What REALLY Happened With Watchfinder

It’s been 3 months – has the move from Watchfinder been the greatest idea ever or has it all gone horribly wrong?

Show notes here – https://www.scottishwatches.co.uk/2024/06/03/scottish-watches-podcast-575-andrew-morgan-watches-life-after-watchfinder-3-months-in/

welcome to Scottish watch’s podcast it’s time to check in with her child he flew the C he left for University a number of months ago me and Dave have been worried sick but it’s time to check if the stabilizers have been taken off the bike that is Andrew Morgan watches how you doing Andrew how are things very well thank you I’ve fallen immediately in with the wrong crowd and now I’m very badly hooked on uh watches even more so than I already was so yeah I’ve not been attending any lessons I’ve been throwing stones at the teachers it’s it’s all it’s all going to Ry you’ve been hooked on a very addictive substance that is going to lead you down many dark paths and Alleyways hopefully not be jumped or worse and you’ve got no money left and you actually owe people a fortunes that what you’re telling me I think this is less uh a situation where I’ve been sent to University I’ve more been sent to a rehabilitation clinic but unfortunately that Rehabilitation Clinic is also a dealer uh so there’s a lot of conflict of interest here uh so it’s massively spiled out of control fair enough and that is something that I’ve always thought about when I’m talking to Norm’s friends and colleagues in different Industries and I say I was on the phone with my dealer earlier on I just wonder what they actually think of me I think let’s say let’s see given the the accent given you know the shavee headed demeanor I think they’re completely fine with that I’m like yeah I anticipate they would be surprised you meant watches if anything they probably thought cars I know that’s what you’re getting but anyway we’re here to tell you to check the show notes we’re going to be talking about lots of the things we’re going to be covering a lot of things that have happened over the past few months since Andrew was on breaking his heart telling us the the breakup story of the century and how he started his own little fledgling company that’s doing great guns and yeah there’s there’s a whole loot of things we’re going to be covering so have a look in the show notes that link will be your podcast player if you’re watching this on YouTube check the description and that will take you to our website to a specific page designated for this show in there text back links to watches and other things that we’re going to be chatting about but I suppose we should do that thing where we catch up and I find out how life has been because we actually did catch up we’ve caught up a couple of times we caught up down south in England British watchmakers day and then over in Geneva but how have things been since you left the big company it’s hard to believe that it’s only been three months since the video where I oued myself as back on the market and single if you like uh but it’s been a crazy three months it feels like three years have gone by but in a good way uh I’ve met so many people I’ve done so many things I’ve been given so many different opportunities it’s it is genuinely like a dream come true I certainly hope it lasts many many years into the future I have no expectation that it will and so really for every good thing that happens now I’m thinking oh man I need to work hard to make sure I don’t take that for granted and that I can continue to maintain this momentum and success but abs absolutely very very happy days um I’m hoping for much more good that was a very polished answer so I’m going to delve deeper and ask you what things have you anticipated that we’re going to go one way but have gone the other because we like to drill down a little bit it’s all very well getting the fairy story about how great things have been but have you come across anything where you had a couple ideas and maybe they didn’t quite turn out the way you expected um if I said no does that make me seem arrogant because so far everything has gone incredibly well the the real beauty of what’s happened is that I get to do what I want which is an unbelievable position to be in I I could have never imagined stepping out of school all those years ago thinking one day I will just get to do what I want and it’s going to put food on the table and keep the lights on so I I see every opportunity I’ve had is either something that’s come to fruition or a learning opportunity so I have spoken to uh you know has some opportunities spoken to some Brands where it’s not worked out but it’s not worked out for reasons that are positive for me either that actually what they’re doing and the arrangement that they wanted isn’t something that I would want and so I’ve learned that I can say no to that that makes me very happy knowing that I can do that and continue to maintain uh success in what I do or it does become something and then it it becomes another opportunity to um to to sort of further grow the business as it stands this is all sounding very kind of political talking around the topic may you should take the hands of time and wind them back slightly because there’s a misconception I know within the industry and within people that view your videos listen to our podcast Etc that Andrew Morgan watches is just a YouTube channel and we did touch upon this back three months ago when we explained that you were leaving you were doing your own thing but even I didn’t have a full understanding of exactly what type of service it is you’re offering and it’s not to the collectors it’s not to the dealer networks it’s to the brands and I will do a quick synopsis of what you told me very recently the kind of blurb on the back of Andrew Morgan watches the the title the first to that’s come out and that is when you were at watchfinder people including myself thought of you as the guy with the Talking Hands the guy that didn’t show his face until later on down the his career path but you would talk about a watch and we’ look at the watch and the watch look great and that was it but it turned out behind the scenes you were highlighting specific models perhaps brands that were doing okay or not so great but due to the fact that you were recording in such great Fidelity producing such great content writing amazing scripts and weaving it all together as a great tapestry they were seeing benefits because their marketing messages the information they were trying to convey to potential and existing customers wasn’t Landing the way they wanted it it wasn’t transferring to people buying the watches and loving them but you were managing to do that and that is what you’re now offering to the greater watch World there you go just listen to him follow his words