your_man_in_Hamburg wrote:They could have gone bust due to any old reason. Plain traditional bad management, incorrect market analysis (quite expensive watches with very avant-garde design), over ambitious expansion, suicide technical development projects, ...
More information about Ventura's end is here (German language articles):
http://bildung.tagesanzeiger.ch/dyn/news/wirtschaft/783929.htmlhttp://www.uhrsachen.ch/tickdifferent/?p=34your_man_in_Hamburg wrote:Don't forget we have other players in the digital ivy league, so Ventura is not alone in hoping to make a buck in this market niche; Tag Heuer Microtimer, Sjöö Sandström Ocean Racer (now gone?), Junghans (perhaps not ivy league)
Tag Heuer Microtimer - yes, but most Tag Heuer watches are mechanical/analog (though they do have a history with high-end digitals). And WTF is a 1/
1000 sec stopwatch good for when you can't even operate a button manually with 1/
100 sec precision?!
The Sjöö Sandström Ocean Racer - never seen one and never would have noticed if you hadn't mentioned it in this forum some time ago.
Does it still exist? If not, it's just another one that didn't survive in this obviously very small market.
I wouldn't even regard it as digital watch, because it's main face is analog, the LCD is hidden (like it is on the Tag Heuer sixty-nine, and also the Tag Heuer Kirium).
Seems like digitals are only accepted in this world if they look like analog watches
.
Junghans are trying to enter the "digital ivy league" with their recent Mega 1000 edition (prices went up) - we'll see how they do there. At least they have a well-known name associated with quality.
Still, Ventura was the only company that focused
solely on high-end digital watches with avantgarde/minimalistic design (starting 1990 with "watch" by Flemming Bo Hansen). Well, they used to have analog watches too, but stopped this line last year (first sign of the demise?).
OTOH: if digital watches aren't widely accepted, this keeps out interest being something
special. Imagine we'd collect analog/mechanical watches like the rest of the world - we'd have to visit hundreds of forums