Ventura has gone bust!

[your_man_in_Hamburg]

My local Ventura dealer surprised me by telling me that Ventura has gone bankrupt. So, if you are seeking a truly limited edition LCD watch, carpe diem...
Hats off for their courageous effort to sell top of the line digital watches. To bad it had to end this way. (See also www.ventura.ch)

[rewolf]

Oh s..t, this is really bad news!
It's such a shame that people are willing to pay silly money for boring, dull and often ugly "high end" analog watches, but not for digital ones.
This was the ONLY company that developed and produced high-end digitals, but there are SO MANY that offer analog watches in the same price range or higher, and these find enough buyers to keep them alive.
What went wrong? Not enough marketing? Too many new models? Of course it's difficult to establish a new name on the market. And then their recent designs (SPARC rx, v-tec sigma/zeta) weren't very appealing to me - I liked the kappam but it never reached the market.
The v-tec alpha design is still iconic and will always be. If the brand isn't totally forgotten in a few years, the v-tec alpha could become a very sought-after collector's item. And the d_sparc will always be the first automatic digital watch.

So I hope my d_SPARC will never need a service. Maybe I should stop wearing it to preserve it - it could gain value... There aren't many of it, or people that have one don't sell it, I've seen less than 10 on ebay in the last 3 years.

Just for the memories, here some pictures I made recently for the What watch will you be wearing on Friday??? tread:

Ventura d_SPARC px steel (W10S)

And now I'll download every file I can get from Ventura's homepage.

Farewell Ventura

[Fitron]

What went wrong? Not enough marketing? Too many new models?

I don't think so, from reading other watch forums there is a real snobbery about digi's and how they're not proper watches. A real watch has to be a mechanical one it appears. Also , there's probably a hangover from all the Casio "cheapies" from the 1980's sticking around which ain't good for any high end digis. I suspect only G-shock will hang in there on their reputation. A loss though and it makes me appreciate Jeff's efforts all the more.

[ronaldheld]

I thought that was old news. There are problems with many people accepting quartz watches, with analog displays more acceptable.
The fact that no one has boiught Ventura is a bad sign.

[your_man_in_Hamburg]

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, ...

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)

But you are right. Mechanical watches enjoy a much better aura. Ironically, the most advanced mechanical movements at the cutting edge of development (if one can say so about mechanical movements) have parts manufactured with methods borrowed from the solid state circuit world. That is, these parts are made with methods developed for e.g. digital watches.

[rewolf]

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.html
http://www.uhrsachen.ch/tickdifferent/?p=34

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

[LEDluvr]

This news about Ventura is sad news indeed.

Rewolf - could you be so kind as to give us a brief synopsis of what those two artices linked in your post say about the bust of Ventura?
For those uf us who are non-German speakers/readers... Thanks!

[rewolf]

I knew someone would ask this
It's a bit much, and I'm not familiar with business language, so I tried Babelfish. The result is so amusing that I simply can't resist posting it (with a few corrections to make it at least understandable)
http://bildung.tagesanzeiger.ch/dyn/news/wirtschaft/783929.html via Babelfish:

High-quality digital clocks bring Volketswiler Ventura into the bankruptcy
Ventura Watch was known for Design-oriented watches and focused since two years fully on high-quality digital watches. Now Ventura deposited the balance.

Since 1990 stood the Volketswil Ventura Design on time for wrist-watches, with which the time indicator was reduced to the substantial. Shortly after the company was founded, the digital clock "Watch" of the designer Flemming Bo Hansen became with 50'000 copies a huge success: A rectangular flat steel housing that encloses a digital display of only four large numbers. It made it quickly into the permanent collection of the museum of modern art in New York. Later Ventura made sensation with mechanical clocks, sketched by the Zurich architect and designer Hannes Wettstein.

Two years ago Ventura founder Pierre A. Nobs wanted to secure their unmistakableness with a courageous decision of the brand. Instead of continuing to compete in hard contest price segment from 1000 to 5000 CHF for mechanical clocks against countless competitors, Nobs decided to go for a niche: Ventura should become the brand for technically innovative, Swiss-made digital watches with high Design quality.

Success took time
But Nobs needed funds. In 2005 A group of investors took over of the firm founder the majority, the share capital by 500'000 to 900'000 CHF was supplemented. But success with the new positioning at the market took time: Was the turnover in 2004 still 5.5 million CHF, it sagged 2006 to approximately 2 million, and in the current year was "the course of business" even worse, as Pierre A. Nobs in a report writes the media.
On Thursday Ventura announced bankruptcy.
Nobs explained, the promised investments weren't made, and accuses the new owner to have pulled the plug too fast: The shareholders which were active in the private Equity and Hedge fund business would have "obviously their own conception concerning the long-termness". Reto Suter, director of Horizon21 private Equity in Pffaefikon SZ and board of directors president of Ventura denies this: "we did not see the perspectives ultra-short-term and also not medium-term". But expenditure and yield could not have been brought to the equilibrium.

By the bankruptcy of Ventura eight persons are concerned in Volketswil and four in the German branch in Nuremburg (babelfish: peppering castle). Pierre A. Nobs raises steep reproaches: In the surrounding field of the bankruptcy "board of directors president and shareholders have served themselves still extensively with valuable clocks from the stock", while the coworkers had to wait for their wages. Ventura executive board president Reto Suter did not want to express himself to these reproaches.