they are good words I so this this is something a lot of people don’t realize when I worked at watchfinder I wasn’t just doing the videos I was taking well give us the the bit of History then your career trajectory recap it for new people and existing people that are maybe failing in the gay matter this guy here how did it start a watch finder what did you really do there what did I really do well to start I have to start right at the start which was before watchfinder and there’ll be some people who have heard this story before so I apologize um I started my career as a civil engineer I didn’t have the money to go to university so I got an apprenticeship as a cad technician and worked with day release to get to become a civil engineer which I really enjoyed I enjoyed the the creativity of that the problem solving um but I didn’t enjoy the bureaucracy remember that that’s that’s called foreshadowing um so I I really liked writing I really liked uh photography and I really liked watches especially so I decided to create my own job and I had seen that watchfinder was advertising for a copywriter to write descriptions for watches um on their website but that wasn’t going to pay enough for me to quit my job as a civil engineer so I decided to pitch them a different job and I had seen in the automotive industry which big fan of cars they were creating things like blogs and and Vlogs and sites with forums engaging with the community to to build up a network of people who um weren’t just there to um weren’t just there to buy and sell but they were also there to commune and en enjoy and engage so I pitched that to watchfinder this idea of a community um from everything from blogs and blogs to to forums and in-person events and they were like this sounds really cool and it just so happened that at the time they were making a transition from being a 20 person shop in Maidstone in one building to becoming a fully-fledged brand now what do I mean by brand I mean something that actually has personality that has more than just a transactional nature to it something that gives more to the consumer so you you could say for example a Samsung phone is a product but an Apple phone is a brand because there is stuff intangible stuff around it that makes people have an emotional connection to it where they might not do over their Samsung product and you’ll have different people who want to work in different ways so the community aspect because watchfinder didn’t make any products that it could brand with its own personality the community was all about the knowledge of the products and so over time uh developed uh developed a Blog and then eventually this Vlog the the YouTube channel to create all of that stuff but it wasn’t just that so also working on the brand meant working on the bricks and mortar it meant working on uh the CRM so email Communications and things like that the website engagement how that was laid out and integrated and how people’s experiences well so the whole thing from start to finish was always something that I was involved with up to the point where basically I was the creative director at watchfinder and then you know I decided to move on to other things and as part of the YouTube channel and the videos what I realized kind of posthumously if you like that I was doing was that when Brands approached and they said hey do you want to feature this or I was looking around and seeing what was coming out there were reasons that I would pick some things and reasons that I would not pick other things and those reasons were really based on whether or not I thought they added value to people over a number of different aspects were they did they look really good was the quality great did they provide excellent value for money and how many of those things did they do some watches managed to hit all of them some managed to hit a couple and some hit none if they hit none I’d say sorry no thank you I can’t do anything with this and the ones that hit a few I had conversations with those Brands and helped them understand why help them better communicate their product uh to to to better add value to the aspects they did have and feedback to them on the parts that weren’t as good to help them improve them for next time and just by happen St so I decided I was going to leave watchfinder and do my own channel I’d already been working on my channel for about a year and it was going very very well and when I started to talk to Brands to say oh you know just in passing us oh I’m leaving they were saying well you’ve helped us before we’d really like you to help us more if you can and the idea came why don’t I do that and so what has evolved from that is uh a consultancy whereby I work with Brands effectively to help them in communication and communication can be they have a fantastic product but they just don’t know how to get it out there they have uh a a great technical ability but they just just don’t get brand and how to consolidate all of the things they do and uh concisely explain them to people or it might be that they have an incredible Heritage but they just are a little bit lost in their way trying to find out how to make the product that is viable and suitable for an audience of today and for me that communication ranges all the way from uh the things that you say about it what platforms do you talk about it on what kind of things do you say but actually all the way up to the very very essence of where it all starts the product itself this is the dream that I’m starting to live is having a say in what these products actually are it’s terrifying it’s utterly terrifying yeah I have never experienced so much imposter syndrome in all my life but my Approach is always to give justification for what I do and I think if I continue to do that it will it will continue to go well and so far there have been some experiences even in these tiny few three months worth of of work that have have have lifted my confidence pieces of advice uh opportunities that have been uh created for people that I’ve worked with in order to help them do better and what this means for me because it was very important for me to maintain this um to maintain this independence of my of my channel and so people think that the watchfinder channel was paid sponsorship all the time never took a penny from anyone and I really enjoyed being able to pick and choose the stuff that I wanted to talk about and what you’ll see over the years at watchfinder is how I discovered Brands you know I I fell in love with Rolex and then I started to become cynical and then actually I realized that they were more than I had ever anticipated the discovery of independent Brands big and small the new watch makers who are taking different approaches to making watches and I want to be able to continue to tell their