I am happy to report that both of my picks ended up being correct.  Congratulations to Van Cleef for Best Ladies’ Watch and of course, we took home the Design and Concept Watch prize for our HM4 Thunderbolt.  I know Max and the whole team are very excited, and they truly earned it.  All of the other winners were very […]

Over the weekend, a very interesting discussion broke out on The Watch Lounge.  I encourage everyone to read the post and the comments there, they are from some of the biggest players in the watch media.  I wrote a comment, but wanted to expand a bit here. There are a few issues at play.  In my comment, I address the […]

When I came on board with Max, clearly we needed to open a few more retailers.  The challenge was that we had no connections at most of the stores.  Luckily, I have no shame whatsoever in cold calling or showing up somewhere unannounced.  I would never pressure anyone to become a dealer, either they get it or they don’t, but […]

Last year I received an invitation from Lussori to join them in their store during the Pebble Beach car shows.  Generally I turn down offers to appear at stores other than our Authorized Dealers, but this was too good an opportunity to miss.  Their store was on the main street in Carmel – an obvious destination for the biggest gathering […]

Rewind back to September 2008.  Max and I had just decided to start MB&F North America.  I knew business and I knew watches, but I had zero experience with the watch business. The organizer of SIAR, the great watch show in Mexico City, had invited Max to visit the Salon.  It was an invitation that Max was going to decline […]

Well, it’s Tech Tuesday during Retailer Week, so what else could we talk about but selling online? Clearly MB&F is focused on leveraging the internet as much as possible.  Without the internet, we would never have gotten to where we are.  It is the single biggest factor that allows little guys like us with no money to compete with big […]

Anyone familiar with watches has been exposed to the “in-house” movement…movement.  We have been led to believe that the only watches that really matter are ones in which every part is proprietary.  I think this is a big mistake, but I understand how we got here. “In-house” is being used as a proxy for valuable.  With so many companies, models, […]

Business Insider has a fantastic interview with Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired. While the entire thing is worth watching, I especially like the story of how he came to his job.  He was a physicist who reluctantly got into the magazine world with scientific journals.  He was eventually offered the job to head this new tech magazine, […]

For the first time on TickTocking, I’d like to talk about sports for a minute.  American readers will know that over the last 10 days, the NFL has gone on a crusade about illegal hits to the head.  In fact, there has been more and more controversy surrounding concussions in football for a couple years now, including this great piece […]

There are a few things in this industry that are just plain broken.  To me, one of the most glaring examples is the system of selling watches at negotiated discounts.  Recently in a Facebook group there was a discussion about an Audemars Piguet model that, to my knowledge, has not even been delivered yet.  Multiple people – not dealers – […]