alt.hn

Strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

I've heard other brands do this (Ferrari?) and, of course, there are lines outside "luxury" brands like Louis Vuitton. Why bother?

PS I'll stick to my Casios: https://blog.jgc.org/2025/06/the-discreet-charm-of-infrastru...

by jgrahamc

This is a wild thing to say. Brand age watches don't look strange. They look beautiful. Incredible thought and care and intention is put into their design. The people who buy them love them. It's so funny to me to get this far into one of PGs blogs and sort of realise "Oh right, you don't actually understand beauty". It's very hard to read this as much more than a slightly autistic man not understanding that it's ok for people to like beautiful things. It is not worth it to me to spend £100k on a watch, but I don't deny it is to other people, I'm not going to pretend the watch is undesirable.

But it does make me wonder whether Paul things that YC is successful today because it has a better design than other startup programmes, or is it successful today because of it's brand?

by Traster

Hobbes: …

Calvin: A good shirt turns the wearer into a walking corporate billboard!

Hobbes: …

Calvin: It says to the world, “My identity is so wrapped up in what I buy that I paid the company to advertise its products!”

Hobbes: You’d admit that?

Calvin: Oh, sure. Endorsing products is the American way to express individuality.

by ploden

Not that Apple's only appeal is marketing, Mac laptops certainly have pros over the bottom and mid tier Windows laptops. But having seen that video, and knowing that other have seen it, are aware of Apple and its positioning, makes people feel better while using and owning their devices.

People absolutely want that feeling and they're willing to pay for it.

by dworks

Branding is not inherently unproductive, nor is it guaranteed to produce worse watches. They may be larger and less accurate, but consumers still (evidently) find value in the brand. A Grand Seiko or a Nomos or a Patek is perhaps now even more interesting & identity-productive than a watch was in the 60s.

As technologists I think we're prone to dismissing improvements that aren't engineering-backed. But all life is storytelling, and labeling that work as "button-pushing" is… dismissive, to say the least.

by benleejamin

Sounds a hell of a lot like the diamond industry. Also, the top fashion houses, but both industries are taking a drubbing from artificial competition (artificial diamonds, and knockoffs, of various stripes).

I'm a believer in branding. I worked for many years, for a company with a "top-shelf" brand, and saw what it took, to maintain. But it takes a huge amount of discipline and "silly" stuff. Brand damage can come from a million different directions. I have found very few people are willing to do what it takes to maintain a top brand.

For quite a while, there have been "brand-only" products, like Von Dutch, or Life Is Good™. They are the two-dollar hat, with the twenty-dollar logo. Like Izod Lacoste or Members Only, in the last century.

by ChrisMarshallNY

P.S.: It is odd to me to have such a length pg essay been up for such a long time with just a handful of comments. Did something happen? I would've expected a wealth of discussion on a post like this by now.

by ChicagoBoy11

The ability to transfer a lot of money in the physical shape of brand watches costing 200k per piece may have added to their appeal. AppleTV’s show Friends and Neighbours upselling their value as Jon Hamm tries to steal them from neighbours may be product placement. But these were all tactics from the 50s and 60s where relatively few media sources meant you could buy your way into the hearts of the masses with an ads campaign.

Today we have a massively accelerated pace of society burning through fads and information - largely due to social media. The artificial scarcity trick is no longer an MBA secret. A brand, especially an AI brand, can burn in and out of favor in days. Transparency in society helps maybe bring out authenticity. Advertising of the past was often “advertising to your weaknesses” and that game is over.

If we can structure the transparency and apply it to politicians and other less transparent institutions that count on “Brand” to the list (especially ones with high margins and large networks) maybe the world will see true competition that benefits everyone more. Lack of transparency (and liqidity, and availability) are what make trust bubbles that distort markets.

by dzink

Really interesting parallel between decidedly traditional technology and today.

by nadis

* https://bookshop.org/p/books/no-logo-no-space-no-choice-no-j...

by roughly

not sure what tfa is trying to say here, but this is far from being an indictment of the current age. the term "golden age" is (from what I've seen) usually used for the time when an industry or field was taking the leap from niche to mainstream, and in the process defining some of the things that would later come to be considered characteristic. by that token, of course the golden age of watchmaking is not today - the field has already gone mainstream and indeed does retain a lot of the characteristic features that the golden age innovated upon and defined.

by zem

"The more subtle lesson is that fields have natural rhythms that are beyond the power of individuals to resist. Fields have golden ages and not so golden ages, and you're much more likely to do good work in a field that's on the way up."

Cigarettes were resisted, leaded fuel was resisted, nuclear energy was resisted. AI is already being resisted and the resistance will grow.

by tlkGah

If the business really mainly on the technical merits of the product/service, even blank brand is an option. Many brand as a façade to a single plant is a different tradeoff.

by psychoslave

Comparing with luxury watches which cost a magnitude or two more and are beaten in precision by a $10 casio.

I guess the thing to watch out for is technical stagnation and "good enough"? Uh..

by canpan

Commoditized software is here. Will there be a market for high-end, luxury software? Becoming an artificially scarce veblen good is unlikely to work for digital goods the way it has for watches.

by spencer-p

Funny thing is, I'm not sure anyone is actually doing either thing successfully. Every time I've looked into an openclaw success story it's ended up being complete fiction.

by monster_truck

what's they key thesis here and the argument ?

