Today I thought I would write something a little different, so here's my top three things that I think could be improved in TAG Heuer world...
#1 The TAG Heuer Website.
TAG Heuer have fairly recently revamped their website and superficially it looks great. They've added animated watch faces so you can see the watch's hands moving and you can even operate the chronographs, which is fun and gives a bit of life to the same old computer generated renders. A few more real life photographs wouldn't go amiss; they seemed to add photo galleries to some pieces a while back but that seems to have gone by the wayside recently, which is a shame.
Also, the details on the website are absolutely woeful. The other day I wanted to double-check if the red hour markers on one of the Manchester United Heuer 01 Carrreras were actually lume or just paint and so I visited the website to check. There was no 'light/dark' picture, but since this was an older model it probably pre-dated that particular feature. So I clicked on the 'dial' section of the details panel at the bottom of the page and no word of a lie it literally said 'Black'. What use is that to anyone? It doesn't even mention that the dial is skeletonised for God's sake!
Compare this with one of TAG Heuer's closest competitors and it looks pretty damned bad. Breitling give you more information about the strap on their super cool Endurance Pro pieces than TAG Heuer give you about a whole watch, plus they give you pretty much every dimension you could ask for and it still annoys me to no end that TAG Heuer removed the part numbers from the main page and stuck them in a pointless drop down menu right at the bottom of the article page. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!
All in all, the website (though pretty to look at) leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to getting down to the nitty gritty. Even looking at the newly released Aquaracers it gives you the barest minimum details when it comes to the movement. It tells you the balance frequency and the power reserve and that it's automatic, but that's it. Oh, actually that's not quite true - it also helpfully tells you that it shows hours, minutes and seconds...
#2 Strap Availability and Compatibility
Watch guys (and gals) love straps; a new strap is an easy way to refresh a watch or to give it a whole new look, especially if you have a silver or white dial which will literally go with almost anything. But TAG Heuer treat their strap selections like an official secret and you honestly can't 'assume' anything. One downside of the whole bespoke strap/lug thing is that you can never quite be sure if a different strap will fit or not and unless TAG Heuer expressly tell you it will then you're digging in the dark.
The same goes for bracelets, I wondered if perhaps the BA0842 bracelet would fit the WAZ101A orange dial Formula 1... but the computer doesn't confirm it will. I think it will, logically it should given that there are other 43mm three handed Formula 1s that I 'assume' share the exact same case, but unfortunately that isn't necessarily so and I'm not really willing to order a £300 bracelet in the hope that it will fit.
The silly thing is that with a bit of thought and effort TAG Heuer could create a bracelet and strap section of their website and generate thousands if not millions of pounds of additional sales. If they put the effort in to show exactly which straps will fit your watch I'm sure their customers would get hooked and spend a fortune on building a collection of different options - I know I would!
#3 Non 'In-House' Movements
I'm not suggesting for a moment that TAG Heuer should take everything in house and I don't believe there is any need to do so. The whole 'in-house' thing is a bit of a red herring forced upon the industry when the Swatch group threw their toys out of their pram over supplying ETA movements to companies outside of their group. 'In House' does not automatically mean 'better', there are some perfectly adequate, reliable and well proven movements out there which perform just as well, if not better than the movements produced 'in-house' by the manufacturers.
The issue with TAG Heuer seems to be that they switched from ETA to Sellita (which is a clone movement) but they also seem to have gone for the lower quality model from the range available. To be honest, I am not the most technical person when it comes to watch movements, but this is something that comes up time and again in You Tube videos and articles and while I'm sure it's not something that really bothers a large proportion of TAG Heuer's customer base sooner or later I think they will need to address this for the sake of their standing within the more informed watch community (at the very least they should address the spinning rotor issue which is well known with these movements).
There really is no need for TAG Heuer to manufacture their own three hand movement (with the accompanying inevitable price rise and servicing cost) when there are already plenty of good movements available, indeed I really think the 'In House' thing should be kept for watches like the Monaco and the Carrera. Just choose a movement that is suitable for the price being charged for the watch... we really shouldn't be seeing watches costing £2000+ sharing movements with microbrand watches costing less than £500. Is it any wonder the fakers are buying the same movements these days?
Well there we are, three things I think TAG Heuer could improve on, and I didn't mention plastic movement holders once!
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