stories and not be bogged down by the commercial aspect um so this is a bit of a a bizarre concept for some but I I don’t charge watch brands to feature on my YouTube channel because I just want to pick whatever I want if I pick a brand for example and I feature them and they say wow that was you brought us all these sales and are brilliant and they want to make a contribution sure why not but I’m never going to say to you if you want to be on my channel it’ll cost you this that and the other because what I want to do is I want to feature brands that I think are either really really good and maybe they’ll let me work with them and it’ll be a dream come true or brands that are like hitting some of those aspects and I can then come along and help them hit the others as well and so it hopefully so far so good it creates this self-fulfilling prophecy of creating value for everyone um and most importantly myself because it keeps me uh it keeps me a happy boy well there we go that a bit of an insight into the behind the scenes that only I picked up the full extent of within the last week when I was chatting getting this episode organized and it makes a lot of sense because the way I looked at what you just said and the way you told me a few days ago is if you bring a brand on you’ll bring them on because you like what they’ve done you’ve got something you can talk about not what they’re telling you in the future none of this are fairy stuff that all the brands love to talk about here’s our plan um but if a brand hasn’t quite gotten to that point where you’re invested enough to bring their product onto showcase then if they get in touch with you and you work on it with them in the future because you worked on and you obviously like what you work on the chances are then they can appear and you have investment in it because it’s part of your family you know it’s your little baby that you’ve worked on alongside so I think that’s a great concept and I love the fact that you’ve taken your time you haven’t burst in and I’m I’m fighting with myself not to say it I’ll just say it recently we talked about Ben Climer at hinki and the negative press that they received and part of his ending his third Act of whichever interview it was people had given them was oh just wait things will get better wait till you see what we’ve got up our sleeve and that always means that you really don’t know what you’re doing and you’re guessing and you’re hoping if you had something tangible you would talk about it and the way that you’re explaining the way the business is developed which most people thought you were going to do exactly the same thing watch finder onto your own channel it is not the case but you’ve managed to also upgrade the quality of the content you’re putting out almost as if you didn’t quite have your foot to the floor so that I think was as much to do with a self-limitation because of being encapsulated within a brand so what I’ve really let myself loose with now is enjoying the humor aspect I I love humor I may seem like a miserable but I I do enjoy a little a little tickle of a laugh every now and then and it wasn’t appropriate for watchfinder so again I was the guy in charge of what that brand was at watchfinder so I was the one determining that it shouldn’t push Beyond a certain limit the idea was to encourage people to have trust in the watchfinder brand and so being ridiculous didn’t really fall in line with that but having my own channel meant that I could kind of let loose and have a bit of a laugh and and enjoy the industry for for what it is you know it’s not just a serious thing it’s a a collection of crazy events that all seem to be happening at once um and and poke some fun at that as you do too and I think you really set the Benchmark way back in the day for not taking all of this too seriously and look at the longevity it’s given you as well and I wanted to steal some of that Juju from you I’ll be honest I wanted some of it for my very self you’ve done well and I have noticed the change and reading the comments in your videos people have picked up on it the shackles have been loosened you’ve mind to escape the turny of the conglomerate and I know what it’s like there was a show that you probably heard on Thursday where there were three jokes that I probably usually would have cut out because they were a little bit too close to the Bone and I thought why am I limiting myself nobody is paying me to do this show it’s not like I’ve got a contract with a brand and I’ve got to tow the company line I just went hell for leather I’ve kept an eye on the comments because it only got released as we’re recording today but so far so good no ceas and deist no one has decided to try and cancel me just yet but it is a very fine line and it’s also not trying to inject humor where it doesn’t exist you know that try hard comedian or the person at school that always wants to be noticed and they’re just pushing a little bit too hard I think as I say all the time watches are a hobby you don’t need them they’re great fun and it gives us something to enjoy and talk about and learn about and if I can just make that a little bit more exciting for folks all the better a guy that will be on next week’s show and I’ve talked about a little bit in the past is Patrick Gray from the risky business security podcast he talks about cyber security what a boring subject that is but he injects so much humor I remember he was talking about different ransomware gangs and how they infiltrated things and he’s like you know what good on them they managed to get in so he talks about things that you probably shouldn’t say cool things about but he does it in such a humorous manner he gets away with it plus he’s from Down Under and a bit like Scottish people we have that kind of dodg humor Gene but we should move on to other things and the thing we always forget to do we talk about the show notes but we don’t tell people about the risk check and I believe you actually are wearing something today that you can show off and it’s a pretty little number so reveal all Andrew what is on the hand today today Ricky I am wearing I don’t think this will be much of a surprise to anyone to be honest but I like it very much I’m wearing my Christopher Ward B Kanto in red this is uh a one of one one that I was very lucky uh to be able to get and I have put it on a white rubber delugs strap um in case you’re wondering because you’re probably looking at and thinking he doesn’t seem cool enough to wear a white strap and I’m not but who knows it might I I might absorb some coolness from it one as I’ve expressed before much to Mike’s dismay the leather straps on the Bell Canto are terrible they are described them before as like you know when you you pick a dried slug off your shoe it’s a little bit like that it’s kind