$300,000 Day & Night Watch
Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome’s “Day&Night” watch — which does not tell the time, only whether it is night or day — sold out within 48 hours of its launch earlier this year as watch fanatics snapped up the $300,000 timepiece.
“When you ask people what is the ultimate luxury, 80 percent answer ‘time’. Then when you look at other studies, 67 percent don’t look at their watch to tell what time it is,” Chief Executive Yvan Arpa told Reuters on Friday at Baselworld, the watch and jewellery industry’s largest annual trade fair.
“Why do people buy expensive watches? To have a trophy. A watch (costing) $9 gives the time as well as a watch at $500,000, so they really buy a trophy,” Arpa said.
The “Day&Night” watch uses the complicated Tourbillon movement — invented to overcome earth’s gravity which used to affect the accuracy of watches — which lures watch connoisseurs as well as fashion aficionados.
The Geneva-based company, founded in 2004, also has an order backlog of up to two-and-a-half years for its “Titanic DNA” watch, which is made from steel and coal from the Titanic and can cost as much as $500,000.
“If you do something that is different, which is interesting, it pays,” Arpa said.