Hi All,
The more I dig into this passion of ours, the more I get irritated by how some companies communicate about their history.
I guess it is similar to us with our CV. It is always a bit embarrassing to present a 2 year gap in our resume so we might arrange it by adapting the truth to what we want to communicate to the HR. Or oversell our managerial and technical skills. Human nature!
Some companies have such a long and well-documented history that there is no reason for them to lie (sorry I should say to embellish reality). Names like PP, AP and VC come directly to mind.
But old brands that die a long time ago are sometimes resurrected just for banking on a name. Other companies will be bought back to fill a specific new market. Those new-old companies have little to do with what they were originally known for.
Others have massive gaps in their history with only a few hundred watches built over several decades, others shadowed smaller brands by taking the headlines on some accomplishment that they were not alone to achieve. You even have those very young companies (post 1990) having "Vintage" collections making you believe that they exist for a very long time.
Some lie about their history (also called revisionist histories), some lie about their technical achievements (changing the name of an ETA/Sellita base caliber or even slightly modified at the manufacture is not enough to be called in-house) while other start-up companies will buy old manufacturer names to avoid the pain of creating their own stories: "history=quality=prestige=I can charge you way more for a cheap case and an off the shelf non regulated movement".
But at the end, marketing departments get very good at selling this to people who will not, most of the time, check what is real and what is just fantasy.
One brand that gives me hope for the others is A. Lange & Soehne (even though I probably will never be able to afford one). Look at their website, go through their menu and check their "Our Saxon origin". Here you are, a clear gap between 1948 and 1990 reflecting their actual history.
This is honesty!
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