Sellita moving up?

[Idontgram]

I thought ETA restricting the supply of the powermatic80 and new traveller GMT to swatch brands was a way of keeping other brands down. However, I just noticed a watch which has the new SW330-2 movement, which is a caller GMT with a 56 hour power reserve.

Given that the SW330 is a clone of the ETA 2893, I wonder whether Sellita will start to compete against the ETA innovations which so far have been reserved for Swatch-group stablemates.

[sweets]

That was ETA's mistake.
They thought they were trimming off the low income dross and crippling their opponents, but because they voluntarily gave a profitable market to their opposiition, Sellita and everyone else now have much bigger businesses with which to innovate and overtake ETA and the Swatch group as a whole.
The fact that ETA withdrew originally also allowed a significant price rise (which ETA could have engineered and benefitted from themselves, if they thought about it).
So the irony was that ETA withdrew from supply of, for instance, the 2824, and Sellita could immediately charge a lot more for exactly the same ETA 2824 clone than they did previously.
It was clearly a mistake at the time, but is proving even more so as the opposition progresses.

[Rev-O]

What sweets said.

Swatch tried to be too clever, cool, greedy and mean. Classic short-termism.

[Idontgram]

Agreed. I for one am excited at the prospect of sellita breaking free of their ‘ETA clone’ label and offering some new ideas. I think that the industry has been held back by an over reliance on ETA designs. Proven reliable movements, though they are.

I’m interested to see what the future holds.

[earlofsodbury]

That was ETA's mistake. ...

Polite reminder that it was imposed on them by Switzerland’s competition commission, COMCO, and Swatch fought it in court for years.

COMCO did kinda get it right, too, inasmuch as it's increased supplier diversity and encouraged in-house developments too.

[sweets]

Polite reminder that it was imposed on them by Switzerland’s competition commission, COMCO, and Swatch fought it in court for years.

COMCO did kinda get it right, too, inasmuch as it's increased supplier diversity and encouraged in-house developments too.

That is not entirely true is it.
ETA announced that they were withdrawing a significant time before that judgement process even started (a few years, from memory), stating that they were limiting on supply to in-house manufacturers. ETA also made significant strides towards doing so.
As a result, a lot of their clients jumped ship before they were pushed.
People like Sinn, Bremont and so forth were all on the Sellita bandwagon before that judgement was made.
In the end, yes, the commission judgement formalised what had started as their own self-imposed decision, a case of ETA being careful what they wished for.

EIT - for Clarity, COMCO had a deal that ETA were allowed to complete their aim of withdrawing from supplying third parties from 2020, that aim stated and signed off in 2013. In a very sudden development, they went from allowing that move to forcing them to do it, in late 2019. the only exception was the sale to small-scale third parties. See THIS article