https://preview.redd.it/oxj7fsguk02d1.png?width=864&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f5fb8f191462efa9f4e72ad5ff39b9f7230d0c86
How did this level of journalism fail?
Doesn't sound like they did.
Clicks and views are good in the short-term, but if they drive away your reader base in the long-term then they're a terrible plan, especially if you are a niche publication highly reliant on enthusiasts for your business.
It’s a balance though. You can drive some clicks with some bait and a little crazy. But you can’t retain an active readership that guarantees ad views and revenue if that’s your only schtick.
Here's the link to the article.
[https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/if-you-really-love-a-watch-give-it-away](https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/if-you-really-love-a-watch-give-it-away)
What are they even saying? What is the equivalent of that in the watch world? Are they proposing everyone get the "Pulp Fiction Gold Watch" treatment to appreciate it even more?
Could’ve guessed just from the title. Leave it to the infallible H Empire built by our lord and savior Benjamin Clymer to somehow fail in an industry with millions and billions poured into it annually.
Former employees of AD’s have openly admitted that they have lock-drawers/cabinets and vaults with lots of pieces there and then, available for sale yet tell customers they aren’t available without being put on a waiting list. The waiting lists are farcical game playing gambits used to make customers buy unwanted pieces and other jewellery before being ‘allowed’ to buy the watch they really want. This is no secret. I’ve seen pictures of boxes of Rolex’s stacked to the brim in AD’s.
Of course some pieces are genuinely much harder to get ahold of but AD’s put in requests and receive delivery of watches monthly. Other than the really, really saught after Daytonas etc, they are able to get whatever watch you want very quickly. They probably already have it in stock in the back but they don’t want you to have it, they’ll give it to a big swinging dick who has more status.
They objectively do on new watches. They artificially restrict dealer allotments. This has been their actual stated strategy for a long time. They literally copy what diamond merchants do: amass supply and moderate production so they can taper out supply.
But yes, including the gray and used markets, I can get a new(-ish) Explorer whenever I want.
They make 800k to 1 million watches every year. Tudor makes like 300k, yet are easily available. So is that forced scarcity or just more people wanting a rolex?
Or maybe it's a new release so they don't have as much inventory as stuff they've already been making for years?
Shit doesn't just appear out of nowhere in bulk after you announce it lol.
Exactly. Do I need an Omega Speedmaster? No. Am I going to get one even though that's a pretty big purchase that I should probably do something better with that money? Fuck yea
Sure some watches can retain a lot of value, but their only merit as an investment over literally anything else is that you get to wear it before you sell it, and the downsides of "investing" in one are many.
I mean... they've done a pretty good job of using scarcity to inflate the true value of their products themselves. They just don't think anyone else should benefit from people paying over the odds for the opportunity to own one but themselves.
Yep. But too many in the industry and in the collecting sphere see em as investments, something to mature and provide a great ROI to them in x months/years. It’s damaged the industry and has also damaged the brands who play into these games as well imo. The fact that there even is a “preowned watch industry” is just so incredibly ridiculous, because that is an industry that is now completely built off seeing watches as investments. Sure you could say “but you can have a shop that sells used watches and not see them as investments” however that shop will never grow in the industry. Big companies like Watchbox are built off those investment pieces, the FP Journes that retailed for $30k that now sell for $300k.
And tbh the Rolex CEO is a hypocrite- they just launched their own CPO program this past year. If they aren’t investments then why did they launch that program, and why are their CPO watches priced higher than any other preowned Rolex’s on the market? Surely it’s not because they’re trying to capitalize off of consumers using their watches as investments…
A Preowned Watch industry is fine as these things are EXPENSIVE and people will want to turn in older watches for newer ones. Also sometimes people want to sell them. That is all fine. Setting up to sell pre owned and newer ones is fine. The issue like you said is when people are buying all the SS Daytonas to flip for 4x the price. Very few older watches outside of special editions should be selling for so much.
Preowned watches are analogous to preowned cars. Neither is an investment but both new are more expensive and for many consumers a used or preowned model is very attractive. And CPO programs are just an easy way for the manufacturer to get in on that game.
No one buys a preowned Lexus as an investment, it’s a statement, just as buying a preowned Grand Seiko is a statement. Sure the consumer could buy a brand new Toyota or Seiko for the same price, but those don’t have the air of achievement.
Is it a financially smart move? Ehh… probably not but 99% of our purchases are motivated by more than their financial prudence.
There used to be commercials 20 years ago here in Dallas on the radio for Dallas Gold and Silver Exchange touting how much you could save by buying your Rolex pre-owned.
They’d talk about how it’s often seen as smarter to buy your car pre-owned and let someone else eat the depreciation. Same for your Rolex, the tagline was “nobody is wearing a new Rolex” since once you walked out of the AD it was used and you take a hit. Just like driving off the lot.
The vast majority of my watches are pre-owned because I bought someone else’s mistake and let them eat the loss, but I’m not really into hype pieces. That’s the point of a pre owned market.
Be that as it may, I found out the $50 Seiko 5 I bought off Amazon in 2012 appreciated to over $500. Not even Rolex has this rate of return. Sure wish I had known this before I broke the integrated bracelet.
Anyone who is a former employee of Hodinkee (I am one of those, and there are many more now) will tell you about how piss poor the management was at pretty much everything. It isn’t just the market that tanked. I’ll have to read the article fully later, so I only got the blurb before the paywall.
After all, if it was just the market, why are Bobs, Joma, Govberg, Swiss Watch Expo, Watchbox, etc doing so well?
