting. And he kind of broke the ice. And uh this is what I mean by kind of an American way of reporting. And even and he actually uh well, it's not really very important, but he didn't he didn't w even want to have an interview. I mean what I would call an interview. Uh he was I don't want a story just about me. He says, if you're gonna use this for the story uh talking to other people that',d fine. And that was unusual. Normally you would walk in in Switzerland, I mean to this day, put a tape recorder down, you know, the PR person's there, uh, and you know, it's a QA. You ask the question, and then the CEO just takes control of the interview. Why never, ever would would do that? And um so that's sort of like the most boring type of interview imaginable. You've totally given up control of this thing. And I mean if you're lucky that the guy's really articulate and funny, but the odds are the odds are pretty remote. Otherwise it's deadly. No, no, no, no. You you you remain you take charge of your own story, and it's multi-source, you ask the questions, etc., et cetera. So, but that that I think is is an example that I think back when in those early days. Oh, and this this happened honestly quite a long time. I mean, it was the same thing with uh Lantominique Perrin was the CEO of Cartier. And same thing, I can still remember him just saying, uh, and again, I asking him, you know, why did why did the Swiss hate you? I said. And he and oh he and he just laughed. He said, oh, because I'm a Frenchie, he said. And this was what this is at the time when he had pulled out of the Basel Fair, it's actually very contemporary in a way, to start SIHH. But just that kind of the that kind of direct conversational, you know, answer me this, tell me this. I mean I have kind of got a little bit of a columbo technique, you know, I know can you help me with this? I know this, this, and this. You have to know your brief. But and even if you know the answer, you want to get the answer. And so it's like the one thing I can't quite figure out is is is this. And it's very hard to resist that, I have learned. And um so anyway, this was this is the game. This is the hunt. This is what I did. How old were you at this point? Well let's just say I'm a septuag. Oh well even back then. I'm in my my my late twenties because I had the academic career I had you know I'd gone for the couple of masters and that I and I actually taught a little bit of Villanova |
| Unknown | . And at this point, did you see a career in watches or it was kind of your your style and interviews influenced by perhaps a a willingness to to kind of take risks knowing that this was not necessarily the end game for you? |
| Unknown | Well I actually did see the career early I I found this thing absolutely bloody interesting to tell you the truth. I mean um just bec just the I didn't know anything about business but I was willing to learn and the cure I mean what what a journalist needs I mean in addition to writing and reporting skills, is curiosity. And I had an enormous curiosity about this and then we can talk to but I mean this was this this this particular then that continues. I mean here I am forty two years into this and, still just enormously curious, uh, and still fascinated by this product, to tell you the truth. I mean, this unusual 400-plus year-old uh branded product um and uh why it is so important to people and so important to industries. And like I said, the the the fact that the watch world was at war was a huge uh a you part of the my fascination. What's going to happen now? Yeah. And just to maybe wrap this bit up, you know, war uh a crisis brings out heroes. I mean, if there's no World War II, nobody ever hears anything about General Patton. So at in this crisis for the Swiss and in this opportunity for Japan, heroes emerge. And and and there's a drama. And I am, honestly, I am just a simple dude. All I want is a good story to tell and a good reader to read it. And if I have that, I'm happy. So it Still is. Yeah, it still is super hard. We all know about this. So uh but but but once once I got into this uh to this reporting about this industry and these products |
| Unknown | , I was hooked. You were hooked. Yes, you mentioned product, right? And the idea that these are branded consumer products, but that that's not actually what you were reporting on for the most part. So what is it about watches? If you if you're not a sort of product guy and a you know diehard collector yourself. What is it about these products that you find compelling? Well let me let me take this two |
| Unknown | ways. We did cover product, but the product at that time I came in was not the big story. So, I mean, the big the story was the revolution and the crisis. And so, and the products were not that terribly sophisticated. I mean, it's it's an elect, you know, it's it's a quartz. The whole world at that time was quartz. I mean the the the what the Swiss had to abandon. The mission was to get rid of mechanical in order to survive into the future. So that that was a point two was I it was a B to B it was a business magazine, a trade magazine. And so um you you could not fall in love with the product. If I I tell everybody this, you you guys, if if I had come back from the Basel Fair, you know, the way the style is today and said, Wow, I saw this one. I love that. What do you s you know, keep your eye on that? I would have been fired. Wow. I would have been out of there if I had written anything remotely like that. I was writing for watch industry professionals. The buyer, the watch buyer at Zale. Uh what are the cir |
| Unknown | culation numbers at at that point? I mean, how many people are reading that style of reporting |
| Unknown | ? Well in in the industry, I mean I I forget exactly what the circ what it was at at the time, probably about thirty-five thousand in the United States. Yeah um of uh uh of of the audience and and and and so the editor I mean pretty much said in so many words, nobody gives a rat's batoot about what you think about this. Temptation. Right. I mean I knew I could not fall in love with these products. Yeah. They were interesting to me, sure. But I could never I couldn't afford them. You know, the job was rewarding in many ways financially. Wasn't one of them. Were you wearing a watch at this point? Oh sure. I wore watch. I probab wasly wearing a Timex in those days. My first watch was an Elgin when I graduated high school from my grandmother. Um and uh that would have been a mechanical. Um that's the 60s. Still have that watch? Sorry? So have that watch. No, I I don don''tt have and then the early, and then I probably I just had a sort of a durable timex for running around, you know, covering covering the down down the shore. Um but the question about so that y so that yes, I I uh did not fall in love with the product. Um I fell more in love with the industry. And that was better. I mean that was I mean career-wise, that was better for me. It was almost, I mean, you knew you had to be you had to be independent and objective, and you couldn't play favorites with brands, you couldn't play play favorites, you know, at all. And the editor-in-chief of this magazine, George Holmes was his name. We still get together. He was hugely influential on me. I was very, very lucky because he he he was he he he sent me to these places that I would came back and said, Look, this is where the story is. I gotta go to Japan. Um and we went on our coin. There were no junkets in those days. Um so |
| Unknown | so I'm not sure I'm answering your question. No, no, you are. And you know, I actually want to kind of push your answer a little bit. Okay. You know, you said that you you aren't in love with the product and you couldn't you couldn't allow yourself to fall in love with the product. But if I hear you, it sounds like you couldn't allow yourself to fall in love with individual products, but the idea of the product, like the idea of watches, and watches kind of as a category, you did fall in love with, right? Absolutely. I am to this da |
| Unknown | y just still fascinated by the by the power of this product. Yeah, you're quite right. And so my I guess my I I didn't fall in love with individual watches, no. Um but it amazes me uh how universal these things are. I mean, even today, you're on an airplane you guys know this uh somebody say oh what do you do you're chatting you say well I you know I get kinda you I try and set up well I'm a business reporter I cover you know and well yeah well yeah and I cover the the watch industry and what And then the second reaction is, well, hey, listen, tell me about, you know, I'm wearing a brand X and tell me about this watch, and I was looking at another watch, and I have a watch. And then you get these watch stories from people. And I'm telling you, more often than not, that occurs. Um |
| Unknown | for you, Joe, because you were one of the most charming and personal people around. It's like you and Dave O'Hero, our video producer, get approached at airports. Stevie and I, however, surely uh resting bitch faces explained. No one talks to me on airplanes. I've seen including Gray won't talk to me on airplanes. That is entirely untrue. For those who are uninitiated, Steven and I are uh plane boarding husband and husband. Yeah. It's true. But that's uh yeah. But to your point, I have seen it happen. |
| Unknown | So yes, it's absolutely the case. And history. I I am I'm in love with watch history. Um and we can go into it perhaps a little bit later. I mean in sixteen oh one, you know sixteen oh one way back. They fought they the the the Geneva founds uh a watch guild. I mean it just absolutely fascinates me. And and then all and then we can talk more about the connection that historical figures have to watches. I mean, people you wouldn't believe. You know, uh Voltaire was a watch baron um at the very end of his li |
| Unknown | fe. Uh I feel like there's like a Broadway musical to be written about that you can use hip hop musical starring as Voltaire. You cannot yeah, I'm uh I' |
| Unknown | m catching him. You cannot you cannot exaggerate the amount of detail on that. And so And so uh so over the centuries, I mean all of just the stories that uh and and and watched watched trivia at a certain point became a uh a fascination of for for me and for my wife. My wife is Norma Buchanan. And we worked together uh for thirty years. Um watch industry was great for me. It uh not only brought me a a a a wonderful career, but it also brought me my wife, who is wonderful. Yeah. Who is is amazing. Well, she and so she at a certain point decided to write a book uh called The Watch Buffs Book of Trivia. This is a shameless promotion. It is available. Yeah, we'll link it up. It is available on on the the site. And what does it- I mean it it's it's it's cheaper than a pizza, folks. I mean this thing is, you know, about eleven dollars, maybe less. And all it is is um uh the connection of watch to the culture. In all of the ways that you can imagine. I mean this is what is so fascinating about about it. And that you got little chapters and it re it really it spans the whole the watches and and and and the military and and presidents and politics and the arts. It's an object d'art. It's an object of science. Um it has figured in in enormous uh historical events and just in daily life, it's this this this it's token um and this totemic object that it it means so much to people. I mean Hayek used to say to me actually, you know, it's the only product we wear uh twenty-four hours a day. It's on your skin. And so yeah, this this part of this product that I cover uh does fascinate me and the industry that I cover. And so um and that's why I don't want to stop, even though I'm you know, bloody old. I we're we're glad you're not stopping. Well, me too. 'Cause like I say, you're giving me uh you know, a new audience to tell some of the stories too. |
