On February 7, 2025, Swiss media outlet Bilanz reported that Rolex is shutting down the Carl F. Bucherer watch brand, which it acquired in 2023 as part of its purchase of Bucherer – the global watch retailer. The decision to shutter any watch brand, particularly one dating back to 1888 with significant in-house watchmaking is major news. And it’s a story with broader implications for the watch industry at large. So with that in mind, on this special episode of Openwork we’re delving into the details and taking a look at what it all means.

Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology, Openwork goes inside the watch industry.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, emailpodcast@collectivehorology.com.

Homages, replicas and clones, oh my! Today we’re digging into the business and ethics of what’s a perennial and now growing segment of the watch market. This is a complex topic, with important distinctions to be drawn between homages and replicas, clones or dupes. And more broadly, it’s one that sheds important light on technology and production gains across the industry globally.

Fortunately, we have the perfect guest to guide us through that landscape: Marc Frankel, who most of you probably know as Marc from Long Island Watch – both a retailer and manufacturer of a wide range of watches including homage watches. Marc is not only a living legend in this industry, but someone we genuinely admire and like. We are both proud and happy customers of Long Island Watch. And one of the great joys for us in participating in the Windup Watch Fairs over the years has been getting to know Marc.

Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology, Openwork goes inside the watch industry.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email podcast@collectivehorology.com.

On this episode of the Openwork podcast, we look at luxury pricing. Of course, we’ve already done a deep dive on how watches are priced. (Check out our episode with Mike Margolis of Czapek and Singer Reimagined for that.) However, in the past, we’ve largely focused on how inputs like cost of labor, materials, inflation and currency exchange impact pricing. But there’s of course more that goes into pricing for watches and luxury goods more broadly. There are considerations like brand value, product positioning as well as consumer psychology that also impact pricing. And that’s what we explore today – those other more nebulous, but equally significant, inputs into pricing.

To help us with that we have the perfect guest: Katharine K. Zarrella is a writer, editor, and the Fashion Critic-at-Large at Document Journal. With a background as Fashion Director at the Wall Street Journal's Off Duty section and as a lecturer at Parsons School of Design and Central Saint Martins, she has contributed to numerous renowned publications, including Harper's Bazaar, The Business of Fashion, and most recently The New York Times, where she recently published the guest essay: Obscene Prices, Declining Quality: Luxury Is in a Death Spiral.

Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology, Openwork goes inside the watch industry.

You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email podcast@collectivehorology.com.