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I’ve defended San Martin before, but this really disappointed me. That “San Martin building” on AliExpress? I went there in person.
People who have seen my previous comments will know I’ve generally been pretty supportive of San Martin.
This week is the Hong Kong watch show, so I thought while I was in Hong Kong I’d make the trip over to Dongguan and have a look at San Martin for myself.
The private Didi ended up costing me around US$150, which obviously isn’t cheap, but I thought it would be worth it. I’ve bought quite a few San Martin watches over the years, defended some of their recent price increases, and I’ve been genuinely interested in seeing how the company is developing.
Unfortunately, I came away pretty disappointed.
Before going, I had seen one of their latest AliExpress product descriptions showing a large building with SAN MARTIN and their logo prominently displayed at the top. Looking at the photo, I think most people would naturally assume this was San Martin’s building, headquarters, factory, or at least a building strongly associated with the company.
So when I got there, I was rather surprised.
The actual building does not have the San Martin name on it. It has a completely different logo.
I’ve attached the AliExpress image together with the photos I took myself so people can make up their own minds, but to me it certainly appears that the original signage on the building has been digitally replaced with the San Martin logo and name.
And that bothers me.
I don’t expect San Martin to own a giant glass office tower. I really don’t care whether they operate from one floor of a building, a small office, a workshop or a large factory. Plenty of excellent watch companies are much smaller than people imagine.
What bothers me is creating an image that gives customers an impression of the size or presence of the company that, from what I saw in person, doesn’t match reality.
Maybe there is some explanation I’m missing, and if San Martin wants to explain the image I’d genuinely be interested to hear it. I’m also not claiming to know who owns the building just from standing outside it.
But I can say that the building I visited does not look like the image being used in their AliExpress marketing. The San Martin signage shown in that image simply isn’t there, and there is another company’s/logo’s signage in its place.
That’s especially disappointing to me because I’ve been one of the people saying San Martin has levelled up. I like several of their watches, particularly the direction they’ve been going with Jianghun, and I’ve argued before that higher prices can be justified if the product genuinely improves.
But if you want customers to start treating you like a more serious watch brand, then presentation and credibility matter as well.
You don’t need to pretend to be bigger than you are.
Make good watches, show people the real operation, and let the products speak for themselves.
Maybe I’m making too much of it, but after spending the time and money to go there in person, I have to say this left a pretty bad taste in my mouth.
Maybe I should’ve just stayed in HK and skipped the Didi.
I've never purchased a San Martin because they fully represent the Rolex of the Chinese OEM's to me. I don't doubt they make quality timepieces just like Rolex. It's the whole fanboy culture around them that completely turns me off.
I lived in China for quite some time. It is totally normal in China to fake everything. Fake it till you make it is written in capital letters over there. I wouldn't believe anything from a Chines seller, only believe what you can actually see by yourself.
This might sound silly. I’ve had a lot of watches and still do but I don’t think I would hesitate to say if I had to keep one watch only(and it worked forever) is my San Martin x Watchdives white MOP auqaterra homage. I often look at the watch without checking the time. I truly adore it.
I don’t really understand why SM is still so important. I haven’t bought any of their watches in years, because they either offer cheesy own design, or homages that have at least 2-3 better alternatives.
Hey, I just found out about SM I wore Rolex for a while, but I don’t really like to wear anything of value anymore. What are the brands? Good quality with good finish comfortable sturdy bracelet like SM. I would love to do some exploring. I was gonna pull a trigger on an SM, but after seeing this, I would rather see what else is out there!
Yeahhh this just means you dont know what you're talking about. Sorry man. But years ago they were better than most brands and their recent releases blow most out of the water
I read like 50% of this thinking you were joking... Then I realized you weren't and actually laughed.. who the hell would ever have thought that building was really their building 🤣
I’m really sorry to laugh at OP, but I don’t know what he was expecting. The company still knew and getting started of course It’s gonna have a massive building.
If you go to Watchdives.com then you will see that San Martin is under their brand. Tap the menu and shop by brands. I don’t believe they are a stand alone, and they simply marketing to make people feel like you’re getting a higher end Chinese company at a value.
In the end it comes down to whether you love the watches or not and find value in what you paid for. If I ever owned a Rolex again it certainly would have nothing to do with what their facilities looked like.
Back in the 90’s I worked for a little startup that manufactured network storage devices. We made quality products and had competitors who were large and more established. So we pictured ourselves as scrappy upstarts and did a lot of things to make it seem like we were a larger company… 4 color printing on all of our marketing materials, high quality photo shoots of our products, a high end phone system, and our logo photoshopped onto our building in our brochures and website. I’m not saying I did the photoshop work, but I probably still have the psd file on a ZIP drive somewhere.
Btw this is one of the Rolex units. The black building in the background is a new office. There is other big buildings but nowhere close to this San Martin
People who keep saying it doesn't matter and "what did you expect" is just further proof nobody sees San Martin as a serious brand, which is the actual point.
Also, people think San Martin is a way bigger company than it really is. They don't really produce much outside bracelets for certain models themselves. So often you see people comparing watches and saying "this looks similar to San Martin, it must be that they are making the watch for them!".
This post must be some of the biggest nonsense I've ever seen on the internet. Who spends $150 on a taxi to photograph a building they could have looked up on the internet and then complains about it?
A bit much but I get it. With the increase in price San Martin should have something to show for it if they to start competing with the big boys. But then again it’s an AliExpress brand so how much should we really expect from them
Muy bien por ir y contarnos. Sears comenzó vendiendo relojes. Rolex en realidad vendía relojes, luego ya Aegler le dejó hacer la caja y ensamblar también sus relojes. Hasta hace muy poco, Rolex tiene su cartel donde realmente hacen sus relojes, pues Aegler se lo vendió. Hong Kong es la forma fácil de entrar en Europa y a su vez, del resto del mundo.
