Hi there,

Long time member, small time poster.

Ive found enjoyment in the hobby of horology and am dabbling with the idea of buying and selling watches so that. 1. I can wear them in the meantime 2. Make it economically viable to do so without me laying under the bridge.

I have just sold a Speedmaster and have broken even but with the deal I made with a supplier of mine I brought 2 watches and got a third lower end well known brand watch for free.

I was wondering if we had any grey market sales people on here who would be able to share their experiences with this endeavour.

Have you made a living buying and selling watches?
what sort of profit margins would you usually aim for?
What's your initial investment in the watches?
Do you actually make any money on these or is all the profit made from social media or YouTube or fixing watches?

I'm starting to learn this is a tricky business importing and exporting watches and we have all probably tried to give it a crack at one time or another.

 

Interesting response, oddly aggressive and rather specific.

You've mentioned loss of public reputation and legal troubles. It seems you know of people who it has happened too, would you give us an example?

 

@dsio is one of the forum owners/founders/mods and has spent years dealing with the things that go wrong when people decide to play dealer and do a bad job of it.

 

I feel the problem with asking a watch collectors forum for advise about starting a watch business is that often (especially if the person doesn’t have years of experience) the person in question solicits free advise from collectors with many years of experience to aid their education.
They then use that free education that was often hard fought and paid for the collectors, to a) compete with same collectors to Buy vintage watches and b) then try to sell these watches to the same collectors at a profit.

If an individual has put in the hard yards themselves over many years and earned they’re often welcomed with open arms.

I’m not saying the above describes you but every few months we get someone along saying they’re going to try and be a dealer and many do fall into the bracket above. Also some practices such as offering a warranty but not actually servicing a watch prior to sale, and banking on only 1 in x crapping out before your warranty expires doesn’t endear certain types of dealers to collectors.

Of course there are many exceptions, but generally the dealers who know what they’re doing and do it well for both themselves and their customers don’t need to ask advice on a forum.

 

Hardly an aggressive response, just fact from years of seeing it all.

Becoming a "watch trader" requires a huge amount of watch knowledge, an even bigger amount of back-up capital (returns/rejections etc) and willingness to take a hit now and again.

Not every buyer is the perfect customer, and unless you can deal with problematic sales to the satisfaction of the customer your reputation can suffer (unwarranted shit reviews etc)

 

I would also suggest that being a watch trader requires being able to get the said watches at a reasonable price for onward sale in the first place! That’s hard, unless you have a relationship with an AD or something. Many watches in the market will be priced about right, and with the current sellers margin factored in.

 

Shit for a world with a million watch collectors and a million watch salesmen. Competition in the market is one thing you expect. Its rather cutthroat by the sounds of it.

Im definitely not new to the trading watches as I have been doing it for many of years now and have often found that I learn the most about watches by making my own mistakes.

With these responses it seems like the secrets everyone keeps is the key to unlock the door into the world of watch trading. Or just don't do it at all .

I was thinking with sucessfull watch businesses most of their capital would come from social media marketing etc..

 

Thank you for taking the time to clarify. It's definitely food for thought and a few pearls of knowledge to lead me on from here.

Ive been trying this for the last 7 years on and off and am often the source of naive dream chasing.

The pearl in this bunch is the saying that you need to become an expert and don't let anyone else be the expert for you. Great advice that.

 

Like every business, you have to pick a target, assess your capacity, and learn a lot. Money questions are secondary.

First determine what kind of business you want (repair, selling, old watches, used watches, new watches, collectible watches, which brand, for what kind of customers, where, ...) and what could be your added value. BTW, these last two words take years to build, becoming an expert, a repairman or building a professional network/reputation is not easier in the watch business than anywhere else.

When you have answers to these basic questions you can start thinking about money. Until then, it's pie in the sky. From your first post, nobody could tell you much, because it looks like you are still unclear about all this.

 

Well there are also questions like, where are you going to get these watches from, which country will you try to sell them too, what is the world doing at that time. I'm a student and shall always remain one, if there comes a time to teach I shall share what I have experienced.

Really I know all the answers to the above questions I had asked but those are from other business avenues I have had.

It's really about sharing experiences to create a better whole community, because nobody will have a monopoly over the grey market ever.

 

From your posts I can't even figure clearly what you are talking about. I don't know the country you are based in (not everyone here is a US American). I don't know what type of watches you are targeting. The speedy you spoke of for example: a 25k$ mint 105.003, a 1500$ 7750 auto from the 1990s, a BNIB 3861? A moonswatch?

It's like saying, "I want to start a car business, share your experiences". Sure, but what are we talking about? (car wash, second hand dealership, repair shop, classic car restorations, leasing business, official dealership, etc...).

Please spare me the "sharing experiences to create a better whole community" feel-good talk, just be specific about what you are asking us (to help you earn money). I did start a watch business, I worked my a$$ off, I did not launch vague questions about it to random strangers on the internet, that is not the way it works. Ask some specific questions and you may have relevant answers, until then it just white noise.

 

If that's how you interpreted that you might not be ready to deal with customers when issues arise.

 

To add to the other responses here (all good, IMO), I note that the primary reason you are interested in starting a watch selling business is:

“1. I can wear them in the meantime.”

That, IMO, is the absolute worst reason to start such a business. First, you will be buying watches you want, not necessarily watches the end customer will want to buy at a significant profit to you. Second, you will immediately degrade the value of said watch if you wear it (note all the posts here noting every minor nick/scratch on watches for sale, and how they aren’t worth the list price because of it).

Buying/selling watches as a hobby is fine — just don’t expect to make much (if any) profit.

If you really want to do this as a business and make sufficient profit to keep it going, then you have to take a completely different approach — buy watches cheap that you can make the most profit on, whether you like them or not. And that is becoming harder and harder nowadays with an over-saturated market (due to the proliferation on online dealers in the last decade). Don’t forget, you need to establish a presence where people can find your shop, and that requires savvy social-media skills and/or advertising.

 

It seems to me that the only people who can really do well selling watches are the people who are able to command a hefty premium because potential buyers see them as highly trusted top-notch reliable experts. This is even true for collectors selling watches on the forum. Just try selling a watch once you reach 200 posts. Without a strong reputation, the only way you can sell a watch is by putting a low price on it.

 

I once had a bricks and mortar vintage dealer and watch/ clock repair shop owner in Chicago tell me wistfully that years ago you could buy a large mixing bowl of watches for 25 bucks. That was the time to get into this. The ship has sailed.

 

And be prepared to have big problems if you don't know how to properly assess/repair a watch, if you buy vintage. That is why I asked about the target, dealing vintage or recent, two wildly different businesses, risks and rewards.