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Show 07t» dimuauy ituu last year reacneu jozi million, the Swiss are understandably worried. Their exports have declined from 7 4 % of the world total in 1966 to 7 2 % last year, and well-financed, technologically advanced outsiders are eager to reach for more Foul! The most feared competitor is Japan's highly automated watch industry, which has captured 8 % of the global market and is growing fast, mainly with jeweled-lever watches that generally sell for $30 or more. Last year the Japanese jolted the Swiss by winning all but one of the prizes for wristwatches in Geneva's chronometer competition. the horological equivalent of the Olympic Games. The Swiss are still crying foul. The Japanese watches, they say, had oversize balance wheels for better performance and\^re never intended for the mass marke^'When you think of how the Germans k^i out to the Japanese in the camera inoVstry, you see why the Swiss watch incfttetry should be so concerned." says RobeV Forster, marketing vice president of Ornetea. Swiss watchmakers are also^>eing pressed by the Soviets, primaril^in the less expensive lines. The U.S.S^ has 6 % of the world export trade foi watches, and dumps another 3,000,000 movements a year that sell for as little as 500 apiece, mostly in Asia and Africa. Often these cheap pin-lever works turn up in bogus Swiss casings with labels that might easily be mistaken for some of the world's bes -known brands. In their richest export market-the U.S.-Swiss watchmakers face rising competition from domestic manufacturers in all price lines. U.S. Time Corp., which prices its Timex models as low as $7.95, claims to sell more than 5 0 % of watches bought in U.S. stores. Bul- ASSEMBLING OMEGA WATCHES ova, biggest American producer of jeweled- lever watches (1969 sales: $159 million), is an increasingly tough competitor in the medium- and hign-priced range. Swiss manufacturers lost their technological lead when Bulova developed the battery-powered Accutron a decade ago. The company has since sold more than 1,500,000 Accutrons and brought the price down as low as $110. Just a Minute. In a major counterattack, the Swiss at Basel last week showed off their new '"quartz" watches. Each uses microcircuitry and a vibrating quartz crystal in place of Accutron's tuning fork-and is said to be accurate within a minute a year, v. the Accutron's minute a month. Trouble is, early models will cost anywhere from $350 to well over $1,000. Last week Bulova began selling a few of its "Accuquartz" watches (U.S. price: $1,325) made in factories that it has in Switzerland. And those hustling Japanese have already begun limited production of quartz models; Swiss watchmakers, only half jestingly, say that they bought up the first batch of 100 for close study. The Swiss watchmakers' toughest problem is that their production operations are wildly fragmented while those )f their competitors are smoothly integrated. Under the protective wing of theVwatch cartel, known as the "convention," the industry remains splintered into moke than 2,000 firms, averaging fewer thaV50 employees each. This creates a ple!l|ora of more than 1,900 brands and rWiibits cost-atfting mass production. TnVcartel is mpw urging more concentration within trft industry, and some mergers^^/ere blpught off last year. Yet change^omeslat a glacial pace. After 40 year^^f cllse financial collaboration, O m e g V aid Tissot only recently agreed to bringVaeir marketing and pujgJyiiijjg-JiijigljJp under a single management. They will still produce their watches under separate brand names. ADVERTISING France's Model President As readers flicked through last week': issue of the French magazine L'Express\ more than a few did double takes. Thi familiar portly figure peering out froi a full-page ad for Brunswick Corp.': Mercury outboard motors seemed! strangely out of place. It was President Georges Pompidou - i n a year-old news photo taken off the coast of Brittany-seated in the stern of a small boat, right next to a 110-h.p. Mercury outboard. "It's for your safety, Mr. President," ran the message below. "We'd be telling tales if we claimed our only concern is your safety. It's important and even dear to us. But-and you'll understand-so is that of all the faithful users of our black engines." Caught by surprise, Pompidou did not understand at all. H e immediately petitioned the courts to force removal PHOTO FROM MERCURY AD Afrer all, it was not unflattering. of the ad. The courts complied in time to strip the President's photo from the 150,000 copies of L'Express sold in the Paris area, but the order came too late to affec t the 450,000 copies that had already been shipped outside the city; the ad stayed in them. Another magazine, Paris Match, which had also intended to carry the Mercury message, got the word from the court just before press time. Deleting the ad caused the magazine to be a day late, raising costs sharply. "We don't understand what the fuss is about," insisted Marcel Witner, Mer-cuiy's international manager. "We did not say Pompidou owned the boat." Besides, he said, in what sounded like an afterthought, "it is not an unflattering picture." More important for Mercury, the/e was all that free publicity resulting from the fuss. Nor was the publicity lost on other advertisers. For example, officials of the Lacoste apparel-and- toiletries firm surely noticed that their trademark, a curve-tailed crocodile, was sewn onto Pompidou's sports shirt. i|£Dste^u^£ast^OsIfL^ rench^^^^^^^^^^ Hunt for Sunken Treasure The invading explorers from nine different countries man an odd armada that ranges the long shoreline of Indonesia. Their expanding expeditions have already spent well over $100 million, and the cost rises steadily. The gamble, they figure, is worth the price. So the big rigs throb day and night as crewmen drill deep into the continental shelf. They are all racing to tap the same treasure- an undersea source of oil that is far from the dangerous uncertainties of the Middle East and close to the great Japanese market. T o make it even more attractive, the oil is "sweet crude," relatively free from pollution-producing sulfur. Geologists suspect that the undersea oilfields stretch in twin crescents from the coasts of Burma and Thailand along the Indonesian Archipelago to as far south as Australia. If drilling proves TIME, APRIL 20, 1970 |