| Unknown | Off the top of your head, we should have brought the book, but do you have any uh great watch trivia that you can you can lob Stevie and I's way? Maybe we uh we plug the the answer into the show notes or something. Yeah. Any question any like watch trivia from the book. Watch trivia from the book, do you think you can stump us? Stump us from? Sure. You will surely stump me. Stevie's a harder stump. Oh, there's there's |
| Unknown | there's oh oh oh okay. Um here's one. What king was a kleptomaniac and a watch collector, and so when Winston Churchill visited him, he stole his watch and then returned it to him the next day. O |
| Unknown | oh. Now I'm gonna get my I'm gonna get my British Kings wrong. Crap. It's not British. Oh, interesting. Uh Met Churchill. Who had Kings? I might be a spanning. The Spanish didn't still have a king then. This is post was it like the Swedes? I have no idea. You wanna hear it? |
| Unknown | It's King Farouk of Egypt. Ooh. Who was a fantastic watch collector, had a fantastic watch collection. Interesting. And and what would what did Churchill have with him that uh he He had a pocket watch and uh it might have been the Bregay, I'm not sure. Churchill also had a lot of watches. And there's actually |
| Unknown | that's a good one. Yeah. There's one of his pocket watches is in the uh war rooms in London. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It's an amazing wat |
| Unknown | ch. Yeah, and then yeah, Churchill the other there's another great, great, great Churchill story about watches um that that I'd love to tell, but uh in due course. Yeah, go for it. Now? Yeah, tell it. Oh let's go. Well th the the the the the kind of thing I'm talking about uh is um let's take Churchill when he was a young man. He was given a watch by his father, Lord Randolph Churchill. It was a Dent watch. Dent was one of the great watch manufacturers, you know, in the uh uh 19th century London. And Churchill goes off to Sandhurst, the military school, um, for college. Um, and the watch, while he's out just they're exercising or whatever they're doing. Yeah, well no. The watch falls into a stream, a very deep stream, sort of where a pond is in the stream. And he he panics, he goes in, he tries to get it, it's too deep, he cannot find it, it's dark. And so this is early Churchill, this is what's to come, this is a sign of what's to come. He gets his gang together, the next day they go up, they divert the stream. Wow. In order for him so that so that so that the water flows out of this this part of the pond that that part of the stream that is deep. He gets the watch, he gets it down to London, he gives it to Dent and he said, please repair it. Please repair this watch. You know, thank God. He's out of the head. He's not in any trouble. Talk about bad luck. Lord Randolph Churchill goes into Dent. He also has a watch in for repair. And when he asks for his watch, they bring him Winston's. And he looks at it and he goes, this isn't my watch. This is Winston's watch. What's going on? What's happened here? And they say, oh well they explain to him what's happened. So Lord Randolph Churchill goes nuts and just he's furious with Winston. It's at the end of his life. He's really actually he's sick. He's about to die. And so he was but very very, cranky at the end of his life and irritable and all that. And so now there is a letters back and forth. And he so he takes the watch. He says, No, I'm not giving you the watch. This watch is going to your younger brother, Jack, who will take care of it. You are not worthy. You are only worthy to have one of those cheap dollar watches from America for your watch. And um and then the mother, you know, Jenny Jerome, Churchill's mother, the American, gets involved. And so it's a family drama. And we'll just end it there. No points for the ingenuity of diverting a shit. |
| Unknown | I feel like that should get you the points. Not not with that. Apparently not. Churchill parents, tough. Toughies. Tough parents leads to the thing |
| Unknown | . Lord Randall. Well no, he wasn't, actually. You were right. But but another wing of the family got the title of the Marlboro, the Duke, the Duke of their own. But I mean that's the kind of thing that I I just love. And all this is chronicled. You know, you can go back and get it all over. But he wrote letters about it and all the rest. But I mean, just that's an example. |
| Unknown | All right. So we're talking about big figures, about giants. One of the things you and I have talked about before is that the moment you entered the watch industry, it was in crisis. And you know, you've already alluded to this. That one of the things that happens is that breeds opportunity for heroes. Who were some of these huge personalities besides Tomki, who we've we've already talked about, who who you kind of met on on both sides of the war, from on on the Japanese side and and on the Swiss side, who were the giants kind of roaming the earth, making making news and making change happen when you entered those first couple years. |
| Unknown | Let me start with Japan. In Japan, uh it was not a crisis. It was a huge opportunity. Um the Japanese watch industry um had developed mechanical watches. Uh Seiko and Citizen were the two big companies. Uh Casio came up, was just beginning in the 70s, uh, but that was an electronics firm. And so I can still remember my first trip in January of 1981. I go to meet a man who is the CEO of Citizen Watch Company. His name is Ichi Yamata. And I was in awe of this man uh because he became CEO of Citizen in March of 1946. Okay Okay. We all know what happened in August of 1945 in Japan, VJ Day, and he had been citizens CEO.ce Sin I mean seven months later he takes over as CEO. And so I was just in awe of him just because of what he had seen and what the court's watch revolution meant to him. You know, it took them years, it took Japan years to get back to the five million production uh mark that they had in nineteen thirty-nine. They didn't hit that to the mid-50s. Um and so Mr. Yamata, I mean Citizen was actually much smaller than Seiko in those days, about a quarter of the size. But it was uh I I just remember the the the the the opportunity to meet him and to talk to him. Uh and he was a very, very gracious man. He understood English. I mean he he could he w he he didn't need the questions translated, but Mr. Mr. Okamoto, uh who was international vice president, would translate his answers. And um so it he he's won just as a for me, a hero, uh who uh oversaw citizen during this entire uh post war rebuilding when you're you know, all all of the combatants really stopped making watches. They it all went on to military. Um which is why the Swiss emerged from World War Two uh as as um you know the great uh watchmaking power because they were not combatants. So but the the but Seiko was the big company then in nineteen seventy eight, my second year covering the industry. They became the largest watch company in the world and there was a man in there, his name was Hideaki Moria. And he was he was absolutely crucial to Seiko's success in the United States. He's somebody to talk about probably for another time. But they sent him over here early, and he devised the strategy, was a brilliant strategy to have Seiko for Seiko's success in the United States. Um one of the first pieces I have a really, really long form pieces that I tend to do. Multisource, I talk to I mean dozens of people for that story, is about what he did in a nutshell, what he did was what ask established distributors in the United States, regional distributors who distributed jewelry and some watches, to set up their own distribution companies just for Seiko. Those guys took a gamble, they did it. They all became millionaires just on their seiko business. And this is how he got to, you know, and in in those days, and I know this, but that they were still concerned about Japanese brands in the United States. They didn't want have to too much of a Japanese footprint with this brand. And so they had American distributors distributing this brand. A bit of trivia. I don't know if it's actually in the book. When they open an office, this is before Maria gets here. They open an office in the 60s in New York. And rather than use Seiko as the brand name, they spell Seiko backwards. And Seiko backwards is Oakies, as if it was from Oklahoma. And I got this little tidbit actually from a a a secret study of Seiko that the F H had. And that's a story for another day about how |
| Unknown | I got that. But uh It's funny you bring that up because uh we had James James Marsden on the show. Yeah, shout out to James. Uh we had James on the show and he was saying the reason he's from Oklahoma and the reason the his uh I think it was his his uncle gave him a watch. His uncle or his father gave him uh his his first watch, gave him a Seiko and told him it was because it was Okies spelled backwards |
| Unknown | . There you go. So there's that. You know, after Tom K |
| Unknown | i I mean the the Before we sorry, before we before we get away from from Japan, you know, you you mentioned this when you started, but I think it's it's worth kind of hammering home here is, you know, we we all talk about the era of quartz watches as being the quartz crisis, right? And most of our audience, I think, and and most of us at Hodinky are, in general, mechanical watch enthusiasts to some degree or another. But that term, the court's crisis, assumes the idea that court's watches are the enemy, right? It assumes that either you you have a financial stake or an emotional stake in in mechanical watches. But you've already mentioned that in Japan it was it was the Court watch revolution. This was this was a chance for a nation that that was in some really, really tough times to kind of make something that could could kind of help them lift their position a little bit? A |
