Longines HydroConquest watches are so costly in India

Hi,

I have seen similar question asked about watches here but still I don't understand why they are so costly. I saw watch a person wearing with name Longines, he told me the watch he is wearing cost him Rs. 65000. Further told me its Longines HydroConquest , a water proof watch. He even gave it to me try and probably I will never again get chance to wear that watch but I was not feeling great about it. Its costly but not impressive.

Why so much money for something which is so basic. If something talks about cars, I know BMW and Suzuki has lots of difference and hence the cost . But where are these differences in watches. I can buy good quality watch with similar design and feature from Timex for Rs. 5K or less. You can buy even lesser from maxima but still good quality.

Any light on this ?

Buddy, I seriously doubt they are that much costly to make but they have certain kind of brand value. Like you have seen iPhone is very costly as compared to similar powered Android phones, not to be surprised, Apple has huge profit margin on each phone and they are world's most profitable company.

And for the watch you mentioned, they have several version of HydroConquest watches , for example,
L3.284.4.56.6 comes with Scratch-resistant sapphire crystal, with several layers of anti-reflective coating on the underside making it a costly affair. Further it has Caliber : L595/592, Self winding mechanical movement beating at 28'800 vibrations per hour and providing 40 hours of power reserve which I don't know how much costly but its a complex mechanism which is like charging your watch whenver you move your hand, only difference is that its mechanical.

In my because there are people who buy such things, we have such watches. In efficiency ratio, they are useless and stupid investment but again thats my point of view.

I think the case of iPhone pretty much applies to these watches also.