
When I first got into watches, around 2015 or so, Seiko was the gateway drug. You didn’t get into watches without buying a Seiko, and specifically an SKX. It was the affordable watch. Any time anyone asked what their first watch should be, the answer was either the SKX or an Orient Bambino. In a recent article on Worn & Wound, my friend and colleague Zach Kazan pointed out that this has changed. Seiko’s ubiquity and popularity have waned to the degree that the watches he was introducing — new Seiko 5 colorways — had received little to no coverage and been subject to almost no chatter on forums or elsewhere. What happened to the golden child?
Zach offered some broad strokes that get at the biggest shifts that may have led to this sea change for Seiko:
But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the end of the SKX and the introduction of the new Seiko 5 Sports watches, along with a simultaneous climb upmarket in their other collections, represents a dividing line that changed the character of the brand and how we interact with it in a significant way.
That scrapes the surface, and accurately so. That said, I think there’s much more to it, including increased competition, price increases without any improvements, and a release strategy that engendered a mix of boredom and alienation.
Remember, back in 2015 when I first got into watches, the microbrand segment was still in its infancy. There were certainly OGs like Halios and Raven, but brands like Nodus and Lorier didn’t exist. Brew had just launched. Studio Underd0g was still six years off. All of this is to say that the landscape for affordable mechanical watches looked very different and was still dominated by big brands like Seiko. But microbrands did happen, en masse, and all of a sudden, there was a sea of opportunity and a surfeit of options for even the most cash-strapped horological neophyte. And since the go-to point of entry for a new brand was a tool watch, Seiko had a lot of competition. There were thinner watches (most affordable Seikos never wore well, but people love to say they did; in reality, they wore better than they should have, but were still rather towering), better specced watches, and frankly, more attractive watches. As time went on, it wasn’t just microbrands that were encroaching: X brand replicas and straight-up fakes were everywhere. You could get your entry-level Seiko fix for less than an actual entry-level Seiko.
By 2019, Seiko was convinced that the SKX was dying, and the brand made sure of it by discontinuing the model in all forms. It was replaced by the far more wearable but less impressively specced Seiko 5 Sports line. But as Zach details in his article, that watch never caught on with the enthusiast community like the SKX had. It didn’t carry the Diver’s qualification, didn’t have a screw-down crown, and the fact that it seemed to be a good watch appeared to work against it. I bought one and was blown away at first, but quickly sold it. It was fine, but nothing special, and I couldn’t mod it (one of the best things about the SKX).
But the SKX is just the paragon of Seiko’s decline. Like many brands have over the past 10 years, Seiko started increasing prices, notably around 2021. My analysis is that Seiko recognized its own popularity, understood that it was probably undervaluing its watches, and sought to address both. Some felt this was perfectly reasonable (like my friends Andrew and Everett at the 40 & 20 Podcast), and it probably was. But that’s not how people took it. People loved Seiko in large part for the value. (If you ever owned an SKX, you know people weren’t buying them for the exceptional QC.) The watches’ value is what made them part of the enthusiast zeitgeist, and from there, the community explored the brand’s higher tiers. But when that value disappeared with price increases that weren’t accompanied by any quality improvements, so too did the community’s tolerance for otherwise just ok watches.

The Grand Seiko SBGJ249 was inspired by “the delicate ripples the warm wind creates over the many thousands of lakes and ponds throughout Japan.” Obviously.
Then there was Seiko’s approach with Grand Seiko of flooding the market with a deluge of SKUs that are impossible to keep track of. You may think that Grand Seiko’s actions have no impact on Seiko’s standing, but I’ll remind you that the second part of Grand Seiko is Seiko, and any sentiment felt about one will be extrapolated to the other. The problem is, Seiko just kept beating a dead horse with increasingly thin claims of inspiration and a full rainbow of colors and trees and lakes and all sorts of crap that everyone became numb to. Do you remember the snowflake? Everyone loved the snowflake! But Seiko (by way of Grand Seiko) once again misplayed the market. It saw something popular and did it over and over and over again until it wasn’t exciting anymore. It hasn’t done this as much with its Seiko lines, but it has focused almost all of its limited editions on young, trendy street-style brands and other things that have minimal footholds in the enthusiast community. That’s led to a brand with which many people struggle to connect, which makes it a brand that people aren’t going to think of as much.
What happened to Seiko? When microbrands started proliferating, Seiko’s market appeal started to wane. To compete against these new brands and maintain its position as the go-to entry-level tool watch, it would have had to drive down prices (and probably quality). It wasn’t willing to do so, so it decided to reposition itself, if only slightly higher — maybe Seiko would now be the go-to second watch instead of the go-to first watch. The flood of contrived inspirations and super-niche collabs was just a safe play as it sought to establish itself in a new segment. Seiko didn’t go anywhere; it just saw the writing on the wall and chose to abandon the mantle of the affordable darling.