| Unknown | aron Powell Absolutely. Revolutions can be good and have a good connotation. The French Revolution, for example. Democracy to us all. A lot of people die. Yeah, there are casualties in revolutions. But for the Japanese firms, um, this was the great opportunity and electronics, of course, which is the base of uh courts watches, they had uh they had an advantage there uh that the Swiss did not have. The Swiss uh Switzerland was not a great electronics power, and we'll get to what SMH means uh in a little bit. It's it's microelectronics. That was the the uh uh the mission. Uh so that yes, uh Japan has a leg up, and that's why that's one of the reasons they emerge so strong uh in the 1970s, and it's why Sego grows to be the number one watch company in the world. So yeah, the the the the notion of a court's crisis is is is absolutely uh uh the Swiss point of view, and they they call it that to this day. Right, yeah. Right? The Seiko introduces the first quartz watch in 69. In 1970, their Swiss watch industry has 89,000 people employed in it. That bottoms out in 1988. It goes for eig yehtearsen and uh at twenty eight thousand. So they go from roughly ninety thousand down to below thirty thousand in eighteen years. That's a crisis. |
| Unknown | So Do you use each interchangeably or do you uh tailor which which of those quartz crisis or quartz revolution do you use them uh tailor to your audience? Aaron Powell Oh that's a very good question. Uh I I think it's bas |
| Unknown | ed on what I'm writing about. If I'm writing about the Swiss it's it's it's it's the court |
| Unknown | crisis. That's a really inside baseball journalist question to ask right there. Okay. I'll I'll take it. I think no no I think it's a good question. I just think that's that's a question only a journalist as |
| Unknown | ks. And even in the uh the series, we we you know, a series that that we did, you know, with a Herdinky, I mean I well again, luck. I mean that's the hallmark of my career. Uh to be able to have covered four revolutions uh over forty years is just enormous luck from the watch gods. Thanks very much. Those four revolutions were. The courts watch revolution. All right, we got one. Uh of the seventies, the fashion watch revolution of the nineteen eighties, swatch uh fossil guess, uh the mechanical watch counter-revolution or the mechanical watch renaissance, which begins in the 1990 and just be goes gangbusters in the first uh decade of this century, and the current smartwatch revolution that is causing enormous havoc in the under thousand dollar uh market right now. So I I got to cover all of those things live, you know. Um so yeah, so there if you if you're talking about the whole thing with with Japan and Switzerland and the emergence of Hong Kong and China, then it's the Courts Watch Revolution. But if it's just strictly on the Swiss side, it's the Courts Watch cris |
| Unknown | is. So before we leave Japan and go to Switzerland and talk about the giants that were roaming the Jura, I guess, uh, you know, striding atop the snow capped peaks, right, Gray? Beautifully phrased. Yeah. Just keep going there. Get quiet, we'll do it like this. Yeah Right. What was it like going to Japan in nineteen eighty one as quartz watches are taking off and and having that both that professional experience but also the the sort of cultural experience. Oh it was phenomen |
| Unknown | al. It was phenomenal. I I uh I I can still remember, I mean, being uh just prof professionally, of course it was great. I mean that first trip was um uh you know one a day. A day with Seiko, a day with Citizen, a day with Casio, and a day with Orient. And then the the on the Friday I was on a plane to Taiwan and then it was a two-week trip and then off to Hong Kong. But the overwhelming impression was just of this this uh the the hustle and the bustle of that city, I mean of of Tokyo, uh was just was a hit. I remember I remember just arriving, you know, after that long, long flight and being just terribly jet-lagged. Um and uh by then um you know my early 30s or almost mid thirties. And um but just think I I got to stay to the Imperial Hotel uh uh down across from the the Imperial Palace and just w just started walking around. And just walking around the Ginza and all the and just walked and walked and walked, even though it's desperately jack lagged, but you didn't f you didn't feel it. And there was just such energy and they were they were booming. They were really I mean they were they were really rising. Uh in the in the uh the nineteen eighties, I mean if you re if you recall, and this would go up uh right through uh to the 90s, they had an Indaka, what they call the Indaka crisis. For them, the crisis was Indaka. Indaka means high yen. And that would come in 85 with the plaza accords, and that's when sort of the the um the western countries devalue the currencies and so the the yen go the the yen spikes and so that's the beginning of a little bit of turbulence for the great Japanese juggernaut. We can get to that later and it's right around the time that Swatch comes in. So but in nineteen eighty one, I mean that place was was just live and they were kicking. And I love it. I just loved it. And then meeting meeting the executives and get in was my first taste of all of this and the opportunity to to find it. You need to be on the ground. I mean if you want to if you want to really report on things, you need to be able to talk to to talk to people and ask them live. It's very, very hard to do remotely |
| Unknown | . And just to finish off that beautiful image, what's what's on your wrist, Mr. Joe Thompson, as a mid-30s uh watch reporter in the U.S. In those days? Yes. |
| Unknown | Oh, good question. Talking watches with Joe Thompson at 35. I think we have talked about. I think it's that Timex. I'm still wearing the Timex. Okay. Yeah. The elegant is out of the picture at this point? Oh yeah, long gone. Okay. Um and uh because that yeah that was a long time since I've been out of high school graduated high school. Um but no the the timex was durable. They were a huge player then in those days as well. Uh you know, the the the Iron Man comes in around that time. I mean they they were big. They were they were they they ended up being the big winners actually in the uh in the digital d oddly enough, because they were not an electronics company. But that's the one American watch company that that survives the whole uh digital revolution, the quartz revolution, and and goes uh on to to greater things. It was funny. I mean, I had never been I I led a very sheltered life. I had never been out of the United States until they sent me to Basel. And so I go to Basel. |
| Unknown | Wait, so Basel is the first place you experienced outside the United States. Yes. That's right. And so That had to be a pretty formative uh |
| Unknown | It was great. Yeah. It was great. I fell in love with the place. I'm still in love with the place. Um and um and a part of it I think is that. I mean it's it's like the first kiss or something. It was just I just was like uh like uh just awestruck by by this ancient city, this ancient medieval city, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, so I come back and uh George Holmes calls me in, how was the trip? And then uh you sit down, it was probably the wrong time to bring this up but I said a trip was great, but now you have to go to Tokyo and Hong Kong because of all the reporting I had done at Basel. I mean that long story that we you guys were lovely to print. And that's how that ends is with uh Henry Kay uh saying to me, this is all a Potemkin village here. If you really want to know what's going on, you have to go to the Far East. Come see me in Hong Kong. And um so he throws me out of the office pretty much and says he just thinks I'm a bozo who wants to see the world on JCK's coin. And he probably wasn't wrong was he? No. So uh but you know, I was uh persistent, I would send him every quarter a memo, pretty much saying here's why JCK has to go to uh Japan and Hong Kong. The balance of power in the watch world is shifting. And Switzerland is not where it's at. Swiss Switzerland's fighting back. That's an important story, a very big story. But if we want to know, you know, who the winners are in this revolution, we have to go there. And one of the great moments to this day of my career is in nineteen eighty, uh when uh George Holmes calls me into his office and shuts the door and says, sit down. And I'm like, what's this about? You're going off shit. I'm about to get fired. Yeah, because that didn't that didn't usually happen, you know. And uh sit down. And then he gets goes around behind his desk and he looks at me and he goes, I think you I think you need to go to Tokyo and Hong Kong. And I damn near jumped out of the chair. And so that's the that's sort of the the yeah, it was just the the reporter thing. You're just you're just kind of j itching to go, uh I see I've seen the Swiss thing, that's a start, but this is where the action is. |
| Unknown | So you get thrown out of your editor's office, but then he invites you back in, you go to Japan, and then once you're in Japan, there's a story about you almost getting thrown out of a very famous sushi establishment, isn't there? Oh man. This is years later |
| Unknown | . This is probably the ear early to mid 2000s. By now I've gone to Japan. I mean I stay on the the Japan story and um I go pretty frequently by you know by American watch journalist or or your and even m less European watch journalist standards. So I I've been out there like fifteen, sixteen times and um on business. And um so uh at a certain point, um and then you know the guys I knew they they they they they they go up the chart in Seiko in particular, uh the CEOs of Seiko, after Mr. Hattori was chairman, I met Roger O Hattori, of course, in 1984 for the first time. And he was the grandson of the founder of uh Hattori Seiko, uh Kintaro Hattori. And he was his his grandson, and he was the chairman, and then uh the new CEOs would all be um executives who had spent time in New York, at Sago Time Corporation in New York. That was the big market. The guy who got selected for that was the heir apparent. And so by this time, um, you know, I I know these guys. This is this is easy now. And so, all right, I go out there and Sutomo Mitome, uh, who wants to be called Tom, he wanted to be called Tom, because uh there's a Tom in his first name, says to me, Listen, and they knew I I love sushi. Now sushi in Japan, I mean, you know, is all is kind of a quick lunch food, I mean, in many ways. I mean it's also a very, very elegant thing. And he says to t so he says to me, listen, uh and and and he was a gourmet himself. Uh uh and and love Japanese cuisine and would always give me keep give me tests and this is this is uh for another time. I mean j just um I mean I've eaten some amazing things as a result of of of meals with Matomi. So he says to me, we have meetings in the morning, Ms. Tom Matomi and I. He's the CEO. And he says, listen, for lunch, we're going to go uh to a little sushi restaurant. He says, um, and um it it's it's it's very good. I mean this is so so Japanese. I mean he would not say to me this is the greatest sushi restaurant in the world. He doesn't tell me that. And he's and he says, but uh don't be put off by the venue. It's in the subway station uh at the Ginza. And uh Sego offices were close to the Ginza, so we walk over to