The question comes up in every second conversation, usually phrased politely. Five hundred and forty-nine euros for a quartz watch?
It is a fair question and it deserves a real answer rather than a paragraph about heritage.
The case decided it
The Severius is five millimetres tall. Not the crystal, not the bezel, the whole case.
An automatic movement of comparable quality is roughly four to five millimetres deep on its own before you put anything around it. Build the Severius as an automatic and you get a watch of nine or ten millimetres that sits on the wrist as a different object entirely. It catches on a shirt cuff. It reads as a sports watch rather than something you wear to a wedding.
We wanted a dial you read, not a rotor you show people. That decision came before the movement, and the movement followed from it.
What a Ronda actually is
Ronda has been building movements in Lausen, Switzerland, since 1946. They are not a budget option, they are the reason a large part of the Swiss watch industry can put a movement in a case at all.
In practice a Swiss quartz calibre keeps time to a few seconds a month. A good mechanical movement keeps time to a few seconds a day, and that is when it is running well. Quartz survives being knocked against a door frame, does not need winding, and runs for years before it needs attention.
Mechanical watches are wonderful for reasons that have nothing to do with accuracy or robustness, and we build one of those too. But if a brand tells you quartz is a compromise on quality, ask them what they mean by quality.
So where does the price come from
Not from the movement. Roughly, from four places.
The dial, which was drawn from scratch rather than ordered from a catalogue, and which is printed in a script no supplier had tooling for. The case, at a thickness that is harder to machine than a normal one. Swiss production, which is what Swiss Made legally requires and which costs what it costs. And the series size: fifty pieces spreads every fixed cost over fifty units instead of fifty thousand.
That last one is the honest answer to why a small brand costs more than a large one for comparable parts. There is no volume to hide behind.
What Swiss Made requires
Since January 2017 a Swiss Made quartz watch needs four things: a Swiss movement, casing up in Switzerland, final inspection in Switzerland, and at least 60 percent of manufacturing cost incurred in Switzerland.
That 60 percent figure is the one most people have never heard of and it is the reason the label still means anything. Details of how it applies to our watches are on the Swiss Made page.
The other answer
If you want mechanical, we build the Genesis Athro: an ETA Valjoux 7750 automatic chronograph, 25 jewels, 44 hour reserve, in an eleven millimetre case, limited to fifty pieces.
Two different answers to the same question, labelled honestly, at two different prices. That is the whole policy.
