Why do some watches always seem to go to the same people? Listener Terry wrote in with a question we hear constantly: how do brands and authorized dealers actually decide who gets the most in-demand pieces? Is it spend, celebrity, genuine interest, or something else? Gabe and Asher walk through the five allocation models that govern how hot watches move from manufacturer to wrist — closed-door allocations, customer pre-sales, first come first serve, lotteries, and order windows — and the trade-offs each one creates.

The conversation starts upstream. Decisions about how many Breitling Cosmonauts or MING Starfields a given retailer receives are made long before any customer walks in the door. From there, Gabe and Asher get into the human factors most cynical takes on this stuff miss: taste fit, follow-through on prior commitments, how someone treats the staff, whether they refer other clients, and yes — purchase history, but as one input among several. They share Collective's own framework for allocating limited pieces, where 10% of a 20-piece run still means saying no to most of the people who want one, and they're honest about why none of the five models really solves the underlying problem.

Also: Collective Horology's third annual Open House is Saturday, June 6 in Hollywood, with 14 independent brands in attendance — register at collectivehorology.com/openhouse.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email podcast@collectivehorology.com.

If you'd told Gabe and Asher on August 7th — the day the U.S. announced a 39% tariff on Switzerland — that the holding companies would close out 2025 with their watch businesses up, they wouldn't have believed it. But that's what happened. Richemont's watch division grew 7% year over year. Swatch Group posted 7.2%. LVMH's watches and jewelry held flat while fashion softened around it. The top line says remarkable resilience. The bottom line tells a more complicated story.

Profits are largely flat. Currency and tariff drag is real. And the recovery is being driven by a strategic shift toward what Richemont and LVMH call "permanent luxury" — fewer watches, made at the higher end, with more specialized supply chains. That shift is a tale of two cities for suppliers: brutal under $10K, a quiet boon at the high end. Gabe and Asher dig into what it means for independents, why the Sellita movement Asher saw in Geneva shows how the market adapts, and whether the grand reorganization of the industry is creating a system that's harder for new brands to break into.

The episode closes on Swatch Group, where ISS has backed activist Steven Wood for a board seat. Asher takes the hypothetical seat and lays out what he'd change: less obsession with covering price points, more focus on creative point of view, and real activation of the R&D and supplier capabilities Swatch already owns.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email podcast@collectivehorology.com.

A grand reorganization of the luxury watch business is happening in front of us, and nowhere is it more visible than in the diverging strategies of two holding companies making opposite bets on the future. Gabe and Asher unpack the contrast between Breitling, which under Georges Kern has quietly reconstituted itself as a private-equity-backed challenger group — bulking up through the acquisitions of Universal Genève and Gallet — and Richemont, the industry stalwart now actively slimming down, shedding Baume & Mercier and quietly walking Montblanc away from serious watchmaking.

The conversation digs into what each move actually signals. Universal Genève's relaunch with full collections at Vacheron and Jaeger-LeCoultre price points, distributed through curated Breitling network partners, looks like a textbook play for cross-shop market share at the high end. Gallet's entry into the brutal sub-$5,000 segment is harder to explain — unless you read it as Kern building a fully diversified holding company with a long-term IPO in mind, willing to plant a flag in a difficult category before the cycle turns. Richemont's behavior reads as the inverse philosophy: get fit, exit segments where the math doesn't work, and protect margin around Cartier and the houses that still command pricing power.

Along the way, Gabe and Asher get into the JLC management buyout rumors swirling out of Geneva, why the Mark Newson Memovox travel clock is the most genuinely interesting thing the brand has done in years, what Monbtlanc's absence from Watches and Wonders actually means, and why the agility of a young holding company is a real strategic asset that the legacy giants can't easily replicate. Market share is up for grabs in a way it hasn't been in a generation — and the next few years are going to redraw the map.

Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email podcast@collectivehorology.com.