The tagline is a bit excessive, I will admit, and telling a company that has an estimated turnover of 615 million CHF in 2024, which landed it in 15th place for turnover in 2024. Despite the obvious fact that the TAG Heuer company is far from being in a bad financial position, especially with one of the most valuable conglomerates in the world in LVMH, behind them.

The catalyst behind this article is the new watches in the Formula 1 line. TAG Heuer had the easiest money milking opportunity in the industry after the announcement that they are back as the official timekeeper of the F1 race. At first, it looked promising. At LVMH watch week, they released an all-new model within the F1 line. Granted, I did not like the piece, and the reception was mixed. The one thing people were clamoring for was a remake of the original F1 TAG Heuer watch.

In early 2024, before TAG Heuer became the timekeeping partner of the F1, they released a remake of the original F1 pieces with the American fashion brand Kith. These pieces were well received for the most part, the main thing people took issue with was the limited nature of the watches and the price. The design and functionality were fine, but with the advent of the Omega X Swatch Moonswatch watches fans expected something in that price range, not more than double the Moonswatch price.

In 2025, at Watches and Wonders, we finally saw it, the remake everyone had been waiting for. TAG Heuer finally released the F1 remake, and fans loved it. For about 15 minutes, then they saw the price. These watches highlight the biggest issue with TAG Heuer, and that is their pricing.

The price of these watches is just shy of 2.000$, at face value that is not bad for a TAG Heuer watch, that pricing sits inline with many of their other quartz offerings. The big issue I have with these new pieces is that this is not what fans were asking for; the fans were asking for a TAG piece in line with those made by Omega and Swatch in their collaboration. Fans were willing to spend around a thousand dollars for a fun summer watch that was a perfect announcement to the world that TAG Heuer was back.

Instead, fans became unhappy. These watches are cool, there is no doubt about it, but these watches are not 2.000$ cool, especially when it comes to value for money. The solargraph movement is a decent one, developed by the Citizen group. Did these watches need this new fancy movement? The answer is an astounding no.

What is going on within TAG Heuer that facilitates this, because this is far from the only issue they have had with pricing? As someone who works with a shop that sells TAG Heuer watches, they have told me that over one month, TAG Heuer had two price hikes, the first was around 5% on average, with one watch going up 40%, and the second hike was around 2%. This is an insane way to price your watches. Yes, there have been external factors like the impending US tariffs and the increase in material costs, but not enough to justify an increase of 40% on one watch.

In the past two years, TAG Heuer has had an unusual number of Ceo’s, this has caused the brand to change direction and focus too many times to count. This has led to them becoming one of the most confusing watch brands in the world. They have a fantastic heritage to draw from; instead, they go forward with the avant-garde spirit in new designs and features, which is not a bad thing, but when they have raised prices and the quality has not fully followed suit, the problem becomes evident.

What makes this so sad and disappointing is that they have shown glimpses of greatness. We all saw them make one of the best chronographs on the market with the Carrera glassbox and expanding that with the chronosprint version and collaboration with Porsche.

Deep in my heart I have hope, under new leadership I hope they are able to turn the ship around and sail on calmer seas, since this brand is so historic and they can be fantastic when they want to.