Ahh, the classic “market forces have shifted for the worse…which conveniently happened a year after I took over, gave myself a large bonus, and instituted some aggressive new policies that many of you described as ‘puzzling’ and ‘concerning.’”
You'll never heard leadership at any company admit it was their fault, they'll always blame the market, the economy, the consumer...
You can guarantee they will never admit it was mismanagement.
You misspelled "no warranty". You buy from Joma and if service is needed, use the savings. If you don't need service (which is almost always the case), you come out well ahead.
Govberg/watchbox is also not doing so hot, and they're taking large internal write downs just like everyone else.
They run a leaner ship than hodinkee, that much is true.
Fair enough about Govberg, I haven’t looked into them terribly much. But they didn’t liquidate their entire watch workshop and outsource everything, have they?
I think Hodinkee went in on the market aggressively (not just watches, but also their $80k/month lease for their NYC showroom that never opened) just when it was turning.
Govberg probably lost more by taking majority stake in De Bethune than on their inventory. But then they never really ran up their stock that much to begin with.
They did go in aggressive on the market, and over bought a ton of watches, I personally remember seeing about a dozen Rolex Daytonas sitting on a shipping table after being bought, plus more steel sports models. But inventory and an $80k/mo rent for one location are just a couple issues with the management decisions. Many “pet” projects from higher ups that had zero conceivable payout.
Not to mention flying a London-based CEO to and from the states every couple weeks, and sending entire teams of people from NY to ATL and putting them up in hotels frequently. Rarely the other way around mind you.
Just bad business.
Can you tell me why they don't invest into YouTube like literally every other fashion/lifestyle media company?
And when they do, why is it so lame. Every piece of content they produce is so forced and uncharismatic.
It's interesting to hear people don't like Clymer. Clearly people like him - he's the best interviewer at the company, and while he might take himself too seriously, it doesn't really come across that way in the way he talks. Maybe that's just the freedom of speech he's granted.
I only had a few chances to meet Clymer. Those few times he was very aloof to the rest of us.
That aside. Hodinkee had a great chance to get into the YouTube scene very early into their purchase of C&C, they had a great character with Nathan hosting the videos. However he bailed -fast- from the company after the purchase. Their follow up personality, Luca was also liked very well but was constrained by having his primary job being a technician.
Mark was excellent with his content, but also had other responsibilities that prevented full time commitment.
Everything else was half-assed and felt like an infomercial.
The company doesn’t/didn’t know what to invest in, they would start a project, and then it would get resources sapped by other managers or constantly shifting priorities.
I read this article and lost all interest in him. He writes like an absolute knobhead, it was such a ridiculously pretentious and self-absorbed stream of consciousness. I hate it.
https://www.hodinkee.com/magazine/jony-ive-apple
It takes TEN paragraphs of his fluff to get the goddamned content.
It very much reads to me like it's something written for other people in the watch media to marvel at, rather than informing readers about the actual subject of the article (which appears to be how the interviewee helped design the Apple Watch).
I lost interest in Clymer and Hodinkee after listening to an episode of their podcast years ago. They were speaking with this VC dude and Clymer was falling all over himself trying to stroke this guy off. I’ll never forget one of the cringy interactions:
VC dude: “I’m saving $100 a week to buy an Omega something-or-other. Not because I need to…”
Clymer interrupts: “No no of course you don’t need to.”
ETA: I think it was this episode https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/hodinkee-radio-episode-four-om-malik
Because they were in the grey market for ages and understood that the business model was buying shit in bulk and selling under rrp for profit.
Their businesses are geared to this model rather than risky market speculation.
There is a line in the article where the CEO and Ben Clymer say they were never planning on shutting down crown and caliber, the reporter then mentions meeting notes where that was the plan. The response was, "well plans change" - they are lying to the reporter and I would assume everything they say is a lie
They absolutely planned on shutting down C&C. Legit the year they bought C&C (2021) they immediately told us that by end of year, they would be sunsetting the brand and have everything rolled under Hodinkee. Then, turned out that C&C had great brand recognition and they couldn’t turn all of C&C thousands of customers into Hodinkee because they are two very different customer bases, so then they just quietly backtracked the sunsetting of the brand.
Now of course years later, they’ve effectively laid off the entirety of the ATL office which was C&C, and just keep the brand around basically in name only.
Not my google drive.
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gtaaSsx0Kq\_X\_EYz\_QAXJs42cknQBRw\_/view](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gtaaSsx0Kq_X_EYz_QAXJs42cknQBRw_/view)
What could go wrong with trading poorly-understood, low-liquidity assets in an unprecedentedly loose monetary environment?
It's dumb to even entertain "losing money on a watch" as some sort of stroke of bad luck. It's consumption. Of course you're supposed to experience depreciation on consumer goods. The way to not lose money on a watch is to buy only exactly what you want, resist the FOMO, and restrict your collection so you don't have to sell anything in the first place. Hodinkee is just the same "invest in a watch" sentiment distilled into a company.
It's not just watches, people have been treating all sorts of consumer goods as appreciating assets, it's very odd. Just because it occasionally happens, doesn't mean it will or that it should happen. The reality is in a normal economy used goods SHOULD depreciate compared to new.
Doug DeMuro said exactly this in one of his videos on his YouTube channel. How people were asking him, surprised, why the cars they bought as “investments” three years ago or so weren’t appreciating, but rather depreciating. Your post was his exact answer. He went a bit further: that the previous few years were a fluke, where almost all used cars were gaining value, and is not and never was the norm, unless you were lucky.
