Originally Posted by
chaadster
...what they call "their movement" appears to be just assembly of a Swiss quartz design, but yet we have in Pennsylvania both RGM and Kobold watch companies, who not only design and manufacture their own mechanical movements, but also make their own cases, true feats of watchmaking. When Shinola claims Detroit is the watchmaking capitol, it smacks of arrogance, and implicitly ignores what any watch buff would say are the more impressive achievements of RGM and Kobold.
Intrigued by this, I went and checked out Kobold watches. They sell a line of watches clearly marked "Made in Nepal." Then I checked out a couple other models which caught my eye:
- The Langley, one of their more "affordable" watches at $1750. Quartz movement, made in... Switzerland.
- The Spirit of America, not cheap $3000+, a manual-wind watch, with "Swiss-made ETA caliber 6497" movement.
- In fact most of their watches appear to have the following attribution, or something similar: "Built in USA using domestic and imported components."
Kind of like Shinola...
Now maybe Kobold did things differently three years ago when this was posted, but if so, it appears that they have changed their manufacturing model more toward the Shinola end of things, since...