Our trip also included members of the Patek Philippe US Sales/ Management team. We spent a ton of time with them and really got an appreciation for how difficult it is to allocate 65,000 watches to 1 million plus customers, if not more. No matter what they do, a customer will always be disappointed. After realizing the difficulties, I apologized to my AD. Each AD has so many heavy hitters that they have to try to please, I felt bad for the times I felt entitled to get a piece. I remember how upset I felt when I didn’t get a green dial 5711/1A, but then realized the person sitting next to me with over 50 Patek Philippe watches didn’t get one either. The perspective was eye opening for me. It made me realize, just have your wish list and be patient, and the pieces you want will come in good time.
I also apologized for asking to try to get my friends an allocation. I realized they just don’t have the pieces to give out. If your AD gets 100 watches for example and they already have 300 regular customers - what are they supposed to do with new customers? In an ideal world you try to please everyone, but the reality is there just aren’t enough Patek Philippe watches to go around. Especially when everyone only wants a Nautilus or an Aquanaut to be trendy, but not a Calatrava because it doesn’t look as good on Instagram. Patek Philippe would like to have their clients be in it for the long haul and not a quick wham bam thank you ma’am. For example; which is a better customer for Patek Philippe, someone who sold their bitcoin and wants to buy 6 pieces in a year and disappear only to be seen on Instagram? Or, someone that adds to their collection and builds it over time for the next 30 years? I think you can figure that out. We also spent a ton of time talking about the gray market. The goal of Patek Philippe is to minimize the effects of the gray market and only have their AD’s sell to legitimate customers. They want their clients to have a great relationship with their AD (and in turn Patek). While impossible to shut down, Patek Philippe will buy suspicious pieces that appear on the gray market to track the serial number. If it’s found that the watch was given to a dealer and the dealer knowingly sold it to someone who they knew was going to flip the watch (essentially sell it for a quick profit); the dealer has a big problem. An example of this would be a green dial 5711 that shows up for sale on the gray market soon after release. Why did that happen? Did the dealer sell it to a long-time customer, or, was it sold to someone new who had ill intentions? The dealers who don’t know where their watches are going, well, maybe they aren’t going to be dealers too much longer. The trip culminated with all of us in a conference room where they opened the safe and literally, we got to try on every single piece in the collection. Not just a couple of Calatrava or Aquanauts, I mean every single piece! This was beyond epic! Of course, the cherry on top was the final dinner. Mr. Thierry Stern (Owner/CEO of Patek Philippe) joined us and we had a blast talking to him. He had just arrived from Singapore and to take time out of his busy schedule and spend it with our group was very gracious of him.
37 POLACHECK’S JEWELERS MAGAZINE
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