of got that sort of rubbery resistance with a bit of crispiness to it so I thought I’ll put my own I will interject because you’re going to go on a tiate here that’s well deserved but I will inter a little bit is it the same leather strap that is on the moon phase because I found that to be the best leather strap that I’ve ever encountered I don’t know I don’t know if it is the same strap is it thinner than a piece of paper can you read the newspaper through it no okay maybe it’s not the same strap I’m going to get a message from Patrick at Christopher Ward saying actually it is the same strap you idiot um so we’ll see so maybe that one’s terrible and you have low expectations for what your your leather should look like well that’s why you’re a guest in any case a lot of brands are very resistant to the idea of third party straps and I just don’t get it because a third-party strap one it protects you if the manufacturer stops making straps for your watches but two it also allows you to change up the personality of your strap and makes you more likely to share it with other people especially on social media which actually gives more visibility to that watch um the brands say oh no but we didn’t get to sell a 300 pound leather strap it’s like first that’s a lot of money for a leather strap but why not embrace it why not make those strap Brands authorized and licensed the ability to sell under your brand name and make some money that way instead it’s a little bit lame third party camera lenses and this is and iide I’ll be very quick cuz I want to piss people off back in the day up until recently when maybe in the past 20 years cameras have had CPUs inside the lenses and more so more recently the new mirrorless models especially Cannon they would not allow connection of the lens to the system inside the camera so your metering your depth f stops all that it wouldn’t transfer across Nikon seemed to allow it fine Panasonic seemed to allow it fine Sony allowed it but Canon would not allow third party lenses to utilize their technology and only very very recently have they opened up and we’re not talking about public domain we’re talking about licensing and it’s quite similar I find to what you’re talking about with watch brands or even car companies car companies will look for any excuse to kill your warranty including I found out if you’ve got a Porsche with a warranty and you change the tires on it and they are not in rated they will void your warranty it’s like it’s tires you know it’s ridiculous so I fully agree with what you say speaking of warranties actually I heard a very interesting fact about Grand SEO so you know how the the the yen is down at the moment and so people are going to Japan to buy watches um people are going specifically to Japan to buy Grand seos and do a little bit of a a pilgrimage for want of a better word and they come home with their their brand new grand Seiko fresh from Japan it might even be a Japan special edition then they might need to go and take it for a warranty repair and they find out that warranty is JDM only and they couldn’t read this because the whole manual was in Japanese so people are discovering that they are buying a watch that the warranty can’t be used outside of Japan when they buy it in Japan that’s something you wouldn’t think about uh worldwide international warranty you just take it for granted that that is going to be the case I know with Rolex and various other manufacturers they don’t do region specific stuff but that seems a little bit crazy especially the brand that’s trying to grow as much as Grand but anyway we’ve talked about your little watch there so it’s a one of one Unique Piece you got it from Mike France he hand delivered it with Patrick opening the door and all the rest of it when did you get it and what is your thoughts on the whole Christopher W thing at the moment because we’ve talked at length about the public perception of 12x and the fact that people didn’t like the fact that it was over four grand and we kind of showed people the reasons for it but you’ve obviously got a channel on YouTube We’re predominantly a podcast what was the perception like when you were talking about this so Christopher Ward is a fascinating company I think of it almost as much as a tech company as I do a watch maker because a lot of what they pursue isn’t to to say like this is the Christopher Ward look and feel what they present actually is here is an opportunity to reach into areas of watchmaking that you hadn’t previously thought you could and so they try and find different ways to approach old-fashioned problems with newer thinking so the Bell Kanto is an example of that utilizing an approach to supply chain in order to bring different talents together to make a watch that should cost much more at a cost that is much more relatively affordable so um talking to uh yorg Senor there who orchestrated a lot of the process he was saying for example he would go to a supplier in Switzerland that makes wheels and he would say 10 wheels please and they would say yeah sure that’s however many Swiss Franks and he’d say like why is it that much and they’d say oh we use this machine to make them and he’d say well why don’t you use that machine over there that machine would make them cheaper and the supplier would say well I’ve never thought about that all the big brands that come to us just say make them and we’ve made them on this machine and that’s how much they cost so they are looking for efficiencies in every single aspect of the supply chain in order to make the prices come down and I find that fascinating and the 12x was I wouldn’t say it was a misstep but I think it’s a a missed opportunity in the communication because what they have done is they have they have looked into machine finishing a higher level of machine finishing of course we all want our watches to be hand finished by a wizard old man up a mountain in Switzerland but he’s expensive he’s got Sky bills to pay and so what we actually look for is ways to replicate that at a lower cost that make it more affordable to all of us I I don’t think anyone would deny the opportunity to have better finishing in their watch for a lower cost even at the sacrifice of it being made by machine um I don’t think that interferes with the ability for brands that are doing things by hand to continue doing that and perhaps even charge more for it look at the gral FY handmade one for example and so what they discovered with the 12x was that they could use machines and again that supply chain uh the technical process of narrowing every detail down how can you actually engineer a bevel that is well Polished by machine for an affordable price and so when you compare the 12x to something like the Zenith defi which currently lists the the the skeleton around 10,000 