For obvious reasons, we will not be revealing his identity or showing any photographs of him. But he goes by the name of “Mrwatchgeneva” on some of the more popular social networks. We met this 14-year-old watch collector inside his comfort zone, in the compact environment of the Davidoff Brothers vintage watch store in the heart of Geneva’s old town, where he occasionally helps brothers Roy and Sasha with cataloguing the store’s fast moving inventory.
Unsurprisingly, his passion for watches developed not from pouring over the high-budget advertising campaigns in glossy magazines but through the more down-to-earth posts on Instagram, where real people take pride in sharing photos of real watches. “I have always liked watches and one day my dad showed me a watch account on Instagram,” he explains. “I started to get more interested in these kinds of accounts and back in February I decided to set up one of my own.” He now has 1,600 followers on the photo-sharing service, which is also his main source of information: “For example Hublot sends out an alert on Instagram whenever a new watch is out. It’s more direct because often the brands don’t mention release dates in their news.”
"70% of vintage watches"
Even the well-informed customer of tomorrow will still need to be won over, however, since this young collector expects vintage watches to account for 70% of his watch buying activities, with only 30% left for new pieces. To make things harder, he is looking for something unique. “Not necessarily a limited edition,” he says, “but something that is different. For example, the Urwerk 210 is an astounding watch.”
Other “grail” watches for this collector all come in at over 200,000 Swiss francs, which remind your editor-in-chief of his boyhood dreams about Lamborghinis and Ferraris. Yet when given a hypothetical 300,000 Swiss francs by WorldTempus (just to make things even more interesting) with the condition that he can only choose one watch, he opts for something much more classical in the form of the new Patek Philippe World Time Moon Ref. 5575.
Our young collector has all the makings of a true watch geek, admitting to drawing up a plan of which watch he is going to wear each day of the week and feeling naked without a watch. He also has a lucky watch (useful for when he is sitting his exams), which, like a true insider, he refers to by its nickname: the Rolex “Batman”.
Despite all these traits of a fully-fledged collector, despite his young age and despite his avid use of social media, you are unlikely to find him bidding online for watches at auction. “It’s more fun bidding live,” he says, “because you get the adrenalin. If you do it online you could be in bed and it’s less fun.”
Whether brands are doing enough to engage with a younger audience through their favourite channels remains a moot point. “They are not,” thinks our young collector, “but the kind of watches they are selling are for grown men, so that’s normal.” But let’s not forget that today’s 14 year-old will be a grown man in just five years’ time.
"Not interested in smart watches at all"
One thing that is sure, however, is that the young collector will not be jumping on the smart watch bandwagon. It’s hard to tell whether he has been influenced by his older peers in the vibrant community of watch collectors that regularly pop into the Davidoff Brothers store in Geneva, but when asked about the issue being followed by the entire Swiss watch industry, his opinion is clear: “I’m not interested at all. It’s a gadget.”
