DEAD SECONDS: Twenty Years of Court Cases Left Independent Watchmakers Out in the Cold

All of this talk today of the cold keeps bringing the saying "left out in the cold" back into my mind. And the biggest example of being left out in the cold I can think of in the watch world was the big parts embargo set forward by the big brands, cutting out independent watchmakers from the game, leaving them out in the cold. Get it? Heh.

I think anyone who buys a mechanical watch should be able to have it serviced by any competent watchmaker they choose. Much of the Swiss industry disagrees, and for 20 years the courts have mostly sided with the industry.

The trade calls it the parts embargo. A brand stops selling spare parts to independent watchmakers and wholesalers, and supplies only its own service centres and repairers it has approved. Independent repairers say the refusals began around 2002. In 2004 their European umbrella body, CEAHR, complained to the European Commission about Swatch Group, Richemont, LVMH, Rolex, Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe.

The case took 13 years. The Commission rejected the complaint in 2008, saying there wasn’t enough EU interest to pursue it. In 2010 the General Court annulled that decision and said the Commission had made manifest errors. The Commission reopened the file and rejected the complaint again in July 2014. In October 2017 the General Court upheld that second rejection. It accepted the brands’ selective repair systems as objectively justified, pointing to the complexity of prestige watches, the need for consistent repair quality and the prevention of counterfeiting. Switzerland’s competition authority had opened a preliminary inquiry in 2014. In 2018 it declined to go further, saying it had no grounds to reach a different conclusion from Brussels.

Swatch Group closed the last big door in the meantime. From January 2016 it stopped supplying parts to wholesalers and to any repairer outside its approved network. Cousins, the British wholesaler that supplied much of the UK’s independent trade, prepared to sue in London. Swatch moved first and asked a court in Bern to declare it had broken no EU or UK law. The Swiss courts gave Swatch that declaration. When Cousins brought its claim in the High Court anyway, the court struck it out in March 2024 because the Swiss judgment had to be recognised under the Lugano Convention. The Court of Appeal refused permission to appeal that July. Cousins spent eight years in court, and no British judge ever decided whether the embargo was lawful in Britain.

Legally, the brands have won. I still think they are wrong, and their reasons deserve a fair hearing before I explain why.

The quality argument makes sense. Bad watchmakers exist, and a careless service can damage a modern watch in ways that are expensive to undo. A brand that puts its name on the dial has a legitimate interest in the work done under it. Brands also say loose parts feed counterfeits and frankenwatches, which is plausible. And the door is not fully shut. Rolex and Omega both let independents open parts accounts if they qualify.

The problem is who writes the qualifications. The brand sets the training requirements, the equipment list and the audit, and it decides whether an account stays open. Repairers’ groups have claimed the required equipment costs around €50,000 for a Swatch Group account and more for Rolex. On one hand, a one-person workshop can hardly afford such an investment, and there is no lower tier of parts accessibility for them. Why would they need 50k in equipment to replace gaskets and bracelets? On the other hand, it's funny that the company setting the bar is the same company that eventually collects the service fee if the watchmaker can’t do it. The 2017 ruling relied partly on there being no evidence that qualified independents were being refused, but this has been denied, with evidence, by CEAHR.

The complexity argument is the one I find hard to accept. Sure, watches are complex, but so are automobiles and computers, and the EU insists that brands must supply independent service centers with parts. Sure, a balance staff might be a bit more fiddly than a brake system, but a watch won't kill people if it's not serviced properly.

The counterfeiting argument works against the brands as well. When genuine parts can’t be bought, watchmakers buy donor watches and strip them, allowing for the rest of the genuine parts to enter the market through channels the brands have 0 oversight over.

What the embargo reliably does is move service revenue from independents to the brands. That is a normal commercial goal. I would respect it more if the industry said so plainly instead of telling owners it is for their protection.

The law around this has changed recently, which is why I'm mentioning it now now. EU countries had until 31 July 2026 to adopt the Right to Repair Directive. It obliges manufacturers to repair certain products after the warranty runs out and to sell parts at reasonable prices. The list is short: washing machines, dishwashers, fridges, vacuum cleaners, displays, phones, tablets and a few more. Watches aren’t on it, although the list can grow as new ecodesign rules are added. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission told Congress in 2021 that it found little evidence to support manufacturers’ reasons for restricting repair. Thirteen states now have repair laws of some kind, covering electronics, farm equipment, cars and wheelchairs. As far as I can tell, none covers mechanical watches.

Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic have looked at the same arguments the watch brands make and found them weak for phones and fridges. Watches are missing from those laws because nobody has pushed hard enough to get them included.

Here is what I want. Brands with approval schemes should publish their criteria, their costs and how many independents they approve and refuse in each country. Any watchmaker who meets the criteria should get an account. Parts for discontinued calibres should stay available for a set number of years after production ends, as the appliance rules already require. And authorised repairers should be free to sell parts to qualified independents, as car dealers have had to for years.

Until that happens, the pressure has to come from buyers. Before you spend five figures on a watch, ask who will be allowed to open it in 15 years. If the answer is only the brand, consider that a part of the price.