the Ginza, um and then we go down, and then there's a tiny little sushi restaurant, you know, and we go in and um we're talking shop. I mean uh I mean I love Matomi. It was great to talk to Matomi. We're just talking, we're talking wine. We sit down, the two of us are there, and there's chefs behind the counter, and there's an older gentleman there. And I'm not paying any attention to that. Um, because I'm with Matomi. And um, all of a sudden, I can see that the chef is kind of a stern guy anyway. I'm not, but I'm not paying a lot of attention to him, and then all of a sudden I hear this kind of a grumbling. They're they're d he's he's talking to Matomi. You know, it's kind of a little bit and it seems to me to be Japanese is immaculate. Seems yeah, thank you. Seems to me to be quite I don't know, like maybe something's wrong. So uh Matoni Hi. Hi. And then um okay. Now as you know, in a su in a in a fine sushi restaurant there are there are pauses in between. And you, you know, then the the the meal's prepared, the piece is prepared, and you put one or two on the on the on the palm. And so we're talking, and just as the next one comes, Matomi says to me, listen, Joe, he says, listen, by the way, let me let me let me give you a tip about eating sushi. He says, here's how we do it over here. He says, when you you take it and you we just tip it with our chopstick, we just tip it on its side so, the fish is on the side to your left, and then you take it with your chopstick and you just take the fish and you dip it just ever so slightly into the soy sauce. Not too much. So you know, so try that. See see if you see if you like that. And I, oh okay. Yeah, thanks. Thanks Tom. I'll do that. Thanks Tom. Thanks Tom. Thank you. No big deal. So I do that. So we leave. I'm not a complete idiot. We're w we f we leave, we walk out. I say to him, Tom, um, what what happened with the sushi chef in there? And I said, so I said, he was upset with me, wasn't he? And he looks at me and and I said, come on, come on. You didn't want to tell me. And then he smiled and he said, he he looked at me he's and he said to me, If that gaijin dips his rice into the soy sauce one more time, I'm tossing the two of you out of here so and then the end of the story is that yeah whenever it comes out, I mean maybe ten years ago, whatever it is, a documentary comes out. It's called Jiro Dreams of Sushi. And it's about this sushi restaurant in the subway at the Ginza and how this is the greatest sushi chef that ever lived. And you know I I I see it I'm holy crap that's Jiro I know Jiro you know Jiro I'm the barbarian that that infuriated Jiro and And because I came in there and absolutely just trashed his joint face. Oh man. So it was just yeah, you know, this was uh sort of the the the Joe Thompson's like forest gump moment where he just like tou |
| Unknown | ches history ever so slightlyly.. Exact I kinda hope that there's like a picture of you, Joe, behind the counter at the restaurant that's just like no gai jean behind the counter. |
| Unknown | It's embarrassing. Yeah, maybe after I left. It was I mean the whole thing's embarrassing to me, but but it just I mean, I mean can you believe it? I mean that's unbelievable. Unreal. You know, just damn near thrown out of Giro's. Oh my god. And and and the point Seiko is a blue chip company. You can you couldn't you can't get seats in there. Yeah. You know? And um I mean I I can't stress that enough. It's a it's a you know m Mr. Hattori, Redro Hattori was married to to a Mickeiky Mimoto. I mean these people are are damn near royalty out there. Yeah. So um but Jiro doesn't care. He's with the CEO of Seiko and the CEO of Seiko dragged this bum in here and that ain't gonna happen. The sanctity of sushi ranks above all else. Yeah. That's amazing. That's awesome. All right, let's go over to Switzerland. Let's do. Um well I mentioned Ernst Tomke. Um and uh he was the first great hero, and um uh I was lucky to get to him. Um it gets easier after that, but the next huge hero uh and the guy who had the single greatest skill set of anybody I ever met was Nicholas G. Hayek Sr. And I'm able I I interview him for the first time uh in nineteen eighty uh six uh at his office. I had met him before that and uh had talked to him. But that's when I say, okay, I need I need to talk to this man and um and was able and wrote him wrote him a letter. Tomkey vouched for me, I'm pretty sure, or it never would have happened. So I go to Hayek Engineering in the banking district in Zurich. That was his building. Hayek was a consultant prior to uh taking over as the uh the CEO of SMH at that time and he agrees to see me and um he was just the most colorful guy uh the smartest guy uh I I ever met and um the the the the and he and he was f f from f as I say, as a journalist, what what you what you what you want is is detail and color. You want you want something interesting. You need you need something for your story. And from from the minute I met him, he he he he gave you that. For example, they put me in a room for a half an hour, and there are two black binders stacked, I don't know, they're f one foot tall with clippings. And so his MO was to bring a brand new journalist in and then sit you in in a room with the clippings and have you read about him. So that you know you are interviewing the most one of the most famous guys in Switzerland. I knew that already, but now I'm getting a real taste of it. And while I'm going through these, there are probably not a lot of English, to be honest. It's French and German. And I can get by in French. And you, you know, you can figure out what's going on here with with the clippings. And then all of a sudden, f behind me, I hear hi, the door opens, I turn around, and here is Hayek. He's short, he's stocky, and he's naked from the waist up. Okay. Wait, that is not where I thought that story was going. So I turn around, I look at him, and he's got a a a blue shirt that he's about to put on, but it's not on. He's carrying it. And he says, Hi. Normally that then that that's kind of an American thing. Um and uh that's a sign. Uh and he says, I'm I apologize for keeping you waiting, and I apologize for greeting you like this. He says, but uh tonight, I'm on TV, we're having a debate uh about corporate responsibility, and uh I have to get ready and I'm running late, and so I'll be with you in a minute. And then he leaves. So then we go back in, and then we have a performance, an unbelievable uh i it was unbelievable to talk. He loved chalkboards, he had green chalkboards, and he was at the board all that. And you tell and he done you mean he he knew that I had been to Japan. You tell you he gives me the whole strategy for SMH, and you tell your friends in Japan, you know, the game is changing. And my friends in Japan. Excuse me. Exactly. But but um so fast forward, the article comes out, and this is where I mean I talk about the watch gods, I'm not kidding. I mean, um the article comes out called The Good Life and something I forget now, David, but but the The Good Life and Hard Times, but they weren't hard. The Good Life and Something Something of Nicholas. Willing Hayek. Yeah. And um uh a year goes by and I want to interview him again. I'm going to Switzerland again. And I think, oh man, you know, fingers crossed on this. I have no idea really. I mean, I I know one thing. I know that the somebody from his office called and asked for reprints. And so that was a sign that, okay, that that's going to go in the bo So he's not like furious about it or anything. You never know. Um next time I go, I and so when I call uh send the letter, it's just it's an instant yes. Oh yes, be happy to see you. Oh, great. That's nice. I go in, I sit down. He says, the first thing he says to me is, uh, I owe you a thank you. I said, yeah? Really? Why? He says, Well, you know, after your article, your article came out, and I got a call from uh an oil man in Texas. And uh he said that he read your article and uh he needed help with his company, so he called me and so I'm going what huh an oil man in time and he tells me the story it turns out that that there was a a a Texas oil man you know who had a brother-in-wla who was a jeweler and, some it's family family outing, 4th of July, whatever. Um, how you doing, Herb? Oh man, it's tough, man. I'm having a lot of trouble. I don't know what to do. I gotta, you know, things are, I gotta, I gotta fix my company. You know, I I uh I and really don't know what to do. This thing's very, very common. And the jeweler says, you know, I just wrote an article about a guy, you know, in in in Switzerland, and that's all he does. He just he's he's he's Mr. Fixit of watch companies. And oh not of watch, sorry, of of of Swiss companies. This is so American. Why don't you give him a call? Oh, okay. So he says, all right, give me send me the article. So he does. And then he calls up, he calls himself into my name is you know Herb McGillicuddy. I'm from, you know, whatever. Beaumont, Texas. McGillicuddy will come to the man for me. Uh yeah, I want to talk to Mr. Hayek. You know, and it's a boom, boom, boom. So yeah, well what what m's my point? Well it it's good to have a little talent if you can, but it's much better to be lucky. Because after that, you know, Hayek uh he always y you know, he I don't know who this dude is, but somebody's reading him and uh it could be business. So so we got off to a good start. |
| Unknown | Um and over the years nobody got better or more access |
| Unknown | to Hayek than you did. I did |
| Unknown | not realize that until r |
