Since being purchased by Richemont in 2018, the British pre-owned watch marketplace Watchfinder & Co. has mostly focused its attention on its home market of Europe. But Edouard Caumon, Watchfinder’s U.S. lead, is hoping to make 2024 the year that Watchfinder gets competitive in the American market.
Since launching in 2002, Watchfinder has been growing steadily across the globe with a focus on digital commerce. Sales increased 120% year-over-year in 2023, commensurate with the continued growth of the global pre-owned luxury watch industry — it reached $24 billion last year and is expected to grow by around 9% this year. But for its U.S. expansion, Caumon said Watchfinder is primarily focused on physical retail.
“I’ve opened 52 boutiques and spaces around the country, in my previous job [as business development manager in the Americas for Richemont with a focus on watch brands],” Caumon said. “Retail is a very competitive space for watch brands in the U.S., but it’s also very important to us.”
While Watchfinder has a handful of showrooms in the U.S., its current focus is on pop-ups and shop-in-shops. It held a pop-up at Art Basel in Miami in December, and its biggest retail partner in the U.S. is Nordstrom — it secured a partnership with the retailer in 2022. Watchfinder has a permanent shop-in-shop on the second floor of Nordstrom’s New York City flagship and in Seattle, along with pop-ups at Nordstrom locations in The Grove, Downtown Portland, Fashion Valley and Oakbrook Center with more to come soon.
Caumon said Watchfinder has, so far, been mostly quiet about directly marketing to the U.S. customer, with the Art Basel pop-up being among its first efforts. But it’s planning campaigns and activations that will roll out in the U.S. market this year. Caumon leads a U.S. team for Watchfinder based in New York City.
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Watchfinder isn’t the only company in the watch space trying to crack the U.S. market. While, to date, European brands have been more interested in selling in Asian markets like Hong Kong and mainland China, the Japanese luxury watch brand Grand Seiko has also been moving westward and expanding in the U.S. Last year, Grand Seiko beat out European brands like Omega and Rolex to win the WatchPro Brand of the Year award. Meanwhile, LVMH chose Miami Watch Week earlier this month as a venue to show off its revamped watch models from brands like Zenith and Louis Vuitton.
Caumon said the U.S. customer differs from Watchfinder’s traditional European customer in a few key ways, mostly in the way they shop.
“They’re not necessarily more knowledgeable [than European shoppers,]” he said. “In France, which is a big market for us, if I tell a customer the price of a watch, they say, ‘OK,’ and they buy it. In the U.S., they push back on everything. They want to check the price at every other place. So the knowledge level is the same, but they want to get the best price and will go hunting for it.”
