Obviously, you're not going to pay $500 a month to wear a Patek Calatrava. I reckon that the concept of a $40k watch is fundamentally offensive to most who are reading this.
But an 80 month amortization window at, say, $20 a month gets you into the land of Citizen, Tag Heuer, Stowa, Oris, Weiss...you know, watches.
No but I don't wear jewelry with the exception of my mostly not worn wedding ring. I don't have any problem with a 40k watch. I'm sure plenty of people would pony up for a rotating watch rental service. Their head curator David Lee looks like the watch equivalent of the Portland barista parody. I'm positive I wouldn't rent a watch from him, which I suppose is a shitty thing to say about a guy I don't know but there it is.
I totally understand where you're coming from and I totally sympathize with the viewpoint. For perspective, this is a write-up by a trade magazine of the British jewelry industry; in their world, a $5k Omega or Rolex is an "entry level" watch and those pesky millennials, whoever they are, generally aren't their market. As such, it's a terrifically colonial viewpoint. He also sits on the board of directors at Sotheby’s. "Oh, jolly good. He's not one of those hoodie-wearing hoodlums."Thankfully, Mr Reza has access to his own money, family money and no doubt money from a circle of friends and business acquaintances. You see Mr Reza is son of the late Alexandre Reza, described in certain circles as the greatest gem collector of the 20th century and founder of the eponymous jewellery brand and boutique that once served the world’s billionaires from its flagship on Place Vendôme in Paris as well as outposts in Geneva, Monaco and Cannes. Olivier Reza took over as president and creative director of Reza in 2009 after a decade in New York as managing director of mergers and acquisitions for investment banking firm Lazard Freres & Co.
I would have rented a Seiko Kinetic only on the basis that they seem to die just after the warranty period and in operating rental models that is the problem of the asset owner. It would force them to actually make them to last! (That's how my last two watches died and three years on I haven't missed having a watch.) From what I read on the Circular Economy this is the key sustainability benefit of renting... making the manufacturer design things with life cycle costs fully optimized, not just to limp over the warranty window at the point that someone will be stuck into buying an upgrade.
I can't say I would... but I can totally see that some people would. Think of it more in terms of a test drive for the newly rich. Or maybe it's like the rented Ferraris I watched get perfectly placed next to a hotel so that the wedding video could include all of the guests jumping up and down "dancing" like it was some kind of music video. Or even... if you're about to interview for some serious new C-level role in NYC where you're already expected to have a $40k time-telling-bracelet to be in the club. Dunno.... renting high end watches isn't really for me... but maybe for some. I'll admit to wearing a watch for vanity. I just choose plastic Swiss timepieces that are goofy. Maybe I never really left the fifth grade in terms of my watch choices.
Also:I just choose plastic Swiss timepieces that are goofy.
now you're just trying to turn me on... The older Swatch Automatics are beautiful. The new System51's seem too.... thick... thick like Apple Watch thick. This guy (mine not pictured) was my JAM until the casing broke making it unable to accept new bands.
They’re definitely glued together... and people paying that much for a swatch... well let’s just say most swatches don’t sell for that. There are a select few that are collectible for some reason - but for he most part can be had between $20 and $250. And I’d stack most of th $250 ones up against any other watch in that price range.
Porsche does it. Apparently it works. Granted, a car (even a Porsche) is a depreciating asset so you can see the justification for just taking the amortization on it. Although for four years at $2k a month you could damn near buy a 911...
If you’re gonna rent it because the rest of your outfit including your car and your date is rented anyway, and you’ll never see these people again, then sure. But what happens when you rent on a monthly basis and someone goes, “Hey show my friend that watch of yours i’ve been meaning to look into getting one”. “Oh, uh, actually its not mine, and I had to give it back to kleinbl00.” This hurts its appeal when marketed.
I think kleinbl00 is asking if there is a market at the mid tier and I dont think there is much of one. There is some sort of market at the high end for people who want to pretend that they are richer than they actually are but its unclear what happens when you put a lot of wear and tear on stuff that probably is intended to live in a safe/vault for its entire life and be worn maybe 2-3 times a year. Maybe thats why its so expensive to rent them.
It was the ownership angle that interested me. On the one hand, they're social signaling of the highest order and renting such a thing is a serious faux pas. On the other hand, nobody gets into jewelry of any kind to wear it... They get it to have it. I mean, Patek Phillipe's slogan is "you don't own a Patek, you safeguard it for the next generation." That is not a rental paradigm.
