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Man who got 'gold' from gold watch dies
He advertised Piaget as 'most expensive,' and built an empire
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Published: January 8, 2009
v - Gedalio Grinberg, who at 15 sold his first clock in his native Cuba for $18, went on to amass a fortune in the United States by helping turn expensive wristwatches such as Piaget into widely advertised portable status symbols with mass appeal, died Sunday in Manhattan. He was 77.
Heather Cohen, a spokeswoman for the Movado Group, from which Grinberg retired last year as chairman, said he died of natural causes.
In the early 1960s, Grinberg started advertising in upscale magazines that the Piaget watches he then distributed were "the most expensive watch in the world." Though watches were still regarded as utilitarian necessities -- and though a few other Swiss watches may have been just as costly -- the seemingly perverse campaign worked brilliantly. More success followed.
Sales of Grinberg's company, which had several names over the years, grew to more than $500 million last year, from $175,000 in 1961, $5 million in 1969 and $130 million in 1993.
In 1988, Forbes said, "Grinberg helped make Americans conscious of their watches and made the glint of gold on a male wrist a status symbol."
Gedalio Grinberg was born in Quivican, Cuba, on Sept. 26, 1931. His father owned a jewelry shop, so he was able to secure an alarm clock when a shoemaker asked for one. That led to a little alarm-clock business. As a business student at the University of Havana, he expanded it to specialize in watches.
Grinberg said he was questioned and threatened with death by the revolutionary government of Fidel Castro. He, his wife and their two children fled to Miami on Aug. 16, 1960.
He knew no English and at first struggled in business. When two other refugees asked him to help set up a Piaget distributorship in New York, he jumped at the chance. Their entire inventory was in one suitcase.
The company first distributed other companies' Swiss watches. It then acquired watch companies, including Movado and Concord, to make its own.
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