Brands: Bulova

These are mere random thoughts on watch brands which I am writing purely from my experience and perspective, which is no doubt different from yours. Feel free to add your thoughts if you think I am talking nonsense.

Bulova is possibly the hardest brand to write about when I look at the history of the brand. I own an Accutron from 1970, my father’s, which is by far my favourite. This does come from sentimentality of course, but it is just such a beautiful watch that I simply cannot resist it.

I have also owned some Accutron IIs which were well made timepieces with very impressive accuracy, but things seemed to have changed in the very recent future. Bulova makes some very poor watches currently and are mingling with the fashion brands at the bottom of the market which is a shame. This in turn can lessen the perceived value of the potentially more important watches they make and damage the brand overall.

The brand has re-issued a raft of vintage models and done so in a positive way, at least in terms of how well they replicate the originals, but is this not a little lazy and jumping on the bandwagon? This re-issuing of vintage watches is starting to get tiresome because it is easy for a brand to do this and requires lesser innovation and almost no design input.

Bulova, alongside far too many other brands, are symptomatic of the lack of innovation in the watch world today. How many watches do you see, for the mass market, that are genuinely new and which take a different approach? It is frightening how only the high-end is doing this and is just causing the lower-end brands to circle the drain faster than they already are.

The history of Bulova is diverse, hugely important and up there with the best of them, but it feels as if the brand is not utilising this as well as it could at this time. No matter what, I still have affection for the brand and especially for some of the vintage pieces (especially tuning fork models), but I would like to see a more considered approach taken to building for the longer term.