I thought about it some more and maybe it could be, especially at the medium end. I dont think the original idea works because you have a lot of inventory/depreciation costs but if you modify it a bit it could. People who love watches have lots of them laying around doing absolutely nothing, why not set up a service where people can rent out their own watches. You can take a cut off every transaction as a service fee think VRBO of watches. The fees should be low of the individual transactions but the profit center should be services. For a set fee KB will catalogue your watch, photograph it and check for defect, then send it out to the customer. At the end of the transaction the renter will send you the watch back and you will once again catalogue it and check for damages and offer up repair services as needed (at reasonable but slightly high prices), maybe for an additional fee you could even store it (Amazon warehouse model). You should also offer some additional high profit fluff services like cleaning/polish/band adjustments etc. Additionally you offer some sort of service where the renter can buy the watch, that might provide some social cover for the "I'm just renting it" problem. You could could have site credits as well, to reduce your credit card fees, and because expired/lost credits are another great profit center, plus it can provide you additional cash buffer. Your main costs will be the website and the fraud. I think you could probably contain the fraud since you will be inspecting the watches but the website costs might be unreasonably high. This also solves the problem thelurkerawakens had as you don't hold the watch in inventory and if it dies you collect additional profit for repairs
Since the watches aren't your own maintenance and insurance would be profit areas not cost areas. The basic service would have a really low cost maybe even a loss leader but all the add ons are where the money is made. Want to just rent out the watch to whoever? 5-10% fee to collect the money. Then the rentee can specify a bunch of additional where you earn most of your money: Want inspection on send out and on return? $10 & Shipping Is there damage? If you find damage or defect then you quote them a repair bill, they are likely to accept and use your repair service, maybe even mandated. Want insurance? Extra Fee + Verification of Renters insurance policy Want to require cleaning on return? $20 Strap adjustment for renter? $10 So you might earn $3-5 a month on the rental itself but you would earn way more on the extras. Thats really were the money is in this model. Hire some high-school/community college kids to clean the watches and do basic low skill work and do the repairs and expensive stuff yourself.
It's a little disturbing to me that we're discussing nuts'n'bolts. I guess the idea isn't insane. I would argue that anybody trusting their watch to your service would want assurances that their watch wouldn't get trashed. That means you're carrying insurance. More than that, if the watch is going out to unknown owners regularly it's going to need some regular maintenance. You're also not going to get high school kids to clean, like, a $1500 watch; you can do more damage in cleaning it than you could leaving it alone if you don't know what you're doing so at a minimum, you're discussing semi-skilled labor. But yeah. Might be viable.
Look I'll be honest my model is mostly viable because there is a lot of cost shifting going around. You are renting out other peoples stuff taking transaction fees in the process and then steering your customers to use all your secondary services. Its dot com bullshit 101 except there is a second profit entity (the service center) that feeds off the the website, provides a competitive advantage and acts as a barrier to entry. The service center is the core profit operation, the rental website is just there to drive customers in for high profit services. If you had to bare all the costs of depreciation, capitol maintenance, damage and fraud there wouldn't be much left for profit but if you shift some of these costs out (as the watch owners are already incurring some of these costs) then the model looks a lot better.I would argue that anybody trusting their watch to your service would want assurances that their watch wouldn't get trashed
True but there can be different levels of assurance, most people will opt for high or mid tier but the bottom tier should be there so that the service appears cheaper than it really is. That means you're carrying insurance
you can cover a lot of the damage through self insurance and repair, if you cant get fraud/damage down to the point where you can cover it you go BK because the model isnt viable anyway. More than that, if the watch is going out to unknown owners regularly it's going to need some regular maintenance
It will, but in my model its up to the owner to decide how that happens. Its another hidden cost/fee that you can take care of as a service. The same way CARE.com will do payroll or VRBO has cleaning partnerships. . You're also not going to get high school kids to clean, like, a $1500 watch; you can do more damage in cleaning it than you could leaving it alone if you don't know what you're doing so at a minimum, you're discussing semi-skilled labor
simple operations can be done unskilled, if you need to polish the glass that's probably up to you. High school kid is unlikely to do $1500 in damages to a $1500 watch so then you are looking at 200-500 and that's a reasonable risk to take as long as it doesn't happen very often.
No. But I undoubtedly spend money on things others don't see as worthwhile, so if others want to rent watches, go for it.
No. I have a $100 (analog) watch that has attracted more interest and compliments than I'd ever anticipated (not that I anticipated anything, because it's just a fucking watch). I've owned two of this exact same watch -- the leather band is of below-average quality, and it broke, so I bought another one. The band on this one is wearing to the point where I'll likely end up buying a third. It's become a signifier in some way. I can't imagine ever wearing another watch, or paying more than the $100 every 2.5 years it's cost to maintain this one. What a racket.
Probably not. I picked up a Hamilton Khaki Field auto the other day. Fair condition off eBay for 230. If I get bored of it I could sell it for about the same maybe 200. From that website it looks like those watches rent at anything from 1/6 to 1/30 of of their used price, so unless you wear it for like a month at a time its cheaper to buy and sell it back on chrono24 or eBay after a couple months. I'm probably not the target audience but its also not really clear to me what you get for your extra watch dollar anyway. I guess for 4-6k you get a lot of bling you can tell people you have a Rolex but for the price of a monthly car payment it all seems kind of silly even if you never admit its a rental. Besides do people actually daily wear $5k+ watches? They get dinged up scratched, and the expensive bands get worn I always though people buy them and just keep them wrapped for special occasions hoping they appreciate in value so they can sell them to the next person.
Probably not. I tend to fall in love with watches once I put them on. Plus, renting a watch doesn't give me the satisfied feeling of knowing that it is mine. That I earned it. That I worked hard and now it's mine to pass down to my kids. P. S. Currently wearing Seiko SNK 809.