Is Tissot a luxury brand watch?

Is Tissot a luxury brand watch?

The short answer is no, it isn’t.

The longer answer entails entering into a bit of speculation about the meaning of the term “luxury” and its difference with the term “high-end”.

The Swiss Federation of Watch Manufacturers, in its reports, divide cleanly watches into four different categories.

1. Up to 200 CHF
2. From 200 to 500 CHF
3. From 500 to 3.000 CHF
4. From 3.000 CHF onwards

As you can see, this is a rather convenient, but very sketchy classification. We would get fashion watches in the first category, good watches in the second category, affordable luxury watches in the third category, and luxury watches in the fourth. But I see a LOT of difference from a watch in the 3.000 CHF range and one in the 10.000 CHF one. So, it seems to me that there is something lacking in there. And cold data seems to suggest that the cutoff threshold for true luxury lies indeed in this range, that is around 10.000.

I would personally consider the range from 3.000 to 10.000 CHF high-end, and everything over it true luxury.

And I am quite convinced a lot of experts in the horological field would agree with me. The high-end world mostly features excellent, but industrially made timepieces, like Rolex and Omega. Anything above that is made in smaller quantities, and generally has much more human intervention, especially for making the details, like decorations, or manufacturing special complications which are quite uncommon (and costly).

So, to get back to your question, if we check Tissot we see that it manufactures about 3.5 million watches per year - so definitely, not hand-made. And also, that they start with very affordable and beautiful models, like this one:

Which is a Tissot Heritage Visodate Automatic - a very fine watch indeed, especially given its price - at around 350CHF to the public, up to models like the Tissot Heritage Navigator Automatic

Or the lovely Tissot Chemin de Tourelles Skeleton Automatic

And both of them - in their regular models (that is, no Limited Editions), have a price of less than 2.000 CHF. So, at best they fall into that “affordable luxury”niche we have talked about before.

Despite that, which might seem very limiting, both are lovely watches. The first is a true world timer, that is, can measure time zones around the globe, and the other is a skeleton watch (well, not THAT highly skeletonized, but lovely to look at all the same, as you can see).

For comparison, a true luxury skeleton watch would be this:

And I am pretty sure everyone can understand the difference at a glance between the two. Also, there is a price multiplier of possibly 100 X - but this is a Vacheron Constantin, a member of the Holy Trinity of watches, and one of the inventors of (let’s say, semi-industrially made) skeletonized watches back in the beginning of the last century.

If you are interested about what makes the real difference between a nice watch and a true luxury watch, you can check this other answer:

Franz Rivoira's answer to What are the things that make luxury watches so much more valuable and expensive than other lower quality, cheaper watches?

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