Muur is van gemetselde (betonnen?) stenen. Ik zou graag een paar fietsen aan de muur hangen. Maar ik heb geen idee wat zo'n muur aan kan. Over de neerwaartse kracht maak ik me niet zoveel zorgen. Maar de zijwaartse krachten wel. Zijn dit gegronde zorgen? Of kan ik gerust hier meerdere fietsen ophangen?
When the demise and financial woes of many swiss manufacturers by the early and mid 70s cannot be accredited to cheap (asian) quartz watches.
As many will know the first quartz was released by Seiko on christmas day in december 1969. But this was a solid gold piece made in very limited numbers. Exact numbers arent known but its estimated around 1000-2000 total were made. It wasnt until mid/late 1971 that Seiko released its second quartz movement made in less limited numbers. These watches were still for the Japanese market and also very expensive, 2-3-4-5 times more expensive than a mechanical Grand Seiko was. The first models for the international market were released in 73-74. Quartz becoming more mainstream and a bit more affordable (still more expensive than cheap mechanical watches) started happening towards the end of the 70s.
So in what way did those expensive and limited number of watches, mainly for its domestic Japanese market contribute towards a "Quartz Crisis" that allegedly started in the early 70s? They did not. Many of these companies who gone bankrupt by the mid 70s did not go bankrupt because of a few quartz pieces that did not even compete with their own customer base and market. A financially healthy company would not have gone bankrupt from that in 1,2 or 3 years.
There are several other factors that lead to the demise of many Swiss manufacturers. Firstly its outdated manufacturing processes. Many small seperate manufacturers assembling their watches by hand. There were thousands of small scale manufacturers when post WW2 there was an increasing push for economies of scale and manual labour being replaced by machines. A lot of manufacturing also went to lower wage countries. Time simply caught up to the way the Swiss made their watches. A lot of the smaller manufacturers were bound to go out of business in favor of economies of scale and mechanised production, quartz watches or not.
What put further stress on the Swiss watch industry were cheap mechanical watches. Watches kept improving and in the 60's cheap watches became decent quality and fairly reliable. You also see a further increase in cheap pin lever movements during that period. Many of those also not being Swiss made anymore like Timex or Rulah.
And yes the Japanese watches did play a role in that too. By the end of the 60's and early 70s Seiko entered the international market. Before that their watches were mostly just JDM. As many made in Japan things during that period Seiko's werent super cheap but quality and price wise outpreformed many european and american products. I'd argue that the mechanical Japanese watches like Seiko 5's contributed a lot more towards the demise of many swiss brands in the early and mid 70's than their quartz watches did.
So several processes were happening at the same time during the 60s and 70s. For the Swiss it was in hind sight easy to blame it all on quartz. And further romantising Swiss watches as a luxury product fighting against the horde of cheap Asian mass produced electronic watches.