The Wild World of Luxury Watches: How Wrist Aficionado Leveraged Social Media to Become Industry Experts

Yeah, we've done fairly well. [This is said in a shockingly matter-of-fact yet humble tone from someone sitting in what may well be the most highly-valued room I've ever set foot in.]

[Eddie chuckles.] They're trying not to let too many people in. They don't have to.

Well…probably 50/50. I can't say I didn't envision it when I was younger. When I was in college, I worked at what used to be Tourneau in sales from when I was 18 to 21, to pay my way through college. That was my first introduction to luxury watches. From there, I went a different path and I went to dental school - I started as a dentist and I worked as one up until just two years ago.

This [luxury wristwatch resale] started as a hobby. I started as a collector…At the age of twenty or so, I started my collection and then built a sizeable collection through my twenties and thirties. In around 2017, Vadim and I were already friends and we said, “this is a nice hobby but I wonder if we can make a career out of it.”

We put a couple watches together to sell, which was our first experience reselling together. We did just okay on the transaction, but…we liked it. We’ve both always been passionate about watches, so it was a good mix.

For us, it was our biggest dream. In 2017 going into 2018 we started as B2B [business to business.] We started going into wholesalers, buying from dealers, selling to dealers – that was our momentum that got us into resale, and then we got started on social media. Social media really took off, and we only really used one platform. It was just Instagram. At that time, it was really the only platform that we thought we wanted to do, and that got us looks from a lot of different people that we never would have met otherwise. 

Back then, when we started on social with luxury watches, nobody was really doing that. We got up to 600,000 [followers] but it took us a bit of time. We grew probably at about 100,000 a year.

Now we have a social media team…but before, it was just us two [Eddie and Vadim] taking pictures out of a window and doing wrist turns all day. That was our claim to fame – people used to come up to our office on 48th Street just to see where we were taking pictures from, because our office was set where we could see Rockefeller Center and the tree was always our backdrop. So it was very identifiable.

Yes, definitely, correct. It was our trademark: wrist turns, right next to Rockefeller Center, where everyone could see the tree. 

But, we’ve fast-forwarded a lot [from the beginning of Wrist Aficionado. At the start] me and Vadim, we met when I was 16, so we’ve been best friends for going on 27 years. The business transition was something that was very natural for us.

You’re not supposed to! It worked out very well for us. But we started at zero. If you’ve grown together starting from zero, then you can make the business work. We were both very passionate about it.

Well, when we came in, we saw an upwards trajectory in watch prices, so we caught a good wave. Watches just went exponential in 2019 to 2021…and then, in 2022, there was a correction in the market and everything came crashing down. It was the first time we’d seen a correction like this.

Luckily, we were able to withstand it and the business still thrived, but the model changed a bit in 2023. That was our litmus test that we could stay standing through a correction like that, and keep moving to scale. For us, scaling means opening more boutiques.

It is. We’re in Miami, Beverly Hills, and here in New York right now. Our fourth will probably be another boutique in the West Coast, or in Florida somewhere…We’re one of the few resellers in our space that actually go brick-and-mortar. 

It’s still alive and breathing. For our clientele, it makes sense because you deliver a luxury experience. If you sell luxury products, you need to deliver a concierge experience. We opened this (New York) store in 2020 when COVID hit, and then shut down within three months of opening, but there was a boom in watches, luxury, and real estate at the same time.

Exactly. People had a lot of time at home, and money to spend. They weren’t flying, going out. So that experience led us to believe that watches work, so at the end of 2020 we opened in Miami because we saw our clients shift their locations from New York to Miami, and we simply followed them to open the boutique at the Setai [Hotel.]

The difficult part for us was to brand ourselves when reselling another brand. We aren’t the brand themselves, we’re the reseller, so we have to build a certain amount of trust with our 1% clients to be able to come to us and pay a premium for a product that’s not our own. So, I think that’s the biggest hurdle we’ve had to overcome. We can sell Rolex, Patek, AP, and Richard Mille...but we’re selling it above retail. You can either wait years to get the watch, or you can get immediate gratification through paying a little more with that trust and a white-glove service here.

For us, it’s all about reputation and word of mouth, and that’s really how we’ve grown our business. Instagram is great, but that’s just for name recognition really. If you’re willing to invest the time and work into growing on social media, it can be a great means of free growth, but it’s really only free to an extent.

I’m a little bit biased because I look at market trends and I think invest-ability comes hand-in-hand with watches. There was a watch boom because people started finally looking at watches as an investable asset, and they’d never had that before. There was even a time back in 2020 where everyone thought this was an asset that would appreciate indefinitely. 

We tend to stick to four or five main brands that are tried and true: Rolex, Patek, Richard Mille, AP. I think that for the novice investor – someone just newly coming into the market – Rolex is a guarantee. It’s your best bet, and I don’t think you’ll lose, especially if you’re getting it at or close to retail. If you’re looking into the Jet-Set pieces, they appreciate well and they hold value well. 

Richard Mille is super elite, and super expensive. Entry point is around $200,000 – but they only make 5,000 watches and they control their own supply and demand chain. Athletes, the super-wealthy, the elite businesspeople…they are always going to want that which the other person can’t get. The exclusivity of it and the limited editions. 

Exactly, and customers are happy to do so. Even if these brands have the ability to make 100 pieces, they’ll make just 20. They have the client base, the wait list, and they know that the next drop is already sold out. People do it with independent watches too.

Oh, 100%. Though...for me, I think the best investment of all will always be Patek. They have the longest history as far as classic craftsmanship. I think their buyer is a wide range, too – they can go from young twenties all the way up to sixties or seventies. They have such a wide range of watches that appeal to all, and investment-wise for me personally that’s always best. 

Cartier Roadster.

That’s right, I got it when I graduated high school; that was my gift right before I went to college.

The beauty of owning the business is that they’re all mine! But on a personal level, the one that I intend to keep most recently is a 5740 Nautilus with the white-gold perpetual calendar. That’s one I think I’ll keep forever, it’s my favourite Nautilus in the Patek series. It’s super special and a nice wearable size for myself with some weight to it in the white gold. 

If we supply the 1%-5%, we’re always going to be battling the other 95% who may not have the same vision or may not see any value. Maybe they just see value in an Apple Watch. And that’s fine! It’s different strokes for different folks. I’ll never tell someone they have to have a specific watch or they need to own an expensive timepiece. If they want to, it’s a luxury to do so. 

Not everyone has the same idea of luxury. Somebody’s luxury might be spending their time on travelling, someone else’s might be just being at home, or riding horses, you know? Everyone has their own luxury.

For a certain demographic, that’s what they love…I can’t fault him for saying he loves his Timex. If Timex is what makes you happy, then I don’t disagree. For me personally, watches have been a passion, and the same for the clients that we meet and the friends that we make. There’s a lot of mutual common interests, and we find that our clients often become friends – we travel with them, meet their families, and it’s more than just talking about watches. That relationship just grows. I’d never fault someone for saying it’s not a good investment – in their eyes, it may not be. 

But from what we’ve seen as far as we’ve been in business…[Eddie trails off and smiles broadly.] This is an amazing career that I’ve shifted into, and I have the true luxury of doing something that I really love, surrounded by a group of amazing people who share my passion.