I think what you’ll realize is the defi doesn’t have polished bevels it’s you know cnced it’s quite intricate but it doesn’t have those little details the problem for Christopher Ward is those little deta details are very very small and very hard to perceive unless you know what you’re looking for and you know you and I know that someone will go to um a watchmaker like protect filipo Vashon or even higher up like the Roman gotier or the rette reies because they are after that every last little facet of of perfection they get this idea of the law of diminishing returns but at 4K that law of diminishing returns is we’re not as familiar with that that the microcosm of that law of diminishing returns higher up so 4K seems like a lot for that watch um and I think for Christopher Ward what they really need to focus on is being able to find avenues like that that are impactful and very readable in a 3 Second Glance in an Instagram post that’s what they did with the belcanto the 12x didn’t quite achieve that that’s a great summary yeah that makes a lot of sense and you’ve managed explain what took me nearly an hour with mik to go through and uh convince people and I’m going to say convince because when we put that out as a YouTube video and our YouTube videos fall a couple of weeks generally after the main show if we get R to them at all we’re getting better at it but as you know better than anybody producing video content takes a hell of a lot longer than audio and when we’re producing two podcasts of an hour roughly each per week in audio to then do another hour or two hours of video is Mammoth so we’ve got Gavin working behind the scenes he’s doing a great job it’s just it takes a while but we did get Mike’s video out there in the YouTube comments again I used a little bit of your terminology and your clickbait ideas I put the title as 4K for Christopher world watch stay in your lane and all the people that initially thought yeah yeah know [ __ ] those guys they jumped on to watch the video and were like yeah yeah yeah yeah and as they’re watching it they probably started to maybe get a little bit of a mind M from me I hypnotized them into thinking a different way and the comments underneath went yeah actually you’re kind of making sense you guys I never thought of this I never understood that that ties it all together for us so I managed to convince some people of things that they didn’t believe initially which I suppose is why we’re here we’re here to open up new ideas and fight against what maybe people thought of the past and show them that you can get great results and it’s not going to cost you 14 Grand or 40 Grand you can get it at four grand it’s very impressive what they’re doing and of course when you try and push the limits like that you’re not always going to get at 100% spot on and I think even for them they are still reeling at the idea of the belcanto being such a success but the the 12 as well okay on one hand you could say it’s incredibly derivative looks almost identical to certain other watches um made by other brands for more money until you get to my Rust Check for shado um but the the 12 offers an experience that is as someone who has who’s had the the great privilege to own a royal o in the past really really hits upon those same notes and there sometimes they’re just like psychological things that maybe even Christopher Ward didn’t realize that they were doing but having the 12 under a centimeter and the titanium version even another millimeter thinner than that having that slimness on your wrist feels very very high end and again I think with the 12x it was a bit bigger it was a bit thicker and it lost some of that by comparison but things at the 12 they’re just absolutely here so sometimes they’re going to have to just work on things and every now and then they’re going to have a Smash Hit I think when it comes out and people get it unrest because there was limited production samples we got one and that’s how we managed to film some things I recorded a really cool video clip and I showed you and I was all happy I was like look at this mom look what I produced and it was using a technique that maybe spoke about in the show before but I employed in high school when I didn’t like people and uh a little bit subus went on and I would say to them here hold this and they would hold some steel wool and I’d say right see how long you can hold on the steel wool for and then I would plunge a 9V pp3 battery into it and what happens if you’ve not done this before is all the bits of Steel will suddenly Catch Fire and they spread like a virus like the Matrix and the green stuff coming down the screen but it is blisteringly hot metal that is there so nobody could hold on to it for too long and I probably burned a few hands but the stature limitations and all that and I was a child don’t worry about it that’s not what we’re here for but what I did was I put this same idea put strands of steel wool underneath the 12x there was a see through transparent plastic on top and underneath to protect the watch and give a little bit of variance to the size and the depth of it let the thing up recorded the video clip took ages to set up the clip lasted about a second long story of my life and I sent it to Andrew and he watched it and he went did you put an iPad under that not great but no Christoper Ward doing fantastic stuff we’re we’re going to get Mike on more because he’s only been on once in the last year and a half or thereabouts and they’ve got people that like to talk it at you they don’t hide stuff they’re very transparent with what they do the costs who they work with and where they invest their money and they are reinvesting it’s not a case of oh we did great with B Kanto we’re off to the Bahamas they bought a 20% stake in this place over in be that I visited once before and there’s lots of things happening behind the scenes we are privy to a little bit more information on new mods and releases coming down the line but 12 was great belcanto was great although I didn’t like it myself I didn’t buy one I didn’t even ask for a loan of one because I looked at it and thought that is not my style or aesthetic yeah okay it’s cool it’s got the CH and whatnot but everybody jumped on it and again I think that was potentially down to perhaps a video that you produced on it I I think to be honest what what sold that watch is what we were talking about earlier okay it doesn’t the looks don’t appeal to everyone but people who like that kind of watch are the people who looked at things like mbf and thought I can never afford one of those and then this turns up and the quality is there as well because they’ve selectively chosen to hand polish certain aspects they’ve not gone throughout the whole thing because that would cost too much but just the right bits