Table for one: a Bulova reproach

I come not to praise Bulova, but to bury it.

I have a problem with modern Bulova. Every time that I see this or that enthusiast enthuse about their newest Jet Pilot or Mil-ships I want to stick my nose in and puncture their joy. It is a reflex that I have resisted so far. Because it has operated as a reflex, I wanted to analyze this reaction and maybe put forward some rational for this animus.

I love vintage Bulova. I own several from 1940’s, 1950’s, and 1960’s. Bulova is not my favorite historically American watch company, but it nearly is. Bulova made handsome watches in many styles. They filled war time contracts and were the first to advertise on the new medium of television, not just the first watch company to advertise on television, the first advertiser of any sort.

Bulova watches in these decades housed Swiss movements, usually made at the Bulova factory in Biel. Early on Bulova controlled both ends of the watch manufacturing process and rarely used complete movements from other Swiss movement makers. (They would finish, modify, and assemble some.) A nice feature of vintage Bulova is that you can always date the movement by codes that the company leaves for you. There is less guessing in collecting vintage Bulova, as compared to smaller companies or rivals like Gruen or Benrus.

They were also innovators. They realized that electric watches were going to be part of the future. They created tuning fork technology that was many orders more accurate than what Hamilton and others were trying. The oscillations measured were more accurate than any balance wheel and were only eventually bested by quartz. The Accutron range of watches was introduced in 1960, the second electronic watch. Accutron technology was so accurate that NASA used Bulova timers and timing packages on forty-six different missions. An Omega may have been worn on the moon, but Bulova got the astronauts there.

I want to make it clear that foreign ownership of Bulova is not why I find myself not favoring the modern company. I am not jingoistic in that way. Bulova has had a film company conglomerate and a Hong Kong consortium as part of ownership in the past. Citizen bought them in 2008 from Loews, which started as a theater company and diversified into tobacco, hotels and watches (in 1979). Having a watch company control Bulova seems better than having a hotel chain controlling them. The thirty years under Loews ownership is not some sort of “golden age” for Bulova. I was wearing Gucci watches in the 1980’s and Fossil in the 1990’s. I have no memory of that chapter in Bulova’s history.

With the prologue out the way we can get down to a serious analysis of one idiosyncratic collector’s issues with a watch brand. (I can hear a twitter of excitement.) This isn’t science. It is barely opinion.

The Best Is [not] Yet to Come

A few years ago, my friend and I took our sons to see Ringo Starr’s travelling band of former stars, has beens, and never was’s. It broke no new ground. The band was in their twilight years and some, like Todd Rundgren, refused to look or dress their age. But we heard hits, hits we had forgotten, songs we didn’t like forty years ago that sounded much better live. It wasn’t edgy or new. It was the comfort food of rock music. And that is ok. Greatest hits can be ok. But, each of these artists was connected to the song. That’s Toto’s guitarist playing Toto. That’s Mr. Mister’s bassist singing whatever hit that was.

What is Bulova doing with its Frank Sinatra line? Here are some golden oldies for you. It’s modern, it’s vintage, just like Frank would have wanted. Is there any connection to Sinatra? No.

Did Sinatra wear Bulova? Hell no. Frank wore “good” watches. When Bulova sponsored his short-lived television variety show sixty years ago they gave him some watches. He gave the watches away. That’s the connection, that’s it. No more story. It looks like the Sinatra estate making a money grab. Ok, and Bulova creates an artificial story to push greatest hits recreations of its back catalog. You get his signature and his hipster hat. They re-name their own models as Sinatra’s hits. And when they don’t overtly brand it you get the Rat Pack, a celebration of second order talents and a third order watch. It is uninspired.

These are mostly old, old, Bulova designs with no connection to Sinatra. So little confidence does the company have that they think only this artificial connection will sell the merchandise.

Please Exit Through the Gift Shop

Another money grab by an estate with no discernible connection to Bulova is the Frank Lloyd Wright line. These are branded like gift shop watches. The overt branding robs these watches of any artistic cache that they might borrow from Wright. They are the equivalent of the poster that you hung in your dorm room when you went through your expressionist phase (“Kandinsky really speaks to me.”) Rather than just place a Wright work into the copying machine, why not pay some talented designer to follow that path and create something original? No, that can’t be done. Only the hits sell.

And these are the good ones. The Joseph Bulova collection is a comic reimagining of a classic 1920’s watch. The 1920’s were not Bulova’s Golden Age, or any wristwatch company’s for that matter. The less said about the Marc Anthony and Latin Grammy collections the better. These may as well be drop ship MVMT watches. The Apollo collection is downright insulting. It is merely a drop ship watch that says “Apollo” on it. It is pandering for pandering’s sake.

I can’t go through the whole Bulova line. There are open hearts that look into basic Miyota movements. There is mineral crystal where sapphire would be expected. Everything is too large in that Citizen sort of way. There are “jeweled” dials. There are call backs to popular watches of yesteryear, but all too large, rushed to the unwary and incurious.

All is not terrible (not a high standard of excellence). The Precisionist movements display a wonderful sweep for quartz. The Jet Star gives off enough of that 1970’s shag carpet vibe to be interesting. The Lunar Pilot is still a watch for giants. But what I am left with is the feeling that for every corporate decision, I would have done something different. What do I know? I know that Bulova must always sell its past glories. I know that Bulova must have some models in department store jewelry cases for when someone runs out of Father’s Day ideas. I don’t hold that against them. However, I do hold this against them:

Time to start over. There is so much history and potential in Bulova. It has name recognition that only a few companies have. It is being squandered.