| Unknown | much later, but that that that was right. And I I think it was the American thing, to be honest with you. I you know, I'm I'm macro, did we talk about my macro view versus the micro view. No, but we should. All right. With me, um you know I like to know how systems work. And that's how I started covering the industry. Because of this crisis, how does how does the Japanese industry work? How does the Swiss industry work? And and then that's the within that the who, what, when, where, and why, but who do I need to know? And then and then and then the why when you finally know them. Um I over the years um wrote these sort of long form articles and he liked it. He liked that. And so you know Jack Forster, our own great, magnificent Jack Forster, we kid each other. He's Mr. Micro. You know, he he he can write four thousand words about a spring bar. And he has. Yeah. I cannot do that. I I I I am I and because of I think because of the time I started, and I liked all this, multi-source stories and all the rest. Well, Hayek l kinda liked this kind of coverage because he was the guy uh making the big, big changes. It was his strategy that they were using and they they they were persuade persuading him. So um I I I I did have a lot of access to him. Um and he was just I mean journalistically I I I can't stress it enough. He he was actually the the um he was one of the funniest people I ever met. People don't realize this about Hayek. He he he he um and we uh we could go for uh y you have to stop me on this. No, but no. Please give us a gun. Yeah, please, exactly. Well um w one time I'm there and I I did have, I would see him every every every year or two um for an interview in his office at at SMH. And um and like I say, and I I would come in and I would do the I would I would do the American thing. And his he he you know he he had connections with American he would say his father was an American citizen I think he graduated from the University of Chicago in dentistry. He himself was born in Beirut, Lebanon, et cetera. But he knew America and wanted to be better known in America. So one day I'm in there, and it was beautiful. I mean, sometimes Mrs. Hobald, his his his PR lady would be there, but over the then she would just not bother because we'd run over um and I'd get him going. I th I did have a little bit, you know, he liked to tell tell s stories too. And I just ate them up. I mean I just shut up and listened, but egged him on. And one time, but he would he he'd love phones that he would be interrupted by the telephone every now and then. He says, All right, I have to take this. Some no, okay, no, but this one I have to take. And then he'd go on, he'd speak German or French. And and and I would get a chance to look around. And I'm looking around at one point and he's talking and what what's that on his desk? And it it's two looks like it's two comic books under a stack of papers. So he hangs up and I'm going, hang on, before before we resume, what what are those? And he he pulls them out and he goes, like this is like the dumbest question I've asked yet. What are these? Well these are comic books. And I go, well, what do you do with them? What do you what are you doing with them? I'm thinking what, the grandkids come to the office or something? Or what do you and this is an even dumber question. He's dead serious. He looks at me and goes, I read them. Don't you? And I I was stunned. And I went, well, well, no, not since I was nine. It's not the thing to say. And then I look at the the the comic and and it's it's it's Dagobert Duck. And that's German and it's and I can see it's Scrooge McDuck. And these are Scrooge McDuck comics. Oh my god. And he then he tells me the story. And he says, well, you know, my wife calls me Doggobear Duck because she says I'm very cheap |
| Unknown | . You're telling me Nick Hayek was sitting in his office reading Scrooge McDuck. He's telling me, wasn't when I was |
| Unknown | there, but the comics were on the thing. And so, and then the and and and the his wife was very quotable. I met her, I never, of course, interviewed her, but I mean he would say, Oh, yeah, my wife, she always says, she says, I'm a I'm a 60-year-old, I'm a I'm a six-year-old, and a sixty-year-old body, which is a very, very great quote and very true. Um and the six-year-old part of him was the comics. And Dago he he was he he he was he had a reputation for being pretty thrifty. So he loved the Dogabare Duck comics. Uh and um and so so we'd get them. Um or she'd give them to them and they'd have a laugh about it. And one time and then and later, literally later, I go in and he's got a big statue in his office uh of a golden Scrooge McDuck. And he said, Oh yeah, my wife got that in D in Las Vegas. Oh man, how did he get out of the statue? So anyway. We need this for the hodinky. Kaya Hayek could be Kaya could be hilariously funny and um and and clearly very, very colorful. He told me a joke one time, completely just as part of our our our conversations, our interviews. Um and I I've thought of that joke many times, to be honest with you. I think of it now with regard to Switzerland and e-commerce, the Swiss watch industry's response to s luxury watch sales on e-commerce. And and here's the joke. So Hayek is, you know, behind the desk, it's just the two of us. And he says, well here's here's a joke, he says, about uh Einstein. And he says, Oh, Einstein was at Princeton at the end of his life, and a journalist came down to interview him. And the journalist a said to him, you know, Doctor Einstein, in which country would you like to die? And instantly Einstein perks up and he goes Switzerland. And the journalist goes, Switzerland. Why Switzerland? And Einstein says, because everything happens 20 years later there. Well, Hayek, who's born in Beirut, Lebanon, and is Swiss by marriage, would roar laughing at this joke, and he understood the significance and the meaning of the joke. And then he he well, and then there were there was another joke. I mean a couple of things. I two years later I go, there's a post script to this. Uh I go in and I knew not to schedule anything after him. Uh and then he says to me, Where do you do you have anything after our meeting? And I said no. He said, Well, I want you to see something. So what he wants this is so so this is really Swiss. What he wants me to see is a television show uh on Swiss TV. And it and the title of the show is What Makes so-and-so laugh. And the so-and-so is whatever the celebrity is. And you're usually it was uh show people, uh it was athletes, and he was the first, he was very proud he was the first businessman to be on what makes Nick Hayek laugh. And he wants me to see this show. And it's in it's in I I I I think it was in in uh French with with with German subtitles and I'm okay, you know, to understand so. Well my my point of this is that lo and behold on Swiss TV, he tells the Einstein joke. And he's roaring, laughing again. He's crying, tears are coming down his face. This is this this joke which is insulting to Switzerland. But and yet captures some something of the national character. And then all right, I'll tell you the second joke. And um and it's a little as the Brits say, close to the knuckle. Okay. This joke about about and so it's another quote uh interview joke that the the it's a man on the street interview, they're they're they're just taking a poll of uh Swiss people and uh and so the uh the interviewer uh the poll taker's in Zoop and he stops at just a man on the street and he says and he's asking him questions, and then one of the questions was, who was the first man? And so the interview says, so who was the first man? And the Swiss guy instantly says, oh, Wilhelm Tell. And the interview goes, Wilhelm Tell, surely there were. Surely there were men before Wilhelm tell. What about Adam? And then he goes, oh well, if you want to include foreigners. That's a little tougher. He told that joke on Swiss TV. So um that's that's Mr. Hayek. Then then then that was the the the the colorful size to him. Um so yeah he he he of course was I mean I did I could as I say, I I could go on on and about him, but he was uh uh uh uh the the most pivotal figure uh of the uh you know, of maybe maybe the century for Switzerland. He died uh ten years ago. It'll be ten years next year, two thousand ten |
| Unknown | . But not everybody was that colorful or that open with you, right? You you secured at at a pretty important time in the in the history of the watch industry, you secured the first ever interview with a Rolex CEO, correct? I did. I did. This was highly ironic |
| Unknown | . It's got to be one of the only interviews ever with a Rolex. Uh it was Patrick Heineger. And the odd thing about this is as ambitious as I was, um, and I admit that, to get to the power players and to find out and to t find out, you know, strategies, tactics, what was going on, all the rest. I did not ask to interview him. It was an odd situation. It's nineteen ninety-four. Zales had gone bankrupt. And um then we were just kind of coming into the the recession, if you recall, right the the election of ninety-two, it's the economy st isupid. Well the the the the economy was bad in 93. Zales goes bankrupt, they were the largest jeweler in America. And s and and Rolex uh ends up uh thirty million di dollars, you know, uh behind. I mean they they they and that nobody could believe that Rolex would have let Zayl owe them thirty million dollars. That's point A. Point B is that as a result of the bad economy, there were enormous Rolex made uh USA made a lot of changes and they laid off people. Um and so they did it right before Basel for whatever reason. So I go to Basel in nineteen in uh nineteen ninety four. And I as I mean m somet you know most of the time you have to go after stories. Sometimes stories come after you, and that was the case in this case. Everybody's stopping me. Did you hear? What did you hear? Everybody's swapping stories. And so I'm I had, you know, by the time everybody's talking to me, I I'm getting everybody's version of what had happened. So I know Rolex doesn't talk to the press. I go back home, I write this story, and it's about essentially I called it commentary, polishing Rolex's tarnis crown. And what they had done was they had as I said, they had laid off people. That's a headline right there. They had they had laid off people and um they had cut two hundred jewelers that had been authorized Rolex distributors. They were there. They were upset. They're talking. And the rumors were that they were going to cut their production in half. So I'm getting this from lots of reputable sources. So I go and I write the article. I know that I now have to go through an exercise. These are all secondary sources about Rolex policy. I want primary sources. The only primary source I can get, other than ex Rolex salespeople who may have an axe to grind is Rolex. So I take the story and I send this story. And in the story, I end up mentioning I had a source who was actually on the Zale Bankruptcy Committee? I won't disclose the source. But he was there with a huge jewelry who had also lost, you know, millions upon millions of dollars. Big, big CEO of a jewelry company, and he was the one that said to me um that the CEO of Rolex USA uh is going to end up being uh Rolex's distributor in Nicaragua as a result and as a result of the of this. And uh that was um did that happen a man named Roland Putin. Uh oh wait. I send the article to Roland Putin. And to him and to the number two man at Rolex, both of whom are Swiss. And I just say to them, look, I understand your policy. Uh I'm I would rather have primary sources. This is going to appear in the next issue of Modern Jewel. I was the editor-in-chief of that magazine at that time. And unless one of you or someone from your company will go on the record with me uh about what I'm writing about here. If I can get any input, official input from Rolex, I'll rewrite this story based on official information that you can give. If if if some of this is wrong, I want to get it right. That's all I want to do. I want this to be right. And I so I FedExit. And the next day I get a call from Roland Putin. And he says to me, you know, he's hostile, of course. And um he says to me, um, I need some time. And I said, well, how much time? He says, I need a few days. I said, no problem. You have a few days. I mean think about it and just let me know in a few days. Two days go by, phone rings. It's Roland Putin. He says, Mr. Thompson, he says, I have good news for you. He says, Patrick Heiniger, our managing director, will