Reputable grey market watch dealers11/3/2022 “You go online and see the bid and ask-no questions, it’s completely transparent. “We thought buying watches should be like buying IBM stock,” he says. Paul Altieri, who relaunched the site seven years ago after acquiring the domain name, modeled it on a stock exchange. It offers full-disclosure on pricing and guarantees that each timepiece is a 100% authentic Rolex, including its parts. “You will pay market price” in such cases, he says, “but unlike a store that will tell you to come back in five years, you can get it the next day.”Īnother model making waves is Bob’s Watches in Huntington Beach, Calif., an online exchange for buying and selling vintage and preowned Rolex watches. Stracke says Chrono24’s reach and scope also allows buyers to find in-demand but hard-to-obtain watches, like a new Rolex Daytona in stainless steel. Lange & Söhne Datograph Perpetual Calendar Chronograph for 40% off list price, and an Audemars Piguet AP Royal Oak 41 in stainless steel with a black dial offered at a 20% discount. That means a watch buyer in Silicon Valley can now confidently walk into a local jeweler and compare the watch’s local retail price to its global “spot” price listed on the German website-and see if he is getting a fair deal.Ĭhrono24 has also reduced the buyer’s risk through its “Trusted Checkout,” an escrow-type system whereby the site holds on to the buyer’s payment until the watch has reached them and they’ve accepted delivery.Īvailable deals? We recently found a platinum A. “The biggest impact we’ve had on the industry is that we’ve created a global price transparency that’s become a de facto standard among dealers,” says Stracke. Shoppers can opt to buy at the price advertised or make a counteroffer, enabling them to view comparables in multiple countries. Each watch is accompanied by a catalog of information, including the country of origin and the dealer’s name and contact details. Stracke claims sales are heading toward $1 billion.ĭealers pay a monthly subscription fee to list their watches on the site. Last year, $750 million worth of watches were sold through Chrono24. Nearly 300,000 watches from Audemars Piguet to Zenith are offered from some 90 countries, by over 2,000 of the website’s dealers who are screened and preapproved. Co-founder Tim Stracke says that about 50% of the site’s listed pieces are new or “as new” (mint condition, unworn). Chrono24 is an online marketplace for new and preowned watches, based in Karlsruhe, Germany, that publishes all the available information about a watch, including its price. Internet forums and blogs have demystified the business and new digital entrants are changing the industry. For the moment, it’s a necessary evil needed to clear out excess inventory. Then the gray-market dealer, in turn, sells it to the customer at 30% off list and pockets the 10% difference.Īccording to various industry experts who spoke with Barron’s Penta, the luxury brands are aware of the practice and have simply turned a blind eye to it-at least publicly. The dealer calls up an authorized dealer and buys the watch, for perhaps a 40% discount. Here’s how it works: A customer goes to one of these gray-market dealers and requests a particular watch. Eager to offload their stalled inventories, some authorized dealers act as suppliers to the gray market. Industry sources tell us that sellers from 47th Street in Manhattan to the Gold Souk in Dubai, who once trafficked solely in preowned watches, are now quietly working in league with authorized dealers. Websites like advertise Omega Speedmasters at 42% off the list price IWC Portuguese Chronographs are listed at 29% below retail at and limited-edition Hublot Big Bangs are hawked at 35% off by. The industry’s most recent problems are a boon for the gray market, as overcapacity at the luxury watch brands has created a flood of inventory that is being hawked online. “The gray market has grown to the point where I think they may sell more watches than authorized dealers do,” he says. In 2009, with clients calling him up after comparison shopping online and asking him to undercut his own prices at a loss, he stopped selling timepieces altogether. At that time the gray market “for all intents and purposes was non-existent.” That’s all changed. Sellers like those at the Dubai Gold Souk work with some authorized watch dealers to sell off discounted inventory.Ĭonsider the fate of Whit Haydon, who began selling watches thirty years ago as an authorized dealer for brands like Patek Philippe, Jaeger LeCoultre, and Cartierat his Raleigh, North Carolina jewelry shop Haydon & Co.
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