[rewolf]

http://www.uhrsachen.ch/tickdifferent/?p=34 by babelfish (with some corrections):

Ventura - bankruptcy despite clock boom
12. September 2007 in novelties by tickdifferent
Actually we wanted to present to you in here different novelties of the Volketswiler digital clock farmer and "manufacture électronique" Ventura. Unfortunately it came different. Ventura was in financial difficulties two years ago and decided a reorientation, which consisted above all of the fact that one wanted to concentrate in the future fully on the production of high-valued digital watches (we reported here).

Industry foreigner at power
Company founder ­Pierre Nobs looked for financial sources in the consequence and found it in the surrounding field of Hedge fund managers, who showed up enthusiastically by the idea and assured an appropriate funds support. On five years the laid out Business plan for the restructuring planned that in the first two years still on red numbers had to be counted, the "BREAK Even" was intended for the third year. In accordance with Pierre Nobs his Ventura was actually fully in the context of this plan, despite compared with the previous years reduced turnover. The investors had however obviously different conceptions of "long-term commitment", displaced Nobs of all positions without further ado and used a new "Interim CEO". Shortly after, "the plug was pulled", although, according to Nobs, there were appropriate open accounts payable in a framework, which would not have required the drastic measure of the balance depositing yet.

The pipeline would be full…
Nobs gives himself optimistically and does not want give up his life's work - he is intensive on the lookuot for new partners with whose assistance he can secure himself the bankrupt's estate, in order to make a new beginning. "I will however certainly mess araound any more with ` Financiers ', but only with persons, who have a a genuine, respectable background in the clock industry, and whose horizon goes futher than the next quarter result. Our pipeline is full - many novelties would be ready, several components are already produced ­und could be supplied by the suppliers within short period. Also drafts exist of Paolo Fancelli for a long expected successor of the legendary "Watch" - a simple digital clock in a price segment of 600-700CHF, progressed very far, for which trade and final customers actually wait already longer. This potential best seller was also a component of our five year plan for the Turnaround of Ventura. I hope naturally much that this clock can be nevertheless still realized soon."

Service and repairs: unclearly
The question is not yet clarified, how it will go on with service and repairs for existing Ventura clocks - according to Nobs statements, he is currently working on a solution. Spare parts would be present in principle, are however for the time being still blocked in the bankrupt's estate. Until one knows details will depend thus also on how rapidly the bankruptcy proceedings are completed. We will inform you naturally here, as soon as we know more.

[Fitron]

I have to ask anyone not British - do you know what Nobs is slang for over here???? I cannot read the postings without laughing, I guess I still have a childish sense of humour, sorry.

[rewolf]

I had no idea, so I asked my favourite translator. Now I know Not the best name to enter the US/British market

[LEDluvr]

Thanks Rewolf... funny translation but I got the jist of it. Nobs and all!
Hopefully Mr. Nobs will get new investors and the company will be re-born.

[LEDluvr]

I guess you could say those investors who pulled the plug were a bunch of nobs!

[Fitron]

guess you could say those investors who pulled the plug were a bunch of nobs!

And you can add everybody who sneers at digital's 'cos plainly they don't know a quality item like the Ventura. The fools.

[LEDluvr]

And you can add everybody who sneers at digital's 'cos plainly they don't know a quality item like the Ventura. The fools.

I second that.

[retroleds]

Darn, I tried so many times to get one of those. Now they are a rare collectible.

[ronaldheld]

ADs should still have them in stock. IMO, they are nice looking but need more work functionally(more accuracy and ditch the scroll).

[rewolf]

... IMO, they are nice looking but need more work functionally(more accuracy and ditch the scroll).

I think the same. The scroll wheel on the v-tec was never as good as advertised, IMO it lacked mechanical feedback. It was hard to decide between the v-tec alpha and the d_sparc px just by the looks, but once I had played a while with the wheel I decided against it.

And what I'll never get is why a watch for 1500€ isn't rated for better accuracy than any other cheap quartz watch. I costs leess than 1€ per watch to make it more accurate. Funny enough, their mechanical watches were "certified chronometers", but with the electronic ones they didn't care - maybe this would have lead to better acceptance within the market...

[ronaldheld]

to be fair, I got them to adjust it to about - 2 seconds/month.
The shorting again of the scroll make me think that it is not a good design feature.

[your_man_in_Hamburg]

Just some additional comments,

Bagger & Gehring here in Hamburg have a handful of leftover digital Veturas, if you are looking for some very "limited" items. http://www.bagger-gehring.de

The Sjöö & Sandström Ocean Race Chronograph (OCR), is an all-digital sports watch with special features for the yacht racing crowd. I have the impression it was manufactured for a short period only. In any way, it only stayed on the Sjöö&Sandström homepage for a few years.

Yes, as an owner of a v-tec alpha, I agree that the "tactile design" of the crown (Easy Wheel, or whatever) does not meet the overall design standard of the watch. No big surprise really, once you have seen what kind of mechanics that produce the feeling and the clickety-click noises that go along with the scrolling. (I took a look after my v-tec alpha had ground to a halt the last time. Yep, it is currently away for its second repair.)

Thanks for the link to the Uhrsachen blog!

[rewolf]

... I took a look after my v-tec alpha had ground to a halt the last time. Yep, it is currently away for its second repair.

That's really bad! Do you know what the problem was/is? Is there still a Ventura service?

[ronaldheld]

The service center is the US is up. Mine is there for an alarm problem.