Does Patek Philippe have good relationships with it's authorized retailers (Pt 1)

For luxury brands to maintain their reputation, they need to trust that their retailers will sell their watches at a certain price.

Patak Philippe makes beautiful watches. Like all other luxury watch brands they also make expensive watches. Like really expensive watches.

But for them to maintain their reputation as a luxury watch brand, they need to trust that their retailers will sell their watches at the price that Patek Philippe recommends.

So the question I wanted to understand was: does our data show that authorized retailers are following Patek Philippe’s recommendations and these next series of articles are going to look at whether this is happening consistently.

And for that I had to use our WisePricing data platform to look at this.

Let's start with the Aquanaut 5167A

According to Patek’s website the MSRP for this watch is listed at $29,875. This means that Patek’s authorized retailers must sell it at this price.

Here’s what data from our WisePricing platform is showing.

Data From WisePricing

Our data shows that since we've been tracking the Aquanaut 5167A the authorized retailers have all raised the prices to be exactly in line with Patek Philippe’s suggested retail price. Interestingly they didn’t do it all at the same time, as some retailers lagged others but they all did it in roughly the same period.

Set it and forget it?

Once that price has been set our data shows that authorized retailers have not changed their prices. Unlike other non-luxury brands, where pricing changes are frequent this does not appear to be the case for luxury brands.

But that doesn’t mean that authorized retailers will always follow this as you will see in another article later this week, which is why it’s important for luxury or ultra-luxury brands to use price-tracking platforms like WisePricing to help monitor their retailers.

In the world of luxury products both brands and retailers need to be aligned in their pricing strategies because any erosion in prices can be harmful to both the brand and retailer.

Before you go…

If you are a luxury brand or retailer selling luxury products interested in trying out WisePricing to make more data driven decisions on pricing that can improve margins and maintain trust email me back for a demo.

If you are a luxury brand or retailer and are interested in our research and advisory services to help determine pricing for your products, reach out to us to see how we can help you by leveraging our data and platform.