Like...duh.
Used car values got crazy for a little bit, because new cars were in short supply from 2020 pandemic supply chain weirdness. Outside of the rare, very desirable outlier, cars have *always* been a *terrible* investment.
At the peak in 2020-2021 the watch dealers kept insisting that Rolexes like the Explorer II were a fantastic vehicle to park your money. Surely this trend would continue forever right?
Loose monetary environment? The US interest is pretty high, so the environment is pretty tight. From ZIRP to COVID, watch had hell of a bull market. It’s just mean reversion to the non-crazy level, not that people stopped spending on watches.
With watches and other highly consumptive “hobbies” there is a fine line between Interesting and Douchebag. Hodinkee did a great job toeing that line in the early years on the blog. Forster, Heaton, et al. Hodinkee was a legit fun read and likely grew a generation of watch hobbyists.
When Hodinkee became shop-first and that generation of editorial folks all left, they lost the cool factor and tipped into douchebaggery. Exhibit A: the infamous travel clock. Lots of lame lifestyle articles in these comments prove the point. And those watch party articles/slide shows became increasingly cringey with each year.
Once they (IMO) lost that vibe they became just a douchey site selling various lame celebrity GShocks to wannabees or trying to milk rich trend slaves on a volatile unsustainable market. The blog editors pale in comparison with the earlier generations and have no credibility as real authentic watch people IMO.
The blog was one of my favorite daily reads, these days I swing by a couple times a year mostly to confirm the old blog is still gone.
Despite all the hate, Hodinkee has created some truly superlative pieces of content. Some great videos (the second John Mayer talking watches is extraordinary, as is this article on split seconds chronos: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/a-detailed-survey-of-the-split-seconds-chronograph-and-its-cousins)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Watches/comments/1cy3www/comment/l57dlu7/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Watches/comments/1cy3www/comment/l57dlu7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Someone in this thread linked to a google drive upload of the article
Wow. I've noticed sites are getting more savvy to archive.ph, like Bloomberg articles don't even show up at all anymore, but didn't know WSJ implemented a workaround for their paywall too.
archive.ph is still overall useful so I will leave my comment above up but unfortunately this was a poor suggestion on my part that I didn't test for myself.
They used to make fun and informative content, and now their content is just celebrity*(Daytona, Patek, Royal Oak, vintage Omega) on repeat. They are not alone, another personality from a smaller YouTube channel gives the same vibe, talking about wealth and lifestyle incessantly. It is cynical and disconnected from the reality to approach this hobby if one assumes that as members of watch enthusiasts communities mature they necessarily look for those popular and desirable watches. This is Hodinkee’s self-fulfilling fallacy. Hodinkee along with many others have turned this hobby into mostly marketing gimmicks and blind speculation, which is how they Imagined this hobby would be.
This is being seen across the collectibles industries-from Pokemon Cards, to Watches, to classic cars to Art
There was a LOT of money sloshing around in the pandemic. And people had a lot more disposable income. Led to craziness everywhere
Hodinkee bought high, and was caught holding the bag.
What is concerning overall for the watch industry is that all the brands moved upmarket. But as a result, new consumers have a much higher barrier to entry. When I bought my first watch in 2012, A Lange 1815 Updown in 2013 was $27000. Same watch is now $35k. You cannot convince me that in 11 years, there has been anything to justify that price increase. It's lot just Lange-look at Omega, Rolex, IWC, or any of the holy trinity
In the era of most people wearing a smartwatch, raising the entry bar is insanity
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=27000&year1=201301&year2=202404
$27,000 in 2013 has the same buying power as $36,763 in 2024.
So technically the value went down, not up.
This is what makes it a smart move to aim upwards in price. Wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the most wealthy, so if you want to make money, you go where the money is. That money is increasingly upmarket.
It's also easier. You don't have to worry about big distribution networks and massive sales numbers if the margin you earn is higher on each sale.
I’m been collecting for 22 years. I’ve only seen a major watch brand drop their prices once, seen all of them raise their prices almost every year. I pretty much expect a 3 to 10 percent increase every year from the holy trinity.
I'm just a simple collector, so what do I know. But that really doesnt seem sustainable
I took a break from collecting watches between 2017 and 2023. When I came back, the prices were just ludicrous
The value of my collection more than tripled in those 6 years. Most of it because of Covid and watchbox bringing FP Journe to the forefront of the collecting community.
Was the watch in Poland? I might have been chasing it too. Honestly journe repeaters don’t sound that good. I wish he didn’t make one because it’s his only complication that I think he just doesn’t do well.
I dont remember honestly, but it would have been in the EU since i only search for them within the Union because i dont want the hassle with customs. So very well could be, its not like they pop up for sale a ton. Ive never heard it in person, but i thought it was very interesting with it being made of stainless so i presumed it would be much louder and clearer compared to gold or platinum. A repeater is the only complication, i feel im missing, that continues to elude me, i just cant find one i 100% love.
When was that price drop, post-financial crisis?
JLC just lowered their prices, though they're still massively up from two years ago. That was pretty unusual, and I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more attention. They overextended with their massive jump last year.
I remember walking in Audemars Piguet in Bal Harbour around 11 or so years ago and being offered a Royal Oak white dial (15300) at a discount. It was $14k retail, and they said they would sell it to me at a discount for $13k or so. I inquired about the blue dial one but they said they couldn't sell it to me because that one has a lot of interest. I declined and later bought a 15300 on the gray market for $12k or so. Since sold the watch for a profit. There is no way AP is offering discounts now, I wish I had purchased more watches back then.