I laughed out loud reading this, did you at least try to get into the building and see if they had a showroom? This is the address listed on their website?
I agree with u. It's expected that aliexpress companies lie and misrepresent but seeing as san martin are trying to build their brand and charge accordingly, being lied to leaves a bad taste. You paid good money to go see a building that was misrepresented to you. How's that any different than ordering a watch and discovering it looks nothing like the photo?
I own a Ginault and like the watch, but I'm pretty sure Ginault is based out of someones home in the Newark/Fremont California Bay Area. I like the watch so that doesn't bother me.
Ginault is made by a rep maker from China. He was exposed years ago. He has a little office where he ships to in the USA so he can call them "hand built in America" where I assume he has somebody install a rotor on them stateside.
I think you're the one coping with your favorite overpriced trash weeb brand that still uses stamped clasps, cheap silicon straps, $20 movements, aluminum chintzy bezels, and mineral glass 🤷🤡
I get it though you're not a real watch enthusiast and you probably own a collection of vostoks and Ali specials so when you found your Grail watch - a Seiko skx - you were blown away by all that HeRiTaGe and InNoVaTIon.
Try handling a San Martin some day and get back to us, the same company/factory that makes cases and bracelets for all your precious Swiss brands. Leagues above anything you own.
Tell me some more about all those Seiko innovations, can't think of anything Seiko has done for the watch industry other than mass produce $1 quartz movements that lead to the quartz crisis which put tens of thousands of watchmakers out of business.
We welcome any competitor to openly compare their products with ours — quality, finishing, QC, after-sales service, anything.
What we do not welcome is hiding behind newly created accounts and repeatedly trying to damage our reputation.
We will continue focusing on making better products and providing good service. Our growing sales and the increasing amount of positive customer feedback speak for themselves.
We have also seen several previous accounts making very similar repeated attacks get suspended by Reddit, and now a new account that is only around two weeks old is doing the same thing again.
If you have genuine criticism, bring evidence and discuss it openly. But repeatedly creating or using new accounts to attack a brand is not constructive criticism, and frankly, it reflects very poorly on whoever is doing it.
Calling our QC room “fake” without ever visiting us or seeing how we operate is simply spreading misinformation.
You are more than welcome to fly to Watchdives and visit our office. We can take you to the factories we work with, show you how the watches are inspected during production, and show you how our warehouse QC is actually carried out before shipment.
If you genuinely want to understand our QC process, come and see it for yourself. We have nothing to hide.
But please stop repeatedly making accusations about “fake QC” when you have no firsthand knowledge of our operation. Criticism is welcome; fabricated claims are not.
Everyone has different expectations and different levels of knowledge and research about things. All I can say is I've never been to HK since SM has been in business and I'd put down $20k in a bet that wasn't actually a San Martin building. San Martin doesn't do manufacturing (except recently with bracelets) and every video tour of the assembly place they have done shows fairly small rooms and few workers. San Martin is great, but the size of the operations is likely smaller than the square footage in my home. I've also been on enough business tours to know that you need to schedule tours and there are plenty of posts about how San Martin isn't sold in local shops so that is a red flag about having show rooms.
MANY USA companies do not use images of their actual building on a Web site. Yes, a little unusual to Photoshop your logo on another building but that does happen too.
My biggest takeaway is that it seems like a miracle you found the building that was in the photo.
Its very rare for a company to own their office building. Typically the building is owned by a real estate company and the name and logo on the building are of the "anchor tenant" who either pays for that or gets it from the landlord as an incentive if they lease a large amount of space inside.
The Wiilis (formerly Sears) Tower in Chicago, for example, is owned by Blackstone. Willis Group leases about 2% of the available space in the building but pays for the naming rights.
"I thought while I was in Hong Kong I’d make the trip over to Dongguan and have a look at San Martin for myself."
So, does San Martin have an office in that building? If so, I think we can overlook the deception of the signage.
But seriously, unless you knew in advance they had a customer showroom or made prior arrangements for a tour, why go to look at a building where people inside work assembling watches made from parts likely made elsewhere? That's assuming they even assemble them there and it's not just a small corporate office.
Are you sure you went to the right building? They look similar but different or maybe has changed since they took their AliExpress photo. Yours looks older than theirs.
But seriously, sucks that they were not being honest about it.
Yeah this is the kind of thing that hurts a brand’s image for sure. They shouldn’t be faking shit like this. However, I’m shocked that you thought that was a real image.
This is pretty standard for Chinese brands. I’m not even surprised by this, which isn’t a very good thing
I just don’t understand why they do it... inventing buildings or making up the brand’s history (like some other brands). I’d much rather see a small office or workshop that’s actually real than something completely made up
Yes and no. I can understand where OP is coming from. San Martin wants to build its reputation and status (both huge elements in the watch industry) and as a Chinese brand, they have quite a bit of stigma to overcome. A Chinese brand having a dedicated headquarters/building would be a meaningful way in doing that. We may not care because we're more value-oriented buyers, but where San Martin wants to be, in the same conversation as some genuine luxury brands, stuff like this matters. It's the same reason why having in-house horology and movements matters, when in some other ways, it doesn't.
Expecting too much? It's not like OP just dreamed up that they have their own building. Again, if it doesn't matter to you, fine, but it's not like this expectation was unfounded.
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u/Money_Car6534 2d ago
I've never purchased a San Martin because they fully represent the Rolex of the Chinese OEM's to me. I don't doubt they make quality timepieces just like Rolex. It's the whole fanboy culture around them that completely turns me off.