that catch your eye it’s just very clever and selective and then the price being down it it had no chance not to succeed if I’ve got my double negatives right there um it’s it was always going to do well without a doubt they didn’t believe it but it did um and I think it will continue to do well and and the thing as well this this will sounds like a whole big Christopher hord plug and up until now I haven’t worked with him but I do have a project coming up with him which I’m very excited about and I don’t know how much I can say so maybe I’ll just say that but we’ll see um but Mike he’s already loaded he retired he made his mint and then went on a Sat on a beach and got bored and decided to start a watch camp this is a hobby for him he is making this because he wants to because he’s passionate about doing it and wants to create stuff that makes people happy to to be fulfilling you know the people who work there you meet them and you talk to them they’re all hugely passionate about what they do because they are part of this Enterprise of dreams so to speak it’s not a he’s he’s not a guy that’s been hired in by the business to you know sort the business out and make Christopher Ward better to try and Rebrand it and change the logo go to look like North Face or whatever it was he is just doing it because he wants to do it and I think that has the ripples through things like the they’re very transparent about the margin being three times instead of five to 10 times like it is in much of the rest of the industry because he’s just like that’s what I’m doing I’m doing it because I want to make it nice um and I think that’s really really cool you’re right he was on the show one of the early episodes and we got his history and he told us that he’d been involved with the Early Learning Center which was a huge thing here in the UK I don’t know if it still is probably not and back 20 plus years ago he sold that and he made tens of millions but get super bored and then decided as you say to start a watch company but to do it online and even back then he wasn’t a younger gentleman you know he wasn’t the The In Crowd doing all that kind of online web to stuff but he turned it into success and it’s been there for a couple of decades and they’re doing even better today than they were 5 years or 10 years ago so enough for the Christopher word chat I should probably do my wrist Check Yes do I’m we on something that is again going to foreshadow a podcast I’m going to record with somebody that’s in Scotland stays less than maybe 100 miles away probably an hour or two well depend on how quickly I ride my motorcycle an hour or two away from me and we’ve never had him on the show which is kind of odd and his name is the dial artist and as soon as I said that you’ll know what I’m talking about he takes ink spatter design and other sort of cues from the fashion industry world the art world and he takes that and miniaturizes it down to the size of a dial so if you can imagine a canvas a billboard down to just a couple of centimeters and Andrew knows what a couple of centimeters is so I am today wearing a limited edition that he has produced in association in collaboration with nun and that is spelled nuuu n a brad we’ve spoken about in the show before because they make watches that highlight the design cues and the ethos of the Genta family let’s just leave it at that but this one here if you can get past the similarities that we spoken about just a few minutes ago about stainless steel sports watches this is pretty funky I believe it comes in around 400 500 this is obviously not solid gold this is IP qued but at that price point at that thinness for a little watch that has got a lot of character on the dial and I don’t know if this is a style that Andrew would like or Andrew would talk about but I actually do quite like it and at this price point I think it’s a bit of a win I’m not going to go too deep into it you can look in the show notes to find out more and you can obviously listen to the episode where we talk to him about how he designed stuff his love of orology watchmaking and working with multiple RS we’re not just talking about these guys over in the Far East he’s done stuff with IFL and loads of other companies Brands watch makers of the past might even be a collab in our future who knows what’s going on there but this is a fantastic little watch yes it does look like a notless we ain’t going to lie about it but you know lots of watches look like lots of watches and we just talked about the 12 and the 12x the only negative and I like to highlight the positives and the negatives of things this would not be a watch that you would ever want to wear in London but that is it enough said this is a limited edition from n and the D artist and it’s available just now on their website details will be in the show notes and this is not a sponsored episode so that was a free plug as well imagine getting smashed over the head for 500 quid that would really suck we are recording another show yet again Preamble and a little bit of foreshadowing with two gentlemen from the police they’ve been on the show before they work for the flying Squad at the Metropolitan Police down south and there’s been a lot of negativity due to published articles about bad things that happened especially here in the UK especially in London to do with watch crime it is on the rise as We’ve Come Into Summer bad things have happened really bad things have happened with a watch dealer that it appears took his own life after being robbed in his or a store that he worked in so we’re going to have the two guys from the police back on just to give us an update and a bit of a refresher that yeah we’re enjoying stuff the sun’s staying out longer but we want to have our watches remaining on the wrist not disappearing and potentially life-threatening consequences that happened thereafter so enough of that we’ll talk about that in the future back to Andrew and we want to find out what’s in your future we found out about the past 3 months it’s been action-packed you were across at watches and wonders we were playing with an Invicta watch that appeared in an Instagram real that I have been sent screen captures of almost hourly for the past couple of days so thanks very much for that one um what else has been happening what’s been on the go what things have you seen that you like maybe you could give us like your top five top five videos that you’ve made something like that sure do you want me to talk about the invictor thing as well yeah let’s go into the invictor story how did this all come to be we’ve had the Tim version and he was on the show telling us obviously he’s working with you on things behind the scenes he’s also working with us on things behind the scenes because you’re a guy that even Way Way Back