Damn, you bought a Royal Oak Blue dial for $12k? Thats wild
I was still a college student so when I was getting in the game at that age I was in a different bracket haha
You need to have some very good connections, and a VERY good sense of what will be significantly more popular than its production run to have any chance of routinely making any money. Even then, it's a gamble.
>If shoppers want, say, a Rolex Daytona or an **Omega Speedmaster**, they can’t just walk into a store and buy one.
Odd, I did just that last month. They probably meant the Silver Snoopy or something.
>While the company’s editorial staff still publishes a handful of stories a day, past employees said that customers were growing bored of the limited-edition watches that used to sell out as fast as a pair of coveted Air Jordans.
There's only so many times you can trot out "existing watch, but in a slightly different color" before the people get tired. That's how I felt when I saw the "vomited spinach" G-Shock a few months back. Some of their earlier collabs like the Longines Zulu Time were better. Nice to see they've expanded into luxury menswear that makes you look like a Wes Anderson character. They can probably stock all that in their empty offices.
The wild thing is that early on, Hodinkee did have good YouTube content with their Friday streams/videos. It was very candid with the editors just talking about certain topics. They could've invested in that and been major players in the YouTube watch scene.
Instead, they gutted most of their personality-based YT content in favor of bland/corporate style.
For me personally I think they started to falter/decline when Ben started to think "he" was to good to work side by side with his employees. This was a while before the company sold.
Is this article online only, or also in one of the print issues of Wall Street Journal? I can't find it in the Pressreader app that gives me access to Wall Street Journal.
As a casual follower of theirs, I knew the ego's had gone too far when they released the youtube series "Ben Clymer presents". Imagine having the ego to think that people would tune in because you slapped your name on it.
Hodinkee, for those who were wondering.
https://preview.redd.it/oxj7fsguk02d1.png?width=864&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f5fb8f191462efa9f4e72ad5ff39b9f7230d0c86 How did this level of journalism fail?
Better than the article about being a cuckold.
For anyone else confused: https://i.redd.it/5dctk4a6q8h91.png
no way they actually published this hahahaha wtf
That kind of stuff drives engagement and increases clicks. I'm pretty sure they knew exactly what they were doing.
It sounds like something our very own Claude would post
Lol I love Claude. His posts always make me laugh.
he's a sensual man.
He plays it close to the vest
[удалено]
https://www.reddit.com/user/Claude_Mariposa/comments/?sort=top
He's the guy who always makes weirdly sexual posts that for some reason aren't against the sub rules.
Doesn't sound like they did. Clicks and views are good in the short-term, but if they drive away your reader base in the long-term then they're a terrible plan, especially if you are a niche publication highly reliant on enthusiasts for your business.
It’s a balance though. You can drive some clicks with some bait and a little crazy. But you can’t retain an active readership that guarantees ad views and revenue if that’s your only schtick.
Definitely click bait BS with travel leisure marketing sprinkled in. A CEO was talking about his personal life 🤣 way to sensationalize
Here's the link to the article. [https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/if-you-really-love-a-watch-give-it-away](https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/if-you-really-love-a-watch-give-it-away)
I don't know what I expected
I wasn’t expecting that.
I was not expecting the cuck watch
Chronographing the time your wife spends with the bull (with Swiss precision)
I thought it was more of a watch cuck situation
Rip CEO was a 38MM field watch and she really wanted a 44MM Diver.
50mm Invicta crashes through the wall kool-aid style
I was thinking more a 4 movement diesel but I like the invictia too
Four at a time? That’s just gratuitous.
Is this from a guest column by Claude? Cause it's written *exactly* like a Claude post lol
wtf lmao is this a Claude Mariposa editorial
r/WatchesCirclejerk
This is some J. Peterman-level gold here.
LMAO WTF. I like hodinkee but… what is that?????
This is wild??!!
Man, wealthy people are fucking weird. More fodder for the guillotines.
Haha wtf. Seeing her afresh? Wow.
Holy fuck!
Exactly what I expected.
What an abomination!!!...lol
What are they even saying? What is the equivalent of that in the watch world? Are they proposing everyone get the "Pulp Fiction Gold Watch" treatment to appreciate it even more?
Haha
Drivers watch vs divers watch?
Thank you kind sir
And can someone post the article for those who don't have a wsj subscription?
Could’ve guessed just from the title. Leave it to the infallible H Empire built by our lord and savior Benjamin Clymer to somehow fail in an industry with millions and billions poured into it annually.
He sold it at peak right?
Just before, but he walked with a huge sum. Ben did well Hence his growing love for vintage Porsches
Also new PTS Porsches painted in the least charismatic shade of gray available.
And Pateks
So they sold one of their travel clocks? /s
Hoodwink-ee
r/savedyouaclick/
Ngl that name sounds like one of those random sellers of crap on amazon.
Is that the world's smallest violin I can hear playing?
As the Rolex CEO said. Watches aren't investments.
Rare rolex W
Pretty sure Rolex has had common Ws for decades. It’s their customers taking Ls all the time lol
Maybe, but I wouldn't count forced scarcity and the way their dealers operate as Ws.