be in New York next week and he will meet with you. Well I I I I damn near died. I mean Patrick Heineger is only the third CEO Rolex ever had. I mean the first one was Hans Wilsdorf. He handed off to Andre Heineg, Patrick Heineger's father, and now it's Patrick. And now he's saying he's gonna meet with me about this thing. So I go to New York and I go in, and this is the old days. Um we go into a spare, um go to Rolex on Fifth Avenue, we go into a small spare room, um, no handlers, it's Patrick Heineger and me, and the text of my story on a table, nothing else. And I can't tape, uh, but I can I'm taking notes. So he says I would prefer this be an informal chat rather than a formal interview I say fine. Any way you want to do it. And so he says, so okay, so it's awkward. And I said, well do you mind so well why don't I start asking you some questions then? So I asked question one. He said, oh, it's not the kind of thing we'd like to comment on. Okay, good question two. He says, well, some people might say that, but uh, you know, uh people talk. And it went on like this for five questions. And um I finally just stopped the interview. I mean, I in effect due with the emotional part of a big T. Time out. Time out here. Hold on. I said, Mr. Huninger, I said, my understanding was that you were going to address some of the questions here in this article. And I said, I've asked you five questions, and you haven't answered a single one. And I said I was I was just confused and slightly angry. And I said, um, why did why did you agree to meet with me? And he just kind of gives me this cold look, and he said slightly, I wanted to meet the man that would write such a thing. As if this thing was like Lady Chattery's lover or something. Some obscene band look. Well the th the the the honestly the response was so off the wall that I just like like a nervous I giggle I start to laugh and go well well you're looking at 'em. I said so that is a strong move back. I said, you're looking at him. I said, so we've we've got that out of the way. You wanted to see him? Oh man So and I said I said um I said look we have to find a way to proceed with this. I said otherwise I I'm gonna print this. But I said I you know the are you are are you willing to uh and I and then we did work it out. So what what we worked out is that we were gonna I would go through the article and if there was anything that was absolutely incorrect, he would tell me, either on the record or off the record, I knew it would be off, but if it was absolutely incorrect, you know, he would tell me so. If it was all right, he didn't have to say a word, and that would be fine. And then if there was anything uh yeah and then and those were the terms then that we work out. And then um if I could get him on anything, um he would then say so I knew that was that was hopeless. I thought, well, all right, this is going to be a fact check and we'll see how we do. So we go through and then he gets a little warmer with the stuff. He does start to to c to contribute contribute a little bit. And the thing wasn't very wrong. You know, I um um uh but I mean I think the Nicaragua thing was wrong. I mean that that didn't happen. That's part of why I waited. No, he he he he he wasn't gonna so you know, so I alright fine, I'll take that out. And um so then we come to the end and I realize that um I have this is it. I'm never gonna see this guy again. I got one shot. And I say to him, listen, I said, I have I said is, there any way I have some qu there are things I hear about Rolex that I would love to ask you, and maybe you can just tell me if they're true or not. This is just stuff I hear. This is the American thing. Yeah. Just just stuff I hear. And I said, can I ask you a few of that? And he goes, he just nods. Okay. Okay. So I said, all right, number one. I said, is it true that Rolex Geneva and Rolex Switzerland are separate companies. He says, that's right, they are. And I go, why? And he goes, you know, it's a bit more annoying quite it's historical. He said. I go, okay, fine. Go to number two. Okay. Is it true that Tudor watches uh are actually Rolexes that don't pass the Kosk test? And he goes, No, no, that's not true. He said Tudor is its own separate line with its own separate production. Okay, great. Then I then I then um then I said is it true that you that you never meet with the press? And his answer sort of like to the effect of it dep you know if they're asking intrus rude intrusive questions like you do, it's true. Pretty much. You know, and I so he said, yeah, no, we don't no, we don't mean to and he said because we prefer, and this is the to this day, this is their policy, we prefer that the spotlight be on our products and our dealers. What he says to me is, you know, our attitude is this is none of your business? What we do with our business is up to us. He says, I I and and I don't I don't feel any obligation to tell you or anybody outside of the company, what it is we do. It's a fair enough position. And I said, and I said, fair enough. I said, but but let me tell you when it becomes my business. I said, it becomes my business when your policies and your behavior in a market affect my readers who are retail jewelers and affects their business. And when they come to me and tell me about policies that you you do, I said, and I have not only a right, but I I said I have an obligation to try and cover this as best I can to serve my readers. So that was it. And then the last question at the end is the only the last question was, okay, about about Rolex sales. I said, I have a source that I read in a European magazine that says Rolex has had 20% increase every year for the past 25 years. I said, is that is that true? And so he stopped and he squinced a little bit, and I can see him doing the math. And he goes, he smiled. He goes, it's a bit exaggerated. He said that's the one thing. Okay, so I could stay away from that number. Wits over, I'm drenched. This is the this is the worst interview I've ever had. He walks me to the door. He says to me, um, if you're ever in Geneva, I would be happy to receive you, but I will not give you an interview. And I said, Well, well thank you very much, sir. You know, I know that ain't happening. Yeah, goodbye. Almost in a compliment. Yeah, there's there is a postscript. Two years later, a year later, I'm at Rolex in Geneva. I look at my program. Patrick Heinegger is on my program. I have a little program there that day. A meeting with some Rolex, you know, officials about product. Um, I said, what's this? He said, no, he he wants to see it. Now I don't know what this is either. I'm the article has come together. And it disappeared forever, yeah. Exactly. I'm there. This ain't good. And we never saw Joe again. This ain't good. So I go in and uh uh it's just it once more it's just the two of us, but now we're in his office in Geneva, and it's cordial. And um we go few it's just chit-chat. It's it's just chit-chat. It it it's going not going on, it's also awkward. All of a sudden, the door opens and a head peeks in and it's Andrei Heineger. It's his father. It's this famous, one of those famous men in the Swiss watch. Definitely a trap. Yeah, for sure a trap. And he and he he looks at me, he looks at him, he says something to him in French real fast. He looks back at me, he smiles, he nods, and he disappears. And it's the only time I ever saw him. And now I know, time for me to go.. And so Mr Heineger, it's great to see you again. Thank you very much. And off I went. And so he was as good as his word. I'll give him that. There is one more. A little bit later than that, Rolex has an event in New York. Norman I'm he my wife and I are are are guests of Rolex USA at this event. And he's there, which is rare. And he's there with his wife. And he's walking through this, it's it was on the river, and I'll never was it cold. It was got uh uh uh ice is an ash or something like that. It's an artistic thing. And he's got a cape around him. And he's strolling with her, very, very he's he's greeting his guests, who are primarily of course his clients, and he and and and and he's he's he's walking regally with with a cape um um and his his wife on his arm and then all of a sudden he looks over and I'm standing there with Norma looking at him. And all of us, and then he just gradually just heads over in our direction. And as he gets close, he puts his finger up and he starts wagging the finger at me. And he says to me, You were the first. And then he says it again, You were the first. And I'm thinking like like he's recalling a root canal or something. And and that was it. And then he looks and then he smiled and he said, I recall something about Nicaragua. And then he just walked off. That's my Roblox story. That's incredible. Patrick Heiniger. I mean, so He died early. He died in nine in 2013 at the age of 62 |
| Unknown | . I know this is a weird takeaway from this story, but I feel like you need to wear a cape. Ooh. No. No, no. I'm the I'm the dope that nearly got thrown out of gyros. I don't need a cape. There's nothing legal or royal. Does it say that on your business card? We should get that uh we can You were also the dope though who was considered like a worthy adversary of of CEO of Rolex. You know, he he said, I will I will receive you socially, but I will not engage with you in a professional capacity because I know what interviews with you are like. Yeah. No, is it they had a pol |
| Unknown | icy. I I d honestly I don't know why I I to this day, I don't I don't know what he had hoped to accomplish. It's but well he did. I shouldn't say that. He did he |
| Unknown | did ultimately, but I had to force him to do it. It's gotta be w one of, if not the only on the record interviews given by a Rolex CEO. Yeah, they don't they don't do e even a |
| Unknown | Mr. Dufour as far as I know. You know, John Fred. I mean he's John Fred to me when when he was ahead of Zenith. I don't think he's done any. I don't think he's done any. Yeah. That's right. I mean, no, it's it's tough to crack Rolex, that's for sure. So |
| Unknown | were you completely ahead of the curve in terms of it sounded like your MO was character driven if not character driven you were interested as the writer of these stories as a character guy. You found people, individuals within the industry compelling. |
| Unknown | I personally did. This this was the stuff you cannot get in press kids. That's why he needed these guys. Yeah. And in in his case, yeah, that that's how we got we got in. But I you know, I the the people part though is also part of the American style. And I would I would say to people, look, you want be because sometimes I would introduce my rude American questions if depending on the situation, by say, listen, excuse me, I apologize in advance for this, but you understand how we Americans are. And I would say, like the the the the the highest circulation magazine in our country is called People. And people is how we learn. It's how we approach a subject. And it's my bias to this day about the kind of the way I cover the industry as well. Yeah. But it it can be more than product |
