One of Switzerland’s most expensive brands says “you never actually own a Patek Philippe, you merely look after it for the next generation.” If buyers don’t heed that advice and send their watches to the shop, water-resistant seals may wear out, while straps can face permanent damage from luxury lifestyle hazards such as perfume or sea water.
Patek recommends servicing its watches every three to five years, and says that maintaining a self-winding timepiece can cost 800 francs. That means the bill over 40 years could add as much as 7,000 euros to the original cost of a 20,000-euro watch.

I like that listing of luxury lifestyle hazards to a leather strap. The losses the companies take on doing the repairs have sent one company into bankruptcy – and the outlook as reported in this Bloomberg article is grim:

Some 127 million Swiss watches will be due for maintenance as a five-year export boom that tapped newly rich status-seekers from China to Wall Street ends. The costs may both surprise owners and burden producers, including market leaders Swatch Group AG and Cie. Financiere Richemont SA, as they try to please customers in a recession. Expenses from filling repair orders helped push Montres Villemont SA into bankruptcy this year.
“When someone buys a Mercedes, the client accepts that within two years it’ll need servicing,” Baume & Mercier Chief Executive Officer Michel Nieto said in an interview, declining to specify figures on repair expenses. “When it comes to watches, people don’t understand this.”

I’m headed to Zurich today for a field trip – I’ll let you know if the streets are littered with the bodies of watch company executives!