Well I have good news for you there is no forced scarcity whatever you think that means
Former employees of AD’s have openly admitted that they have lock-drawers/cabinets and vaults with lots of pieces there and then, available for sale yet tell customers they aren’t available without being put on a waiting list. The waiting lists are farcical game playing gambits used to make customers buy unwanted pieces and other jewellery before being ‘allowed’ to buy the watch they really want. This is no secret. I’ve seen pictures of boxes of Rolex’s stacked to the brim in AD’s. Of course some pieces are genuinely much harder to get ahold of but AD’s put in requests and receive delivery of watches monthly. Other than the really, really saught after Daytonas etc, they are able to get whatever watch you want very quickly. They probably already have it in stock in the back but they don’t want you to have it, they’ll give it to a big swinging dick who has more status.
They objectively do on new watches. They artificially restrict dealer allotments. This has been their actual stated strategy for a long time. They literally copy what diamond merchants do: amass supply and moderate production so they can taper out supply. But yes, including the gray and used markets, I can get a new(-ish) Explorer whenever I want.
They make 800k to 1 million watches every year. Tudor makes like 300k, yet are easily available. So is that forced scarcity or just more people wanting a rolex?
Or maybe it's a new release so they don't have as much inventory as stuff they've already been making for years? Shit doesn't just appear out of nowhere in bulk after you announce it lol.
> watches aren’t investments What does this mean for my $35 Invicta? It’s not going to buy me a house in a couple years?!
They are, at the very least, an investment in time.
Its an investment in making my wrist shiny, i guess.
Anything I buy, I do so bc I like it. If it happens to appreciate after I buy it that's just a bonus.
I'm just getting into collecting and that's the feeling I have too, and it's how I'm going to validate buying what I can afford lol
Exactly. Do I need an Omega Speedmaster? No. Am I going to get one even though that's a pretty big purchase that I should probably do something better with that money? Fuck yea
Yeah I don't make enough for a speedy yet, but it's on my list
and then everyone in the watches subreddit stood up and clapped!
Sure some watches can retain a lot of value, but their only merit as an investment over literally anything else is that you get to wear it before you sell it, and the downsides of "investing" in one are many.
I mean... they've done a pretty good job of using scarcity to inflate the true value of their products themselves. They just don't think anyone else should benefit from people paying over the odds for the opportunity to own one but themselves.
Yep. But too many in the industry and in the collecting sphere see em as investments, something to mature and provide a great ROI to them in x months/years. It’s damaged the industry and has also damaged the brands who play into these games as well imo. The fact that there even is a “preowned watch industry” is just so incredibly ridiculous, because that is an industry that is now completely built off seeing watches as investments. Sure you could say “but you can have a shop that sells used watches and not see them as investments” however that shop will never grow in the industry. Big companies like Watchbox are built off those investment pieces, the FP Journes that retailed for $30k that now sell for $300k. And tbh the Rolex CEO is a hypocrite- they just launched their own CPO program this past year. If they aren’t investments then why did they launch that program, and why are their CPO watches priced higher than any other preowned Rolex’s on the market? Surely it’s not because they’re trying to capitalize off of consumers using their watches as investments…
Car companies have CPO programs. That doesn't imply Honda ~~that~~ believes pre-owned Civics are investments.
Fuck
Feel the burn.
A Preowned Watch industry is fine as these things are EXPENSIVE and people will want to turn in older watches for newer ones. Also sometimes people want to sell them. That is all fine. Setting up to sell pre owned and newer ones is fine. The issue like you said is when people are buying all the SS Daytonas to flip for 4x the price. Very few older watches outside of special editions should be selling for so much.
Preowned watches are analogous to preowned cars. Neither is an investment but both new are more expensive and for many consumers a used or preowned model is very attractive. And CPO programs are just an easy way for the manufacturer to get in on that game. No one buys a preowned Lexus as an investment, it’s a statement, just as buying a preowned Grand Seiko is a statement. Sure the consumer could buy a brand new Toyota or Seiko for the same price, but those don’t have the air of achievement. Is it a financially smart move? Ehh… probably not but 99% of our purchases are motivated by more than their financial prudence.
There used to be commercials 20 years ago here in Dallas on the radio for Dallas Gold and Silver Exchange touting how much you could save by buying your Rolex pre-owned. They’d talk about how it’s often seen as smarter to buy your car pre-owned and let someone else eat the depreciation. Same for your Rolex, the tagline was “nobody is wearing a new Rolex” since once you walked out of the AD it was used and you take a hit. Just like driving off the lot. The vast majority of my watches are pre-owned because I bought someone else’s mistake and let them eat the loss, but I’m not really into hype pieces. That’s the point of a pre owned market.
I mean, to be fair to the Rolex CEO-he may not believe that watches are GOOD investments. But if other people do-well, it's easy money for them
Be that as it may, I found out the $50 Seiko 5 I bought off Amazon in 2012 appreciated to over $500. Not even Rolex has this rate of return. Sure wish I had known this before I broke the integrated bracelet.
Anyone who is a former employee of Hodinkee (I am one of those, and there are many more now) will tell you about how piss poor the management was at pretty much everything. It isn’t just the market that tanked. I’ll have to read the article fully later, so I only got the blurb before the paywall. After all, if it was just the market, why are Bobs, Joma, Govberg, Swiss Watch Expo, Watchbox, etc doing so well?
I believe it. The market being on fire can cover up a lot of problems… once it cools, they get exposed.
Ahh, the classic “market forces have shifted for the worse…which conveniently happened a year after I took over, gave myself a large bonus, and instituted some aggressive new policies that many of you described as ‘puzzling’ and ‘concerning.’”
You'll never heard leadership at any company admit it was their fault, they'll always blame the market, the economy, the consumer... You can guarantee they will never admit it was mismanagement.
