Questions about starting a watch business that turned into a social experiment

Syrte

greetings,
Actually there are many important things that haven’t been said yet:

If you’re talking about vintage, the finite supply is quickly drying up. You cannot make the same apparently easy profits you did 5 or even 3 years ago.
Soon there will be no watches with big brand names to hunt
« In the wild », and the dealers will be those with a big network of collectors from whom they can obtain the best pieces, to resell to others. The field’s already crowded with people who have invested the past 5 years at building a large following on social networks and getting to meet people for drinks and get togethers in large cities around the world.

The booming investment market concerns watches worth qt least 8K dollars, or euros, or GBP— is that your type of watch and price range?

watchyouwant

And for 18 K/Year I rent you our Director of Security, Dash. Cash upfront of course. Cheap to feed.....

dsio

If I had a dog costing $17k / year I’d be shopping for a cat,

Dan S

I was thinking the same thing. That the net revenue was quite small compared with the amount that would be tied up in inventory.

Donn Chambers

I think Teddy Baldassare is an excellent example. I don’t think anyone had heard of him 5 years ago, but now he has his own online store selling both used and new watches - he’s an AD for several brands. He got started doing rather mediocre watch reviews, but quickly improved his videos - became more comfortable in front of the camera, better editing, a lot better photography. When he started making some money, he began reinvesting that in his fledgling shop. I believe he started off selling straps and accessories, then some used watches, then got his AD connections.

He’s young and tech savvy. And he also puts out a ton of content (maybe 2 videos a week on watches) and he now has expanded to fragrances with his girlfriend, Courtney.

Adrian at Bark and Jack is another example - great photography and personable on camera, leveraged that into a shop selling watch straps and coffee. Enough so that he has quit his original job.

These are exactly the models I was suggesting earlier if you really want to establish a business. But if you don’t want to put in the time and effort to do that groundwork (I.e., make videos people want to watch and establish a base), then I think you will have an uphill struggle.

remember, to get that $17k in profit, you have to spend $100k to start and get inventory. Do you have that? They used their YouTube videos as a way to fund that initial investment.

Dgercp

Your plan is brilliant and fail-safe. Clearly this a home-run strategy and you should absolutely go for it. The nay-sayers here are simply jealous that they have not thought of this first. What do these OF collectors know about business?
The issues of watch knowledge, inventory, marketing, overhead, etc. are mere details. I say just go for it!

Maybe I can invest with you? But let me think on this a bit 😀

immmhus

I don't think I need to devuldge what my investment wants to be, but let's say 100k for arguments sake.

This is kinda what I was eluding to early on in original question. It seems like the market is saturated, I know that. And the people who are doing well in the watch game are probably not the ones making only profit off the watches themselves.

I would think that the "content" that comes from buying the watch and talking about it would bring in more of an income stream through YouTube or social media than the actual sale of the watch itself. Albeit you don't want to be losing money when selling the watch.

And I'm know these people also have friends in high places who have nice watches that they can produce "content" for a fee im guessing.


That'd be the more realistic way of going from here I'd say.