Collaboration Nation II: Naoya Hida x Zenith And Ignoring Dollar Signs
Naoya Hida and Zenith was not on my bingo card.
Very often when I sit down to write a watch story, I remember something Alan Downing wrote in his persona as Watchbore, over at Timezone.com (this was many years ago, I think in the very early 2000s). The relevant quote is: “People often ask Watchbore two questions. The first is, Is my watch worth what I paid for it? The second is, Is my watch a good watch? The answer to the first question is always, ‘no.’ The answer to the second is always, ‘it depends.’”
The Unpleasant Matter of the Bill has always been part of being a mechanical watch enthusiast. At the time Watchbore wrote those remarks it was still not out of the question for someone starting out as a watch enthusiast to begin with an affordable automatic – Seiko diver’s watches, including the legendary SKX007, were starter watches for lots of folks who would later go on to collect much more expensive pieces – but today in terms of actual acquisition, we seem to be living in segregated silos defined by price barriers which it’s increasingly hard to cross. The question of whether or not a watch is worth it, is something easier to judge now than it was a quarter century ago, and checking online to see the re-sale value of a watch is one very fast and universally available way of triangulating on what a reasonable expectation of value retention might be (there are about a million caveats to saying that, but the general rule holds; resale value numbers are no longer almost totally opaque).
Brands have generally occupied well defined places in the hierarchy of values, but the enormous increases in prices over the last six years, have led to increasing questions about what exactly you are getting for your money. Against this we have the ability of some watches (and to a lesser extent, some brands) to command prices which have nothing to do with the actual watchmaking content of the watch. That it’s the watch, not the brand, is shown by the fact that for brands with a viral watch, another watch from the same brand, but a different model, will not perform in the market nearly as well (the obvious example is the Royal Oak vs. Code 11.59). Different makers and brands will also often focus on one or two aspects of the watch as the main selling point – although at the very high end in independent watchmaking, every element of the watch from the movement to the case to the dial has to be handled with obvious attention to detail, and with as high a level of craft as possible.
How any collector looks at the value of a watch depends on the watch and the collector, but the perceived value proposition of a watch and of the watchmaker or brand that makes it, does need to be well established for the watch and the maker to have a clear identity in the market, and for collectors to feel comfortable buying one. A value proposition always exists against the background of current market conditions and when the market changes rapidly (as it has in the last six years, both boomwardly and bust-wardly) there’s a chance that the perceived value proposition will be called into question.
This is the environment into which Naoya Hida has launched its 2026 collection – and against which a very interesting collaboration was recently announced.