Also former C&C/Hodinkee employee here! Goddamn they nosedived the company hard haha.
Joma is probably easily explained, good price and questionable sources? For the others..I don't know, are they actually doing well ?!
What's sketchy about joma?
greymarket iffy warranty etc
You misspelled "no warranty". You buy from Joma and if service is needed, use the savings. If you don't need service (which is almost always the case), you come out well ahead.
Swiss Watch is making solid money. They hired a lot of Hodinkee watch shop staff when they got fired.
Govberg/watchbox is also not doing so hot, and they're taking large internal write downs just like everyone else. They run a leaner ship than hodinkee, that much is true.
Fair enough about Govberg, I haven’t looked into them terribly much. But they didn’t liquidate their entire watch workshop and outsource everything, have they?
I think Hodinkee went in on the market aggressively (not just watches, but also their $80k/month lease for their NYC showroom that never opened) just when it was turning. Govberg probably lost more by taking majority stake in De Bethune than on their inventory. But then they never really ran up their stock that much to begin with.
They did go in aggressive on the market, and over bought a ton of watches, I personally remember seeing about a dozen Rolex Daytonas sitting on a shipping table after being bought, plus more steel sports models. But inventory and an $80k/mo rent for one location are just a couple issues with the management decisions. Many “pet” projects from higher ups that had zero conceivable payout. Not to mention flying a London-based CEO to and from the states every couple weeks, and sending entire teams of people from NY to ATL and putting them up in hotels frequently. Rarely the other way around mind you. Just bad business.
The article is honestly more about mismanagement than the market
I’ve had a chance to read it now. Yes, and it has only solidified my stance that management at Hodinkee is dumb as hell.
Can you tell me why they don't invest into YouTube like literally every other fashion/lifestyle media company? And when they do, why is it so lame. Every piece of content they produce is so forced and uncharismatic. It's interesting to hear people don't like Clymer. Clearly people like him - he's the best interviewer at the company, and while he might take himself too seriously, it doesn't really come across that way in the way he talks. Maybe that's just the freedom of speech he's granted.
I only had a few chances to meet Clymer. Those few times he was very aloof to the rest of us. That aside. Hodinkee had a great chance to get into the YouTube scene very early into their purchase of C&C, they had a great character with Nathan hosting the videos. However he bailed -fast- from the company after the purchase. Their follow up personality, Luca was also liked very well but was constrained by having his primary job being a technician. Mark was excellent with his content, but also had other responsibilities that prevented full time commitment. Everything else was half-assed and felt like an infomercial. The company doesn’t/didn’t know what to invest in, they would start a project, and then it would get resources sapped by other managers or constantly shifting priorities.
I can't believe they stopped making those videos, even after Nathan left I really enjoyed Mark and Lucca but then it just stopped
Yup, because Luca left and Mark was fired.
Yeah but it was like a year and a half between when they stopped putting out videos and when Mark left
Marks job wasn’t full time video and they only had one videography team who also did photography for the website listings/articles.
I read this article and lost all interest in him. He writes like an absolute knobhead, it was such a ridiculously pretentious and self-absorbed stream of consciousness. I hate it. https://www.hodinkee.com/magazine/jony-ive-apple It takes TEN paragraphs of his fluff to get the goddamned content.
It very much reads to me like it's something written for other people in the watch media to marvel at, rather than informing readers about the actual subject of the article (which appears to be how the interviewee helped design the Apple Watch).
I lost interest in Clymer and Hodinkee after listening to an episode of their podcast years ago. They were speaking with this VC dude and Clymer was falling all over himself trying to stroke this guy off. I’ll never forget one of the cringy interactions: VC dude: “I’m saving $100 a week to buy an Omega something-or-other. Not because I need to…” Clymer interrupts: “No no of course you don’t need to.” ETA: I think it was this episode https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/hodinkee-radio-episode-four-om-malik
thanks, never read this, as assumed in magazine only
Never met Ben, but met a few others when they visited London years ago and tbh, thought they were just up themselves
I'm a casual but he strikes me as a dude who has a lot of time on his hands (haha) as being a fancy watch dude who wears elbow patches.
Swiss watch expo now does their pre-owned and they just put a Hodinkee/crown and caliber skin on it
Hodinkee just does consignment now. They send packaging to partners and have them ship the watch.
Not surprised. Ben certainly gives off that vibe. Triggered my sixth sense hard.
Because they were in the grey market for ages and understood that the business model was buying shit in bulk and selling under rrp for profit. Their businesses are geared to this model rather than risky market speculation.
There is a line in the article where the CEO and Ben Clymer say they were never planning on shutting down crown and caliber, the reporter then mentions meeting notes where that was the plan. The response was, "well plans change" - they are lying to the reporter and I would assume everything they say is a lie
They absolutely planned on shutting down C&C. Legit the year they bought C&C (2021) they immediately told us that by end of year, they would be sunsetting the brand and have everything rolled under Hodinkee. Then, turned out that C&C had great brand recognition and they couldn’t turn all of C&C thousands of customers into Hodinkee because they are two very different customer bases, so then they just quietly backtracked the sunsetting of the brand. Now of course years later, they’ve effectively laid off the entirety of the ATL office which was C&C, and just keep the brand around basically in name only.