*Key thesis:* When technology eliminates meaningful performance differences between products, industries shift from competing on *engineering and function* to competing on *brand and status*. The Swiss watch industry after the quartz crisis is a clear example: mechanical watches stopped being valuable tools and became *luxury symbols whose value comes mainly from branding, scarcity, and signaling wealth*.

*In one sentence:* The essay argues that when technology makes functional differences between products disappear, industries shift from engineering competition to branding competition, and the modern luxury watch market illustrates how that transformation works.

---

If you want, I can also explain *why this essay is controversial among economists and designers*—there are a few big assumptions in the argument.

And the counter A few places the argument is debatable (even if it’s persuasive as a narrative):

It treats “brand” and “engineering” as mostly opposed. In practice, luxury buyers often do pay for engineering (finishing, durability, serviceability, movement architecture), and those technical choices can reinforce brand rather than fight it. The tension is real, but not always zero-sum.

It downplays other drivers of the Swiss recovery. The rebound isn’t only “they discovered brand.” Things like Swatch’s role in recapitalizing distribution/production, industry consolidation, improvements in manufacturing, and globalization of luxury demand can explain a lot of the late-1980s revenue surge alongside marketing.

The “artificial scarcity = managed asset bubble” framing is provocative but contestable. Scarcity can be interpreted as: capacity constraints, quality control, long-term brand stewardship, or channel strategy—not necessarily “bubble management.” It may function bubble-like in resale markets, but that doesn’t prove intent or fragility in the way financial bubbles work.

Some claims are asserted more than demonstrated. Examples: Rolex “abandoned research” after ~1960; “only three survived as independents”; “most brands are owned by six holding companies”; “they rebuy hundreds per year.” These might be true in broad strokes, but the essay uses them as load-bearing supports without showing evidence in-text (beyond a couple notes).

The design-history claims are simplified. Watch size and shape trends aren’t only branding; they’re also driven by changing tastes, ergonomics, manufacturing norms, sport/tool styling, and shifting notions of masculinity. “Big = cheap historically” is directionally true in some eras, but not a universal law.

The gender section is especially shaky. “Women never really went for mechanical watches” and the steam-engine analogy read like overgeneralizations—there are strong counterexamples (and cultural variation) that complicate that story.

by another_twist

Software. everyone can do it now. but you still buy lets say Crowdstrike for security, because is in your brain for years as security software.

by sinzone

Respectfully disagree.

Since the 60's (and one could argue, even long before that), watches are 1) fashion, and 2) male wealth-signaling fashion. That's it. Nothing more. And for males who subscribe to this wealth-signaling cult, they know from a long way away what watch brand is on that guy's wrist.

Okay, today's brands signal maybe a little differently than just wealth. Casio G-Shock watches aren't substantially different than their non-G-Shock counterparts in any significant way, but they cost way more. The G-Shock brand signals... I dunno, sportsy-ness? Maybe it is closer to a pure fashion brand here.

I think we've been in "The Brand Age" since the advent of advertising. There are plenty of products that have virtually no differentiation besides brand, and there (almost) always has been.

by creeble

My only question about this entire essay is... where did this time traveler came from???

"Our" time traveler was never mentioned until this line.

by NinjaTrance

Wow, that is… not what I would recommend. Brand is one of the few things that will give you pricing power in the age of AI.

by bensyverson

There are brands for non-rich: Linux is a very strong brand but virtually free and non-exclusive at all (think Android phones). Patriotism and country reputation might also be thought as brands. E.g. would Portugal's tourist boom happen without the Portuguese tarts popularity?

Edit: my watch is a Pebble.

by diego_moita

If you have to explain why your product is expensive, maybe it shouldn’t be.

by figassis

However swatch group(omega was force merged in the 80s to form the swatch group) has 3x the turnover of Patek.

More over Swatch caters to both high end and the poors + kids. So brand is.. good? so long as you only cater for the rich? I'm not getting that really.

by KaiserPro

It is possible to view the fact that capitalist markets can turn a desire for art, individuality, and "something special" into a business as a bad thing. I'm not entirely convinced that's particularly interesting, though... it seems just a localized restatement of a generic "capitalism is bad" take.

by eykanal

What people usually mean when they talk about differentiation is distinctiveness [1]. Design isn't a differentiator for these watches it's about being distinctive. At the end of the day when telling the time is commoditized, and expensive watches are just a status symbol it's all you've got.

[1] - https://marketingscience.info/news-and-insights/differentiat...

by crowcroft

He does not disappoint. Also, not buying the watch industry parable.

by itisit

(1) https://philippdubach.com/posts/nikes-crisis-and-the-economi...

EDIT: Nevermind comments are apparently just a pg meta discussion..

by 7777777phil

The very same people who would be flagging that comment wouldn't bat an eye at saying they won't read or support anything by folks like DHH, or a hundred other prominent tech figures who have committed some ideological-wrong.

It's just a similarly heavy-handed reaction from the other side of the divide.

I don't find anything wrong or downvotable about people voicing perfectly valid criticisms about pg, his opinions, who he associates with and signal-boosts...unless these standards you all want to apply wrt cancellation are "for thee and not for me".

by busterarm