Doing the Watch Thing

“Are you still doing the watch thing?”
After a week of traveling, countless meetings, and presentations at two shows for hundreds of people, my brain was starting to get overloaded with watches.  On Friday I took the train from Philadelphia to Baltimore to visit my family.  The question above was the one I fielded the most often from my family members who I speak to at most once a year.

This whole world of expensive watches is so unreal to most people.  We are in our little bubbles – our websites, forums, blogs, stores, shows – where it seems as if everything revolves around watches.  For me, getting reminded that we are so far off the general public’s radar screen is a very powerful thing.  For one, it highlights the interesting challenge of this job: a very tiny percentage of our target market has any knowledge that this world exists, let alone familiarity with our brand.  From a marketing perspective, this is a much more fun challenge than convincing people to buy Coke rather than Pepsi.

Perhaps even more importantly, the chance to explain our niche world to neophytes forces us to focus on the things that really matter.  Why would a watch be so expensive?  What are the people like who make these things?  What sorts of people buy these things?  These are all important questions for ANYONE in this industry to think about.  The ability to explain the answers in a way that makes sense for anyone shows a basic mastery that is important – why are we here?

I’d love to hear your stories of some reactions when people hear that you are in this industry or interested in haute horlogerie.  Leave them in the comments!