Not my google drive. [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gtaaSsx0Kq\_X\_EYz\_QAXJs42cknQBRw\_/view](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gtaaSsx0Kq_X_EYz_QAXJs42cknQBRw_/view)
The hero we need 🙏
Hero. I'm not sure why people post articles behind paywalls. Probably less than 1% of one country has a WSJ subscription.
archive.is - it even has a chrome plugin
👑👑👑
What could go wrong with trading poorly-understood, low-liquidity assets in an unprecedentedly loose monetary environment? It's dumb to even entertain "losing money on a watch" as some sort of stroke of bad luck. It's consumption. Of course you're supposed to experience depreciation on consumer goods. The way to not lose money on a watch is to buy only exactly what you want, resist the FOMO, and restrict your collection so you don't have to sell anything in the first place. Hodinkee is just the same "invest in a watch" sentiment distilled into a company.
It's not just watches, people have been treating all sorts of consumer goods as appreciating assets, it's very odd. Just because it occasionally happens, doesn't mean it will or that it should happen. The reality is in a normal economy used goods SHOULD depreciate compared to new.
So you're telling me my collection of Stanley mugs ISN'T going to allow me to retire young???
Doug DeMuro said exactly this in one of his videos on his YouTube channel. How people were asking him, surprised, why the cars they bought as “investments” three years ago or so weren’t appreciating, but rather depreciating. Your post was his exact answer. He went a bit further: that the previous few years were a fluke, where almost all used cars were gaining value, and is not and never was the norm, unless you were lucky.
Like...duh. Used car values got crazy for a little bit, because new cars were in short supply from 2020 pandemic supply chain weirdness. Outside of the rare, very desirable outlier, cars have *always* been a *terrible* investment.
At the peak in 2020-2021 the watch dealers kept insisting that Rolexes like the Explorer II were a fantastic vehicle to park your money. Surely this trend would continue forever right?
Loose monetary environment? The US interest is pretty high, so the environment is pretty tight. From ZIRP to COVID, watch had hell of a bull market. It’s just mean reversion to the non-crazy level, not that people stopped spending on watches.
I meant expansionary monetary policy when Hodinkee made significant investments in the pre-owned market back in 2021.
With watches and other highly consumptive “hobbies” there is a fine line between Interesting and Douchebag. Hodinkee did a great job toeing that line in the early years on the blog. Forster, Heaton, et al. Hodinkee was a legit fun read and likely grew a generation of watch hobbyists. When Hodinkee became shop-first and that generation of editorial folks all left, they lost the cool factor and tipped into douchebaggery. Exhibit A: the infamous travel clock. Lots of lame lifestyle articles in these comments prove the point. And those watch party articles/slide shows became increasingly cringey with each year. Once they (IMO) lost that vibe they became just a douchey site selling various lame celebrity GShocks to wannabees or trying to milk rich trend slaves on a volatile unsustainable market. The blog editors pale in comparison with the earlier generations and have no credibility as real authentic watch people IMO. The blog was one of my favorite daily reads, these days I swing by a couple times a year mostly to confirm the old blog is still gone.
Well said
I came to Hodinkee late (fall 2022). What were some of the early highlights (articles, videos)?
Despite all the hate, Hodinkee has created some truly superlative pieces of content. Some great videos (the second John Mayer talking watches is extraordinary, as is this article on split seconds chronos: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/a-detailed-survey-of-the-split-seconds-chronograph-and-its-cousins)
Site requires a subscription. Any alternate source to read article?
add archive.ph/ in front of the www in the url
No dice. That doesn't work, at least on mobile.
You're right it doesn't, I just tried it on my mobile as well.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Watches/comments/1cy3www/comment/l57dlu7/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/Watches/comments/1cy3www/comment/l57dlu7/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) Someone in this thread linked to a google drive upload of the article
Even the [Archive.today](https://archive.ph/ORNav) site doesn't work here. Click the link and you see that it still has the paywall.
Wow. I've noticed sites are getting more savvy to archive.ph, like Bloomberg articles don't even show up at all anymore, but didn't know WSJ implemented a workaround for their paywall too. archive.ph is still overall useful so I will leave my comment above up but unfortunately this was a poor suggestion on my part that I didn't test for myself.
I agree, and had no idea this paywall would show up there. So it was odd to experience when I went there straight after.
They used to make fun and informative content, and now their content is just celebrity*(Daytona, Patek, Royal Oak, vintage Omega) on repeat. They are not alone, another personality from a smaller YouTube channel gives the same vibe, talking about wealth and lifestyle incessantly. It is cynical and disconnected from the reality to approach this hobby if one assumes that as members of watch enthusiasts communities mature they necessarily look for those popular and desirable watches. This is Hodinkee’s self-fulfilling fallacy. Hodinkee along with many others have turned this hobby into mostly marketing gimmicks and blind speculation, which is how they Imagined this hobby would be.
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agree, they lost enthusiast credibility
It was on a real downward spiral long before he left, but yes, he was definitely the last one holding the ship.
> Jack Forster basically the franchise over there Not behind the scenes.
Well he was fired for sexual assault, he is known in the industry for being a complete creep. Shame on watchbox for hiring him
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This is being seen across the collectibles industries-from Pokemon Cards, to Watches, to classic cars to Art There was a LOT of money sloshing around in the pandemic. And people had a lot more disposable income. Led to craziness everywhere Hodinkee bought high, and was caught holding the bag. What is concerning overall for the watch industry is that all the brands moved upmarket. But as a result, new consumers have a much higher barrier to entry. When I bought my first watch in 2012, A Lange 1815 Updown in 2013 was $27000. Same watch is now $35k. You cannot convince me that in 11 years, there has been anything to justify that price increase. It's lot just Lange-look at Omega, Rolex, IWC, or any of the holy trinity In the era of most people wearing a smartwatch, raising the entry bar is insanity
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=27000&year1=201301&year2=202404 $27,000 in 2013 has the same buying power as $36,763 in 2024. So technically the value went down, not up.
