Swiss Army Wristwatch Marketing Strategy?

I'm not into fancy wristwatches.  Nor into the ultra-cheap digital-display kind either.  Moreover, I'm not a mechanical movement snob: battery-powered does the job without the need for expensive periodic cleanings and maintenance.

Eons ago, I bought an Omega Seamaster at a PX in Korea and wore it for 20 years or longer.  But it didn't keep time well, and the maintenance costs drove me to cheapo digitals and Swatches.

In the late 1990s I finally settled on a nice line of watches from Victorinox, the Swiss Army knife company.  Black case and matching rubbery band: nice looking and less than $100 back then.  Over the years I bought two more similar watches.  Then that line disappeared.

In 2013 my wife bought me a different style Victorinox in Cologne (Köln) Germany -- a nice-looking gray item with a matching cloth band.  But this cost close to $300.  For the last few years the Victorinox watches I've seen in their London store have prices starting on the order of $400, a figure I just confirmed by checking their Web page.  That's more than I care to spend on a timepiece.

The only option was to shop other brands.  I did buy a nice Skagen watch at the fancy mall at Shepherd's Bush in London a few months ago, and use it on dressier occasions.  And a few weeks ago I bought a sporty Wenger watch while on a cruise ship.  The former sold for about $200, the latter for around $150.

Now it seems that Wenger was a maker of Swiss Army watches that was bought by Victorinox in 2005.  Wenger's knives have been phased out, and the brand is now used for travel items and watches.

My take is that by bringing in lower-priced Wenger watches, this allowed Victorinox watches to be moved upscale from where they were when I first started buying them.  The result is that, now that I know what happened, I can still but moderately-priced Swiss Army type wrist watches, but not the Victorinox branded ones.