The Watch Appreciation Thread - Part two (Rolex, Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, Jaeger LeCoultre,

[9thsymph]

In the immortal words of Derrick Lewis: "My balls was hot".

In the immortal words of Allen Iverson:

“we in here talking about praxis”

 

[mozi]

I didn't say that NY didn't match Boston for old money and privilege.

I said that it's a poster child for respectability and the patrician lifestyle, bolstered by the presence of so many world class academic insistutions (especially for its size).. There's even the term of "Boston Brahmin".

Geez man, why does everything have to be so confrontational with you? I was speculating on why Boston would be especially attractive to Patek Philippe. I specifically left out any explicit comparison with NYC just to not trigger you. Do you just come loaded for bear for no particular reason?

Boston has a lot of expensive universities.
Once a year, these universities have graduation ceremonies.
Parents and families often come by for these events.

Many of these families are pretty wealthy that they can send their children to the expensive Boston schools, and many of them live in cities or foreign countries without a Patek boutique or even AD. They are often feeling very celebratory during graduation season.

That is why a Boston boutique makes a lot of sense for so many luxury brands.

 

[UnFacconable]

I just looked at another area with which I am extremely familiar, Pasadena, and if you believe that Pottery Barn, West Elm, and Design Within Reach are all within a couple of blocks of other, then I have a nice picture of a bridge to sell you. Also, some NFTs. You can look at the locations of Pottery Barns across the country, you'll see that they are set in prime Upper Middle Class shopping locations. There is one in a prime shopping space in Walnut Creek, for example. Again, just trying to stick with places I know well. You can do the same exercise with the Ralph Lauren stores, incidentally, taking out the outlet stores, which serve the discount market.

I'm confused - did you mean to say the opposite here? The Pasadena PB is a few blocks from DWR and a few blocks from West Elm. Or are you just trying to sell pictures of bridges?

Are you an architect? My father was, (he quit to become an academic) by my childhood is peppered with lectures about who designed what and what was built when and for whom and for what reason.

We can agree to disagree about whether we like Pottery Barn (frankly, we probably agree) but it's undeniably laser focused on one specific type of customer. The locations are basically chosen as funnels for that type of customer. I would have thought that my posts about it would be pretty uncontroversial.

This is true across retail, restaurants and service businesses. All national brands spend a lot of time and energy choosing their locations to according to the specific mix of performance and brand promotion they are looking for. And of course many independent boutiques are thoughtful about where they are located as well.

I'm not an expert on Pottery Barn specifically and to be honest I'm not even sure what the current agreement or disagreement is with respect to PB and these other home furnishing businesses, but I did want to note that choosing your retail location based on the customer profile is table stakes. Unless you're Subway, apparently.

Boston has a lot of expensive universities.
Once a year, these universities have graduation ceremonies.
Parents and families often come by for these events.

Many of these families are pretty wealthy that they can send their children to the expensive Boston schools, and many of them live in cities or foreign countries without a Patek boutique or even AD.

That is why a Boston boutique makes a lot of sense for so many luxury brands.

I'm not saying there is no business case for PP in Boston, I'm sure there is, I just don't see visiting kids for graduation as a particularly lucrative market. There are lots of places full of rich people tourists - Napa, Aspen, etc. in addition to the larger cities, which get lots of well off travelers.

And even assuming that there was some massive influx of wealthy watch buyers visiting their kids at graduation, in 2022, you can't just walk into a boutique and buy a Patek right? I mean isn't half this thread devoted to people complaining about empty display cases and having to beg for allocations?

My guess is the Patek business case in Boston is focused on selling to local clientele including the Martha's Vineyard crew. Not people who are in town for back to school weekend.

 

[patrick_b]

Just to tie the two conversations together:

is it more expensive to be upper middle class in Boston or New York?

How much money do you need to make in Boston to be comfortable?

If you are upper middle class in Boston, how many Pateks, on average, will you be able to buy a year?

