How the average Maker (or Factory) works:
Now I am sure most of you have varied ideas of how a Maker (or Factory works). Some of you I am sure have conjured up some very interesting mental pictures of the actual look of a Factory. Unfortunately I cannot show you pictures, and even if I could, Makers have their own setup depending on what they produce.
The most important thing to understand is the word MAKER is more apt to describe the Makers of our watches; because that is what they are, in the truest sense. Makers make the watch, and COMMISSION OTHER FACTORIES to make each individual part, with the final assembly of the various parts occurring at the Makers shop.
As an example, this is how the process would go:
1. Maker decides to make a new PAM.
2. A Gen PAM is bought and then dissected.
3. The Maker will then approach different Factories to produce each part, such as a factory specializing in cases, bezels, crystals, hands & dials, straps, movements, etc.
4. Once the maker has commissioned all the Factories needed to produce each part, each individual factory will make a prototype (if needed, if they have never repped that certain part before for that make/model).
5. The prototype pieces get QC’ed by the Maker, and if up to par, get approved for mass production.
6. The Factories send the maker the amount of pieces the Maker commissioned the Factory for.
7. The Maker then takes all the parts and assembles the watch, ready to be released.
An important point to raise on the whole procedure is there are minimum production quantities for different parts, like the case factories' minimum order is 1000 pcs, crystal factory is 500 pcs, strap factory is 3000 pieces, etc., and due to different production abilities of different parts, they may only pass the parts to the Makers in batches As an example the first batch the Maker received all cases of 1000 pcs, but only 300 dials/hands, 500 straps, 500 movements, so the first batch of the certain watch is only 300 pcs because there are only 300 sets of dial/hands.
The above points and paragraph lead onto a few things, which directly affect all of us:
1. Sometimes when we ask the Maker if he has a watch in stock, he might not have it assembled but will have all the pieces in order to assemble it. This is an occasional reason why sometimes it takes a while before the watch is given to us.
2. Because these are assembled largely by hand, not all watches are uniform in terms of quality. This is the reason why we have to do our own QC. If an employee working at the Maker’s company is tired/lazy/not well/etc., etc. mistakes happen (none of us are perfect, you know what it’s like). An example would be someone assembling a watch with a scratched caseback.
3. When we ask the Maker if a watch is in stock, someone at the Maker’s company might confirm, thinking that all of the pieces required are in stock, and upon assembly find out that 1 part is missing, and therefore get back to us and state the watch is out of stock.
4. When a watch is out of stock, it is because all of the Factories are still completing the Maker’s order of ___ <- (insert number here) crystals, or bezels, or cases etc., etc. This is why it is hard to estimate at times. There is a whole chain of Factories that need to fulfill their part of the watch before the Maker can start assembling it.
So as you can see, the creation of a watch lies with many different Factories, who have been commissioned by the Maker. The Maker is the ideas man, the man who assesses the desire of a watch and then communicates with the various factories to see if the watch can be made, and to what standard. At that point, if it seems that the watch can be reproduced well, then the Maker will front the money and get the project going and done.
The Maker’s and Spare Parts:
The breakdown laid out above pretty much explains the subject of spare parts, however, to make it very clear:
1. If the Maker has spare parts, he might not want to sell them off, in case he has pending orders for a new batch of other parts to fulfill backorders.
2. If a watch is no longer in production, the Maker might not have spare parts from when he was producing it, and due to the fact that the Factories that produce the parts have high MOQs (minimum order quantities), parts for that no longer produced watch might be impossible to get ever again.
Usually we can get spare parts, but in the event that we can’t, I hope this explains why.
