Quote:
Originally Posted by tony20009
I don't know what JLC, Patek's and other high end makers' customer profiles indicate, but my anecdotal observations tell me that the typical and target customer for those makes of watch are very globally mobile. Assuming they are, a number of factors may come into play, among them pricing and warranty considerations.
Sure, the makers are happy to sell the watch in any country, but ideally they'd sooner Americans buy their watches from American dealers. The easiest way to make that happen is to remove the price benefits (to the extent possible and where they exist) of buying overseas.
For example, I'm in the PRC, London, Tokyo and Paris quite a lot. I rarely buy luxury goods anywhere but in U.S. The exception is when I know the item simply isn't available for sale in U.S. or when it is on deep-discount clearance. Short of that, the money I save (taxes) is otherwise quite often given up when I declare it at Customs. Now "regular" stuff is a different story. There's plenty of that stuff that's cheaper to buy overseas, but I'm not going to make a trip there to get it and I'm not going to buy enough of it that it could be considered "stocking up" on something.
All the best.
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With good reason. I don't imagine these types of goods are listed at such great deals in those areas. From my experience you are definitely spot on with your observations. I've shopped for specific watches in Seoul, and while I think the sticker price was the same, the major factor was that they don't negotiate at all. Now it's possible that I am getting a false generalization of the area because from what i was told we were in a pretty high end mall. But even if that is so, I came back to the states and got something like 18% off MSRP for that same model at a pretty "high end strip mall" in my area. The guy in Seoul just didn't even wanna talk. Meanwhile, I don't know anybody around here that pays full MSRP.
Regarding that import fee...err well i'll just say, on this same trip, my wife got a bag in Korea and we told them about it coming back in. They literally looked at us like, why did you just tell us that!? They basically ended up chatting us up, playing with their toys a bit and let us go without a charge. I'm not going to spell it out here, but you get the point.