Boston UMC don't even take the T. They sniff the seats in an Uber XL.

 

[HorseHide]

The Pottery Barn reference started way back with Foo's commentary about $1M annual income being "middle class" in NY. That devolved into many different conversations about the demographics of various NYC neighborhoods, about the "definition" of middle class, about the spending habits of different groups, yada yada yada.

For me, if you fly private, you're "rich". If you fly commercial, you're not. I know, plenty of nuance comparing charter versus fractional versus part 91 (and what about domestic versus international...). Also, there are folks that fly private that are poseurs and folks that fly commercial that are very wealthy. I fly commercial, I'm not rich (even though there is no economic metric of which I'm aware where I would be categorized as middle class).

 

[9thsymph]

Jim’ll pant it:

a secret Taiwanese trillionaire inside a Boston pottery barn wearing a casio, standing next to an mit alum wearing a pp, buying a picture of a bridge - the Brooklyn bridge, with a tiny bubble gum Porsche zooming into Manhattan…

thanks!

 

[LA Guy]

I'm confused - did you mean to say the opposite here? The Pasadena PB is a few blocks from DWR and a few blocks from West Elm. Or are you just trying to sell pictures of bridges?



This is true across retail, restaurants and service businesses. All national brands spend a lot of time and energy choosing their locations to according to the specific mix of performance and brand promotion they are looking for. And of course many independent boutiques are thoughtful about where they are located as well.

I'm not an expert on Pottery Barn specifically and to be honest I'm not even sure what the current agreement or disagreement is with respect to PB and these other home furnishing businesses, but I did want to note that choosing your retail location based on the customer profile is table stakes. Unless you're Subway, apparently.


I'm not saying there is no business case for PP in Boston, I'm sure there is, I just don't see visiting kids for graduation as a particularly lucrative market. There are lots of places full of rich people tourists - Napa, Aspen, etc. in addition to the larger cities, which get lots of well off travelers.

And even assuming that there was some massive influx of wealthy watch buyers visiting their kids at graduation, in 2022, you can't just walk into a boutique and buy a Patek right? I mean isn't half this thread devoted to people complaining about empty display cases and having to beg for allocations?

My guess is the Patek business case in Boston is focused on selling to local clientele including the Martha's Vineyard crew. Not people who are in town for back to school weekend.

Yeah, I meant the opposite. They are all within a few blocks of one another, and in Pasadena, that's practically the same block. There are also nice bookstores (Vromans is right near there), opticals, numerous nice restaurants, antique shops, high end vintage stores, even a Whole Foods.

tbh, I'm not sure what exactly is the disagreement either. I thought that Pottery Barn is pretty uncontrovertibly the definition of bougie - an upper middle class lifestyle - as normally defined. It even sells a "Luxury Monopoly set" (https://www.potterybarn.com/products/monopoly-luxury-edition/) which is priced about the same as a good, but not hyper lux, chess set. But apparently not everyone agrees.

I would also love to sell you a picture of a bridge, if you are interested in that type of thing.

 

[LA Guy]

Jim’ll pant it:

a secret Taiwanese trillionaire inside a Boston pottery barn wearing a casio, standing next to an mit alum wearing a pp, buying a picture of a bridge - the Brooklyn bridge, with a tiny bubble gum Porsche zooming into Manhattan…

thanks!

Someone upper class, or at least, upper-upper-middle class, should commission it.

 

[Ambulance Chaser]

Just to tie the two conversations together:

is it more expensive to be upper middle class in Boston or New York?

How much money do you need to make in Boston to be comfortable?

If you are upper middle class in Boston, how many Pateks, on average, will you be able to buy a year?

Boston is expensive. Not NYC or SF expensive, but more expensive than you would think. My sister and her family live in a non-descript 2BR, 2.5BA row house in Cambridge that is worth well over $1 million. Granted, it's in a nice neighborhood with good schools (bordering Somerville near Davis Square, for all you Bostonians), but still.

