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My father owned a watch shop, his father owned a watch shop and his father before him used to fix watches, but he didn't own a watch shop. Don't feel sorry for him though, I hear he led a full and happy life. In many respects I'm just like my father and grandfather, and to a lesser extent, my great grandfather, because I own a watch shop.

I don't need a fancy graph to tell you that watch sales are in decline. The number of wrists in the world is always rising, but the number of watches on those wrists is always falling. You can practically imagine the graph in your mind.

It's quite obvious that the mobile phone is to blame. Whoever decided to stick a clock on the screen of a phone was a genius. Even though it's quicker and easier to check your wrist for the time, people don't seem to mind delving into their pockets for it. It's just like the past when people carried pocket watches, except it's more like a sterile and daunting future where everything is electronic and shiny. The only option us watchsellers, fixers and makers have left is to totally redesign the watch. Once a month for the past two years we've been getting together to discuss the future of watches. We have come up with the following ideas:

1) Tattoo watches that tell the time every minute of the day, not just twice a day.
2) Brain watches; A watch which lives inside the brain, letting the wearer know the time without having to look at a physical device
3) Celebrity Time Tellers: Former celebrties who follow the rich and famous to tell them the time upon demand.

It's been a hard two years, that was until we came up with a better idea just three weeks ago. Lesley, a watchshop owner from Birkenhead, decided that the best thing we could do to defeat the mobile phone watch market was to put a mobile phone inside every watch. It made perfect sense. The watchmaker would rise again. Sadly Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG found out about our plan and they came knocking on my door. They said that if we started putting mobile phones inside our watches they would beat us up. Now we don't know what to do.

Paul, London.

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