In the olden times, mankind utilized celestial bodies such as the sun, moon, stars and planets for time-telling.
Mankind then through time developed a way to tell time in a more specific: from the pendulum clock, to the modern wristwatches and to time-telling devices such as cellphones, PDAs and iPods.
In mid 17th century, time-telling became much more precise with the invention of the pendulum clock by Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens. With the pendulum clock, time was counted by seconds for the first time. Before the invention of the pendulum clock, time cannot even be counted by minutes.
A century ago, Britons who lived and worked within earshot of a church could tell time as church bells rang every quarter hours–a practice still done today by Greenwich residents.
Then came wristwatches. Simply put, wristwatches are watches worn on the hand.
In modern times, clocks are integrated in modern trappings such as cellphones, PDAs, iPods and computers. Clock feature is even integrated in modern cars and home appliances.
Of all human inventions relating to time-telling, wristwatches are the most developed timepieces. The complex functions and aesthetics of watches are still superior compared to that of time-telling electronic devices.
Despite the collapsed of large financial institutions and falling stock markets, people are still shopping for designer timepieces.
The global recession which started to show its consequences in the middle of 2007 did not affect the popularity of designer timepieces. People are still buying designer timepieces in the midst of this global recession.
As the saying goes, “Watches have always been about more than simply telling the time.”
When buying fine watches, there are a lot of places to choose from. The most remarkable notion to know before making a purchase decision is the distinction between gray market versus authorized sellers and how that changes the price, warranty coverage, and resale of a watch you buy.
All original Rolex, Omega, Tag Heuer and other elegant watches come from the maker’s factory as cited on their website. The manufacturer only sells them to authorized distributors and dealers. To maintain and establish an authorized dealer connection and bulk discounts, authorized sellers should produce significant fundamental investments in a record and proceed to purchase merest numbers of watches over time. This can include the most insignificant initial and continuous inventory purchase requirements as high as US$ 250,000 for a single merchant to give each major brand.
For smaller dealers, this frequently pushes them to buy more watches than they can sell immediately to their buyers and to hold in inventory a final number of commodities of a single label. So some authorized merchants sell off at wholesale rates the surplus to the ‘gray market’ of unofficial dealers who then sell the watches at massive discounts than authorized dealers are allowed. This is not clearly outlawed, but it regularly violates the re-sellers or the authorized dealer agreements with the manufacturer.
The producers, to guard their authorized sellers against the heavier discount offered to the buyer by the non-authorized dealers, decline to provide in-warranty service on these watches. Unluckily, this policy regularly ends up hurting the naive consumer more than it protects the authorized dealers. The reason this policy is an inefficient impediment is that the customer needs to know this before they buy the watch. But only a small portion of buyers know this before purchase. Numerous do not discover this until after they have a dilemma and are rejected in-warranty service by the authorized repair center or the manufacturer. At that point, the buyer sees the manufacturer as the evil guy for declining to acknowledge a warranty on a watch the consumer feels they bought legitimately.