Yeah, I meant the opposite. They are all within a few blocks of one another, and in Pasadena, that's practically the same block. There are also nice bookstores (Vromans is right near there), opticals, numerous nice restaurants, antique shops, high end vintage stores, even a Whole Foods.

High-end furniture stores tend to cluster together because they have a symbiotic relationship with one another. Someone who wants to outfit an empty house can buy a living room set from Store A, a dining room set from Store B, and a bedroom set from Store C, and be done in one trip. My neighborhood is primarily residential and known for nightlife, and many years ago Design Within Reach made the ill-advised decision to locate a store there. It lasted about a year.

 

[9thsymph]

Yeah, I meant the opposite. They are all within a few blocks of one another, and in Pasadena, that's practically the same block. There are also nice bookstores (Vromans is right near there), opticals, numerous nice restaurants, antique shops, high end vintage stores, even a Whole Foods.

tbh, I'm not sure what exactly is the disagreement either. I thought that Pottery Barn is pretty uncontrovertibly the definition of bougie - an upper middle class lifestyle - as normally defined. It even sells a "Luxury Monopoly set" (https://www.potterybarn.com/products/monopoly-luxury-edition/) which is priced about the same as a good, but not hyper lux, chess set. But apparently not everyone agrees.

I would also love to sell you a picture of a bridge, if you are interested in that type of thing.

I’m LMC but only buy authentic Mies Van Der Rohe chairs at auction. I tell my friends I got them at pottery barn, though…

 

[LA Guy]

The Pottery Barn reference started way back with Foo's commentary about $1M annual income being "middle class" in NY. That devolved into many different conversations about the demographics of various NYC neighborhoods, about the "definition" of middle class, about the spending habits of different groups, yada yada yada.

For me, if you fly private, you're "rich". If you fly commercial, you're not. I know, plenty of nuance comparing charter versus fractional versus part 91 (and what about domestic versus international...). Also, there are folks that fly private that are poseurs and folks that fly commercial that are very wealthy. I fly commercial, I'm not rich (even though there is no economic metric of which I'm aware where I would be categorized as middle class).

I don't disagree. but I think that "flying commercial" is so broad as to be nearly meaningless.

 

[LA Guy]

Boston is expensive. Not NYC or SF expensive, but more expensive than you would think. My sister and her family live in a non-descript 2BR, 2.5BA row house in Cambridge that is worth well over $1 million. Granted, it's in a nice neighborhood with good schools (bordering Somerville near Davis Square, for all you Bostonians), but still.

High-end furniture stores tend to cluster together because they have a symbiotic relationship with one another. Someone who wants to outfit an empty house can buy a living room set from Store A, a dining room set from Store B, and a bedroom set from Store C, and be done in one trip. My neighborhood is primarily residential and known for nightlife, and many years ago Design Within Reach made the ill-advised decision to locate a store there. It lasted about a year.

My point was that Pottery Barn is generally considered upscale. I think that the disagreement was less about class, and more about taste. Pottery Barn is the housewares and furniture equivalent of Hugo Boss or Bose (or I guess, these days, Master and Dynamic.) For people who care, there can be an immediate, visceral, reaction. For people who don't, it's something decent and reliable and takes minimal thinking.

I’m LMC but only buy authentic Mies Van Der Rohe chairs at auction. I tell my friends I got them at pottery barn, though…

I buy stuff from Pottery Barn and Design Within Reach and tell people I bought them at auction.

 

[9thsymph]

Come for the watch talk, but stay for the PB promo codes…

twat fvcking rulz

 

[HorseHide]

what the **** do I know? I had to google Derrick Lewis and Nomex

 

[LA Guy]

what the **** do I know? I had to google Derrick Lewis and Nomex

I dunno, but if you haven't competed in MMA or done wildland firefighting, why would you criticize the comforting blandness of Pottery Barn?

For real though, some of their couches are really comfortable.