| Unknown | . Right. Yeah. In fact, it like this these days it has to be. Yeah. And the point I was trying to drive towards which which is like it's it's the people ultimately and the people behind the watches and the people who wear the watches. Not to give too many spoilers, but Joe, you've you have a story coming in our our next magazine, in volume four of the magazine, about uh an an interesting moment in the the history of the watch industry. I won't spoil it too much, but it has to do with ultra-thin quartz watches. Uh and it really you could s you could almost replace the word watch in the story with any noun, and the story is still just as compelling and interesting. Because it's a story about sort of like titans of industry trying to figure out how to save a business or how to compete or how to find new solutions to problems. And it's the fact that it's about watches is is almost incidental to what makes the story fascinating |
| Unknown | ? Well well thank you Stephen. I I I mean and that is right. I mean that's what I said. I I I that that's I I want a good story. That that that is that is my MO. And so when there's a and when there's one, I my my uh belief, my bias is that um the the readers are interested in this If you're a fan, if you're a Yankees fan, I mean I'll the judge, I'll talk about Jeter. I mean if you were a Yankees fan and you follow Jeter, you don't you don't only know how he performed the night before, whether they won or lost, and whether he got a hit. You know what Dreader's salary is, you know who he's dating, you know what car he drives, you know what he eats for breakfast, you know what the salary cap is, you know when his contract's up. That's a fan. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And we're and we have the great uh privilege and and luxury of writing for fans, for people who care about this? So that was always sort of my bias, and I I call that kind of the American style, was to what is what all is going on around this? You know, there's a huge context. You know, what happens when uh you know when you delink the the the Swiss franc to the euro as as happened you know and and and and and it's cause all kinds of crap happens and that that should be covered, in my view, you know. And um again, you're not going to get it in a press release. You gotta you got you gotta have sources for that. You gotta develop sources. I mean, I heard Jimmy, you know, Jimmy, Jimmy Breslin, um, you know, you y big guys are little heroes. I can I re remember uh when he died, people were saying who were his sources you know, on the on the you know City Hall or the Crime Beat, they'd pick up the phone would ring and there would be a voice on the phone and they would hear two words and they knew instantly who it was and the voice would say what's doing that's it what's doing and yeah in a way, I mean I I d there's that's the only comparison. I'm not Jimmy President. But I y you need people who will tell you what's doing. That's what I that that that's it and especially in a crisis. When I started in a crisis, that is what you need. You need people who can can can go for that. And that's what a reporter is. Anyway, that that's that's that's my hit |
| Unknown | . If it hadn't been watches, what would have your beat been? Because you are a storyteller. You would have done this regardless, I feel like. You would have found something. That's a good |
| Unknown | question. Yeah, in the beginning, my my first when you're you know when you're young, you're some my early writing heroes were sports writers. They they to this day, those kinds Any names? Oh, Sandy Grady of the Philadelphia Bulletin was an absolute I mean he was one of my earliest heroes. This is this is this is way, way, way back in the Wayback Machine. But the Philadelphia Bulletin was an afternoon paper. I used to deliver it when I was in grade school. And I read Sandy Grady religiously. He was a fantastic sports writer. And to this day, I mean, you know, down in Philly, that's a huge sports town. I'm kind of a you know, I uh uh I waste far too much time on sports and talk sports rad |
| Unknown | io. All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna blow up your spot here a bit. One of my favorite memories uh from the last couple years of working at Hodinky has been, you know, peep people may not realize this because it's not something that jumps out if you're not in it, but SIHH every year coincides with the NFL playoffs. And so they're NFL games on and they're on Swiss time. They're on very late at night. We've usually pulled somewhere between a 12 and a 16-hour day doing work for the shows. But it doesn't matter if the birds are playing, you will find Joe at a bar with a beer in his hand at 2 o'clock in the morning watching the birds play whoever it is. And this past year holding court. And we got to this past year a couple of us uh had a very late night at a pub in Geneva uh with Joe watching uh some playoff football. It was pretty pretty amazing. Gotta love the Eagles. I Got the Eagles. |
| Unknown | I G G L E S as we say down in Philly. Yeah, so th those were to the writing thing. Yeah, because they they they they know how to tell stories. They're p theyhen're phenomenal with analogies. I'm not anywhere near them, those guys with with with the na analogies and the and the symbols and the but I still love I still love reading them, just for the joy of the joy of reading. So it it would have been sports writing. Could have been, you know, I I I not worth exploring at this point. If I had to pick an industry to cover, it might have been books. And I love that, you know. Um but but uh yeah who knows? I I don't know. All I know is I was just hugely lu I mean hugely lucky that |
| Unknown | um that they put me on this beat. And if I could ask one more question before we move on. Let's go for it. Uh contemporaries of yours in the eighties into the nineties, the the the era that we're currently talking about in in the watch beat. Were there any that come to mind that you know compare to your style of long form watch journalism? Oh |
| Unknown | that's a good question. I mean there are there are many there are many. I mean there are uh contemporaries, I mean Way Co at Revolution Magazine. The difference there is Way is an admitted enthusiast. That was the big change that comes in my career as we talk about this. It changes. The media changes first with with the r with the third of the revolutions, with the mechanical renaissance comes um first of all, it's no longer B2B. We have to go B2C because now there's an audience for uh aficionados and collectors. And then the the and so now there is there there there's there's a need out there for people to say here's what I think about watches. But I I was already too my first two two of the four decades, I was just still doing the report the reporting thing. The independent objective, I uh you know, I'll give you what my sources say. And some of my own analysis based on something else, either what people are telling me or what I'm analyzing in the in the data or whatever. But never ever on my thumbs up and my th thumbs down. And I have two hilarious stories, we won't do them now about about pr products, you know, that I saw. And I just, you know, you you you you you can't help it sometimes. I mean, you do have reactions. And there were two that I just thought: this is pathetic, number one, and then this is pathetic, number two. And this is pathetic number one was SWATC in 1983 |
| Unknown | . Yeah, uh I won't often say this, but uh it seems like yeah, it seems like you were wrong on that one. How can you be so stupid? It seems like you know I |
| Unknown | I won't bore you with what I why that and the second one was panorai. No lie. Okay. No lie. Everyone makes mistakes, Joe. I wasn't the only one. Uh Panorai that that that that you know thought Panorai looked like a hockey puck on the wrist. But um at any rate, yeah, there are certainly others doing long form, um but uh I think not as long as my long form. I I do get a bit long. And that that's and that's taxing to to to many readers. And uh but uh and those of you who hang in there, God God love you. Thank |
| Unknown | you. So we've talked about these different eras and these different decades, but let's let's look forward a little bit. We've we've talked about this, you know, often in in light of the Basel fair uh and all the changes that are happening with Basel World, but you know, where do you see the industry moving? I mean, you've seen it change a number of times. Like what what do you think the next five, ten, twenty years look like? Wow. |
| Unknown | I mean, you know, my my stock answer to this is it's hard enough for me to figure out what already happened. I mean that's taxing enough for me. Figuring out what's gonna happen is is impossible. What um I might approach it more from what I am what I am still curious about, why I want to keep going is um well uh uh e-commerce. I mean that that that Hayek joke, everything happens 20 years later here, there. Um they better not wait twenty years on e-commerce, you know. And they're not. So that is something that is certainly something to watch. Uh so uh but it ye y it'll be brick and click, people say, but but how it will, etc. So so that's one. And that's for the luxury side. What um and but i i i it's up and down on on e-commerce, up and down the whole uh the whole price pyramid. And I still cover a fair amount, I mean because of swat swatch watches, swatch watches, God forgive me, because of smartwatches, I still cover the mid-range down to $200. And so that's that's another thing that I'm very, very curious about. This, where is this smartwatch revolution going? I mean, look at the havoc it is causing. We are seeing fossil, for example, have to totally come up with a a uh a reorganization of its structure, a new kind of mission in order to compete with Apple. And they're the only ones who really do want to kind of compete with Apple. The Movado Group taking another tack, acquiring millennial brands. I mean, the good news about the smartwatches, for many who, many of whom predicted that, is it's it's teaching a new generation how cool watches are and the fun of wearing watches. And so Vado's acquiring uh brands like Movement and Olivia Burton. And so they're surviving in the uh the under-1,000 uh range. Um and look at Seiko. Seiko now is de-emphasizing core Seiko, that's under a thousand or under eight hundred, and emphasizing Grand Seiko. So there's great turmoil in that big luc,rative, high-volume $200 to $1,000 market. So I'm still curious about that and would love to stay on that story. Because that's not finished. We have to see what happens there. And then a huge story now that I barely touched is pre-owned. This market is starting to organize itself. So with with you know other new players, you know, Watchbox and uh Rishmont uh coming in and uh acquiring Watchfinder. What's going to happen uh with this market? And new forms of retailing and uh well you have to look, you know, make another click on the site here, and you'll see new forms of uh retailing emerging as we speak for watches up and down the price pyramid. So um I I'm I'm I'm not dumb enough uh uh how can I put this? I'm too dumb to know uh and too smart to predict so that I don't make a fool of myself uh about what's coming. But this is what um this is what I'm um very, very curious about still |