the first time I met you was two years two and a bit years ago at watch and wonders and you wanded over I didn’t recognize your face cuz no knew what you look like you were like Charlie from Charlie’s Angels and you came over with a chat and since then we’ve worked on a whole load of projects back with watch finder across in Geneva and now we’re doing things there might even be a sort of Regular Show coming soon stay tuned for that one oh that’ be nice that would be nice you know we’re talking about things yeah we’ll leave that sitting just um a lot of foreshadowing not for skinning but foreshadowing in this episode so moving on to what’s been happening fill us in bring us up to speed so the invictor has been um a big highlight of my year so far as I think it has been for many people because nothing brings about Joy more than the misery of others or in fact or in fact indeed the the the misery of an object itself this is the most disgusting watch in the entire world the invictor Gladiator I believe from the reserve series they reserved only for people who have drunk too much paint um speaking of which that’s a fancy looking beverage you got there is that the is that an energy drink that gets you through the night editing it doesn’t see limited edition I hoped it would but it doesn’t it’s iron Brew power Brew of course it’s iron Brew for Scottish people oh cliche um so well basically that watch had featured in a video a while back of just horrible worst watches ever and a friend of mine Rob huberty former Navy SEAL all around nice guy decided out of the blue that he was going to buy one and bring it to watches and wonders I’m surprised he wasn’t arrested at the border for bringing that monstrosity into Switzerland but he got it in there and um it was just like a stupid joke really where he showed it to me I tried it on I was wearing it throughout the tour in the the Rolex stand because they had that whole you know the life cycle of the GMT and the lady was telling us when I was asking questions this and this stupid watch hanging off my wrist um and it was very very hard to keep a straight face but the lady who was doing the presentation to be fair absolutely 100% kept it all together very very very professional and and we thought we’re having a great time with this thing we should see who else might enjoy it and so through through the course of the week of watches and monders if we would meet people and we would go like oh what do you think of this and it it started to get a bit out of hand because it was just you know our friends and other people that we knew and people that we were meeting and then and then and then it was a few CEOs what do you think and and everyone just seemed to really love it you know we were all just reving in its hideousness and um it got to the point where we were at the ahci uh event it’s like a where they show these cool independent Brands the Pirates as they’re known um and they are out in Geneva and and you go in there and Philipe duall was there and he was just looking at some stuff and talking to some people and he was just sort of getting ready to leave and we like Rob go and ask phip he I can’t do that that’s ridiculous you can’t ask phip look at this thing like do it you only get one chance and you’ll regret it if you don’t so I mean there not a braver person you can ask than a Navy SEAL and even he had gone bright red at the thought of this and he did it and we thought oh you know I’ve never met Philip before I don’t think he speaks very much English and I thought maybe he would find the whole thing confusing and quite rightly disgusting but he didn’t this guy was in stitches he was he was laughing away to himself he was looking at this watch we were all enjoying it and then he went a step further he said ah hang on a second and he reached into his pocket and he pulled out the first Simplicity he had ever made like this this watch if it went at auction would do Gang Busters it would be well into the millions he pulled it out of his pocket held one in one hand and the other in the other and was like oh you yeah which which do you guys think is better like completely straight it was just the funniest thing ever and it it was just the it was just the Pinnacle to this ridiculous Journey that this watch had gone on bringing all these different people together and cuz watches and wonders for people who haven’t been there before it’s a very cool event and you get to see all of your favorite watches and bronts but the vibe at the actual show can sometimes feel a bit I don’t want to say oppressive but most of the people there might be retailers uh especially on the the closed days the private days and you don’t get the sense of like passion and a Vibe and and stuff like that um and this showing this to people actually brought that Vibe back it was it was at dinners it was at different shows around Geneva it was whoever we met this this thing came out it was a heavy thing for Rob to carry around as well it’s an absolute lump um and it just it just absolutely made the event so there’s a little real going around on Instagram of that Journey uh check it out there’s some good cameos from some people that you wouldn’t expect in there including yourself everybody who’s anybody is a there so yeah want to check out that’ll be in the show notes and we’ll include that in the YouTube video but apart from that what else has been happening and what’s in the future for AMW what videos have you coming out you’ve changed things up as I said watch finder videos they were not cookie cutter because everything you did was unique and had its own theme but things have just been I don’t know you’ve spinal tapped it up to 11 a little bit on the amplification module what is next what have what you coming down the line what you going to impress us with next so I am looking to do more videos of product reviews one of the great challenges of doing watch reviews and watch videos is having access to the product and so I’ve looked to find a format that I don’t necessarily need that that I can talk about things that I’ve seen and experienced but I don’t necessarily have to have all of that at home in the studio and shoot it all so on and so forth but I do want to make sure I continue with live Hands-On reviews of certain products that I think are very interesting and so I’m establishing more of that I’ve done a couple now and I’m going to be doing some more but there’s a very special element that will be coming because this is a bit of behind the scenes Ricky and I we were talking and you showed me a shot that I had featured in a video which was from the brand and you’d asked me if it was mine and it wasn’t mine and I’ve been trying to figure out how to make that shot happen so with the reviews I’m going to be pushing for uh more interesting more Dynamic