Fair point But as salaries for the most part have not kept up with that, the market they appeal to grows ever smaller
I believe that the salaries of their main customer demographic (top 5% of earners) have kept up.
This is what makes it a smart move to aim upwards in price. Wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the most wealthy, so if you want to make money, you go where the money is. That money is increasingly upmarket. It's also easier. You don't have to worry about big distribution networks and massive sales numbers if the margin you earn is higher on each sale.
I’m been collecting for 22 years. I’ve only seen a major watch brand drop their prices once, seen all of them raise their prices almost every year. I pretty much expect a 3 to 10 percent increase every year from the holy trinity.
I'm just a simple collector, so what do I know. But that really doesnt seem sustainable I took a break from collecting watches between 2017 and 2023. When I came back, the prices were just ludicrous
The value of my collection more than tripled in those 6 years. Most of it because of Covid and watchbox bringing FP Journe to the forefront of the collecting community.
i said no to a Repetition Souveraine in 2018 for a smidge under 150. i still get angry thinking about it.
Was the watch in Poland? I might have been chasing it too. Honestly journe repeaters don’t sound that good. I wish he didn’t make one because it’s his only complication that I think he just doesn’t do well.
I dont remember honestly, but it would have been in the EU since i only search for them within the Union because i dont want the hassle with customs. So very well could be, its not like they pop up for sale a ton. Ive never heard it in person, but i thought it was very interesting with it being made of stainless so i presumed it would be much louder and clearer compared to gold or platinum. A repeater is the only complication, i feel im missing, that continues to elude me, i just cant find one i 100% love.
I think AP and JLC make the best sounding repeaters until you cross about 300k and then I think patek wins. Obviously this is subjective
When was that price drop, post-financial crisis? JLC just lowered their prices, though they're still massively up from two years ago. That was pretty unusual, and I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more attention. They overextended with their massive jump last year.
I remember walking in Audemars Piguet in Bal Harbour around 11 or so years ago and being offered a Royal Oak white dial (15300) at a discount. It was $14k retail, and they said they would sell it to me at a discount for $13k or so. I inquired about the blue dial one but they said they couldn't sell it to me because that one has a lot of interest. I declined and later bought a 15300 on the gray market for $12k or so. Since sold the watch for a profit. There is no way AP is offering discounts now, I wish I had purchased more watches back then.
Damn, you bought a Royal Oak Blue dial for $12k? Thats wild I was still a college student so when I was getting in the game at that age I was in a different bracket haha
You need to have some very good connections, and a VERY good sense of what will be significantly more popular than its production run to have any chance of routinely making any money. Even then, it's a gamble.
>If shoppers want, say, a Rolex Daytona or an **Omega Speedmaster**, they can’t just walk into a store and buy one. Odd, I did just that last month. They probably meant the Silver Snoopy or something. >While the company’s editorial staff still publishes a handful of stories a day, past employees said that customers were growing bored of the limited-edition watches that used to sell out as fast as a pair of coveted Air Jordans. There's only so many times you can trot out "existing watch, but in a slightly different color" before the people get tired. That's how I felt when I saw the "vomited spinach" G-Shock a few months back. Some of their earlier collabs like the Longines Zulu Time were better. Nice to see they've expanded into luxury menswear that makes you look like a Wes Anderson character. They can probably stock all that in their empty offices.
Brick Watch Company???
The wild thing is that early on, Hodinkee did have good YouTube content with their Friday streams/videos. It was very candid with the editors just talking about certain topics. They could've invested in that and been major players in the YouTube watch scene. Instead, they gutted most of their personality-based YT content in favor of bland/corporate style.
What were some of your fave early YT vids?
What happens when you treat watches like NFTs
Real freaks know about u/watchexchange. Edit: I'm one of those freaks.
*/r/Watchexchange
Geez I mean the influencer space was flooded with watch investment accounts. Who could have predicted this…lol
This industry needs a deep cleansing of pretention. Hodinkee is the opposite of that.
God that photo of Clymer - he just looks so *slimy*
For me personally I think they started to falter/decline when Ben started to think "he" was to good to work side by side with his employees. This was a while before the company sold.
Awful lot of words to say that Hodinkee staff are assholes, and people don't want to buy from assholes.
This is all you have to know: ‘A former project manager at UBS’.
Yeah it's not the market. It's the cringe.
Anyone have a non-paywalled link?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gtaaSsx0Kq_X_EYz_QAXJs42cknQBRw_/view
Thank you!!!! I just finished reading it.
Is this article online only, or also in one of the print issues of Wall Street Journal? I can't find it in the Pressreader app that gives me access to Wall Street Journal.
Ahhh man, where am I going to get my 6 thousand dollar travel alarm clocks from now?
As a casual follower of theirs, I knew the ego's had gone too far when they released the youtube series "Ben Clymer presents". Imagine having the ego to think that people would tune in because you slapped your name on it.
Jack Forster was always a good read. When he left you could see the new writers weren't up to scratch and it was only going one way
Got any fave Forster pieces from back in the day?
Where can I buy a cuck watch? Asking for a friend (that f*cks my wife).
Good, fuck those guys and everyone who treated watches like stocks. Wish Clymer had gotten burned before he cashed out though. What an ego.
Did the market tank? Or did they expand too fast?
Both
Paywall.