| Unknown | . I love that. Me too, man. Cool. Well, we gotta start wrapping up here. So let's get into the hodinky questionnaire. The questions we ask every guest, learn a little bit, a little bit more about Mr. Joe Thompson. So first question, what's a watch? I know you're not a product guy, but what's a watch that's caught your eye recently? Well, the watch I'm wearing |
| Unknown | . Good answer. The Omega Speedmaster, uh, first Omega in space. I mean, it's it's just um it's a it's a it's just a beautiful watch. I mean I I was a very skinny person. I'm no longer very skinny, but my wrists still are. And uh this is 39.7 millimeters, and it it it really does uh fit the wrist. And I talked about all the history. And it's another reason I just you just love having a watch like this. I mean, you know, it's based on, you know, Wally Shiraz's uh uh mission, uh the Mercury mission. He was one of the seven original astronauts, as uh most people know. And this is a watch he bought himself. This watch was modeled on his own uh his own Speedmaster. And so um and I could go on and on. I love the way um the the hands go all the way to the end of the register. That's just some little thing. I mean you know it's it's it's just kind of a pr just a little style thing that people kind of love or or not. I love it. And I'm so happy with all all three of these these these hands that go right to the end. Um and uh you you you you you can read it and anyway, uh that' |
| Unknown | s enough of that. Um I'm honored to know that you also own a uh that's right. I gotta get on the speedy bandwag |
| Unknown | on here. You do? Yeah, yeah. And this hangout. Ye |
| Unknown | ah, and you can still after all that ingrained stuff that it still feels like, oh my god, I shouldn't have said that I gotta say, I gotta say, Joe, for somebody who says he's not a product guy, you know a hell of a lot about that product. It's uh I like that watch. Question number two. What is the best place you've traveled in the last year. |
| Unknown | Oh, in the last year. In the last year. Well, I'm not going as much uh overseas as I have. Um in the in the last year. The well you but for personal trav |
| Unknown | el. It can be longer than a year. If there's somewhere you you went in the last couple of years that was really great. |
| Unknown | Well if if I can just change it a little bit. There's a place I like and it's more to the theme of what we're talking about i love neon switzerland neon switzerland you is is where oblot is based and the only time i ever saw if you go past it from the train you think it's a dump. It looks just like looks a factory town or something. It is not. Get off the train. Walk just around the corner. You're on cobblestone streets. It was founded in the ninth century by the Romans. There are Roman ruins there. Um you walk along the streets, I came upon a plaque. There's the little plaque that I stumbled just roaming around, and the plaque says, this is the this is the house in which uh um Rousseau's father died. Isaac Rousseau. Not Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Isaac Rousseau, who was a watchmaker. And he died in that house in Nyon. And then John Jacques Rousseau, you know, the great writer of the Confessions and all these other things, was the son, grandson, and great-grandson of Swiss watchmakers. And um there and you go, it's right on the lake and you look across the lake and you see you see France, you see Avion. Um and it's uh it's just a beautiful location and I I I was I mean for years and years I knew nothing about Neil. It wasn't until John Claude B there I had to go there for an interview with him and then discovered it and and love it |
| Unknown | . Amazing. We'll have to do that because I've only ever driven by it often with gray and uh it does look like a dump from the highest. No, you you you can't judge a that book by its cover. Interesting. Cool. Uh what's the best piece of advice you've ever been given and who gave it to you |
| Unknown | ? It yeah, it it it it's one you hear a lot. It would have been my mother who just encouraged me to listen and not talk because you know, if you talk you're not gonna learn anything. But if you listen, you learn a lot. And it was wonderful advice for my career. As it turned out. As a professor, maybe you had to talk more. But as a journalist, you just you just l I don't talk like this in an interview. |
| Unknown | Perfect. And so what's your what's your guilty pleasure? I told you we're learning about Joe Thompson. |
| Unknown | Um I I never think about work or anything else when um when I'm watching and not everything and I try and do it I got I have to put limits on it and I do but uh you know if I'm watching the the Eagles, the Philz, um I live in New England now, so uh I I I I you know, uh I can't follow the any any real teams that compete with the Philz, which mean both uh n all New York teams. So yeah, I I you know, I th that th that that's that's fun. That's fun. I mean I was supposed to write an article. I mean I'll s I I will say this. As you know, at a work Sunday, I'd interview Mr. Loris Melakoff? You did? About the breaking news over the weekend. We got a tip on a Friday. He wanted to be interviewed. And I was about to write the story, but Tiger had just made the turn. And I said, sorry, I gotta watch this. Yeah. And I watched the the y I watched them come in. I watched the second nine and I filed a little late |
| Unknown | . You didn't six o'clock. Shout out to Tiger and shout out to Mr. Ben Clymer who Yeah, oof. Very jealous. Very jealous, as I am as I am with Mr. Climber very frequently. Yeah. I am not somebody who watches a lot of golf. I'll I'll play golf occasionally. I'm not somebody who watches a lot of golf. Watching Tiger, oof, man. Yeah, I love And you like sports at all, man. I love the majors, yeah. No, |
| Unknown | but you're right, absolutely. And just for a g a guy like me, yeah. You know, that that that remembers Tiger from day one. Yeah. And it's it's for me it's a it's a whole Greek, it's it's it's it's it's a Greek story of the gods making you suffer. And once you suffer, then you get wisdom and then you're a better man. And it seems like that's where he is. To to see him up there talking about his kids, uh the joy with which he won that was unlike anything I ever saw in in in the Tiger Hey Day. You know, he was just so sort of driven and cut off and he was a he was a golf god himself and he could but now he would never he wouldn't touch anybody else's hand. He would never give you a high five walking off. No, that was the that was the young tiger. He came too much too soon for him. But now at 43, he's he's really, you know, the the the gods have put him to the test and then he's back. Over under on the number of majors he wins before he retires. That's that's a good one. Um I'm rooting for him. Let me put it that way. They'd like to see a tie |
| Unknown | . Eighteen each. All right. We gotta go see a Phillies uh Mets game sometime. No that That rivalry's good this year, man. Oh, I think uh last night. Yeah, last night. Last night was a rough game. Uh yeah. All right, we won't recap the entire Metz Phillies game right now, but we could. That could be our spin-off show. We'll do a Metz Phillies. Harper didn't deliver. Yeah. Edwin Diaz, man. Oof. Um All right. And our last question is uh we always ask for a cultural recommendation. So something, a book, a film, a bit of TV, uh someplace you ate, something you recommend that the listeners go check out when they're done listening to this. The writer who |
| Unknown | changed my life was William Faulkner. I can still remember the first time I picked up a Faulkner novel. I was in high school. It's called Intruder in the Dust. And I just thought, what the heck is this? And and I'll make it the hardest. The first two sentences of Absalom Absalom are in my view some of the most brilliant writing in American literature. It goes on for about four or five pages. It's typical Faulkner stream of consciousness, you'll have a hard time understanding what going on, but it's almost poetry. And um if if you want to experience a genius writer uh coming out of the American school. Read the first two sentences of Absalom Absalom. It's a Rosa Cauldfield in a rocking chair in Oxford, Mississippi, rocking back and forth |
| Unknown | . Perfect. Beautiful. I'm gonna go with the book too. Uh we're recording this, not to be a bummer. I'm gonna end this on a major bummer. Uh sorry everybody. Uh we're recording this the day after um the fire at Notre Dame in Paris, uh, which I think everyone in our office was following kind of uh rapped and and horrified yesterday, but it had me thinking a lot about Paris and I'm married to a woman who has a PhD in French and is a French professor, so uh this may be why my brain went this direction, but I was thinking about, you know, the ways in which Paris kind of plays in in all of our imaginations. And and one novel that really stands out to me um is is Flaubert's Madame Bovary. Uh and there's there's a line in the book where Emma, the heroine, the protagonist, is is deep in the throes of depression, living out in the the sort of the sticks uh in the provinces, and the line is she wanted to die, but she also wanted to go to Paris. Uh, and she just couldn't let go because she hadn't yet made it to Paris, and it was all about getting to Paris. Uh and so I would say whether you go read Madame Bovy or you do something, just go think about Paris for a little while. It's a pretty pretty amazing place. Uh I don't know anyone who's been who doesn't have amazing things to say about it. Uh it's a place I think about all the time, go any chance I get. Um yeah, just think think a little bit about Paris. So think about Joe Thompson too. Also think about Joe Thompson. Yeah, seriously. Joe, this was unbelievable. Uh you know, Grace said it before, but uh we're gonna have to have you back. This is this is a regular time. Yeah, I'm I'm sorry, but we're dragging you back in here uh pretty pretty frequently. I'm the guy that asks the questions to man. I'm sorry. Which is what makes this sorry. Yeah. I can say as a journalist, I understand. Like it's it's it's way more fun as a journalist to be on my side of the mic than on your side of the mic, but you should get you should get used to this. You're good at it. Thank you guys. You're great listen |
| Unknown | ers. It's been fun. I wasn't sure it would be, but it has been. Thank you |
| Unknown | . This week's episode was recorded at Mirror Tone Studios in New York City and was produced and edited by Grayson Korhonen. Please remember to subscribe and rate the show, it really does make a difference. Thank you, and we'll see you next week. |