more shots that reveal a product in its three dimensions that don’t feel flat that have movement to to them an interest so people can enjoy the watches on a greater level when they do watch one of my reviews so I’m always looking for new little devices that pop up on Amazon and things that I can break apart and reconfigure to do what I want to do with them so keep an eye out for that Ricky I might meet your challenge soon okay well I am a junkie not just for watches and other things but camera equipment we talk about it in the show all the time people actually do like it they don’t skip forward they do check the sort analytics and I uh I I seem to be a bit of a for buying tripods and lightstands and things and there’s a guy called Marcus pick on YouTube and it’s all his fault he seems to be some retired multi multi-millionaire and he just buys camera equipment and talks about it and showcases it and I do the same what things have you picked up then or what things if you get your eye on new technologies or new products that you’re going to be looking at integrating towards the channel what’s going to help you out in the future well first of all I have an irrational hatred of light stands because no matter how much space you have in your Studio there’s one light stand and you always can’t quite get it past another light stand and they conflict with each other and that that brings involuntary rage I try and keep my light stand countown if I can um but what am I looking for okay I’m I’m a a tech junkie too I’m always looking at the latest things like what’s come out at um is it NAB is Nab the one yeah uh what’s coming out there and black magic who are um a camera company video camera company that I very much enjoy who a bit like the Christopher ward of the camera company they give you great technology for not very much money they have they had a while ago released a 12K sensor which sounds utterly ridiculous in terms of the pursuit of extra resolution you know most TVs you can’t really discern the difference between 1080P and 4K like it’s just you’re not perceiving enough resolution so why would I want 12K well the great thing is is it allows you to crop into shops and do things dynamically with them with all of thatt resolution but also as well so this is going to sound really Petty but I’m sure other photographers and videographers will will relate So when you buy camera gear you want it to look professional you don’t want it to look amateurish you don’t want the you want it all to look like what you’ve seen press and and in Hollywood you want it to look like you know what you’re doing and the camera that I have you don’t want it to look like a kodo dragon where it literally looks like a box like I like the Box because you can build on the box it has like little screw threads in it you can buy little accessories and arms and things and you can bolt it what you want is that setup where you can’t even see the Box anymore and you have a lens and you have a m box you have rails and you have a follow focus and you have all of these extra things that you’re not even using you like a a vmount lock battery lock plate I’ve got it plugged into the veins but the camera that I have at the moment which is the 6K pocket looks a bit like a toy d SLR it’s kind of plasticky and chunky and it looks looks like a Sega Game Gear it does it really does Ah that’s that was very satisfying you connected those it does it looks like it’s just it looks melted doesn’t it and but now they’ve released a new version of that which is the square box which would make me feel much more professional by myself in my studio where no one can see me so right now I’m having to rationalize not buying one because my irrational brain goes yeah yeah you need that but my rational brain says you know you don’t your your camera is does the job that you needed to do and this wouldn’t improve it in any way at all okay well you’ve answered one question anything else in there because I’ve got a few things I’m going to tell people about that might featur from the channel sh sh you’re doing your best Sean connory impression oh yes what’s coming up well I never really know too much cuz I’m usually chasing my own tail but I’m doing some stuff with some brands that I think people will really enjoy so I’m producing a few videos here and there that will go out on their channels for them about their stuff and they have rather foolishly said to me do whatever you like and so I am sometimes I think you know like I’ve got to play fair game here and I’m doing something that you know is is roughly what I think they also want but injecting some stuff in there but yeah I’ve sent some scripts over for approval to them that have come back with no red lines and I’m like okay so yeah I’m having a bow good and that’s the way it should be uh there are lots of creators out there to a little bit of inside baseball information for folks Teddy balesar produces content for lots of different watch companies they don’t tell you that he produces it Christian Theo and Harris has been doing this for a number of years we don’t because I don’t have enough time to record two podcast and edit two videos a week so I do not do this but if any brands are interested I mean I did some stuff A couple of years ago for araj I helped do some second camera work but it’s finding the time and having the ideas and you’ll know what it’s like cuz you’re a creative and you’re producing stuff but it’s having the proper ideas and the freedom to actually explore because you hit the nail on the head with Mike France earlier and a little bit like ourselves we’d never came into this industry this Hobby and now the career path we’ve taken by going to business school and saying okay I want to be this type of person without knowing the industry we’re going to fall in looking at LinkedIn all the time there are so many people that went from something that completely different to where they are now and I’m talking about watch companies PR people some of them are fantastic we love them to Pieces others are just there because it’s a stepping stone to working with a jewelry company or a fashion company the thing they’re wanting to get to so the fact that you are not that person you’re not the videographer that doesn’t care about watches you understand them finding somebody that can film properly that spots the nuances of having the hands at the correct position making sure there’s not a smudge in the dial that if there is a little scuff or a scratch then it’s touched up before the filming that really does help and all these brands that are working with you and talking to you they’re in good hands they’re in good talking hands oh very good yeah and I I don’t ever want to just produce videos that feel like everyone else’s videos if if I work with the brand it’s in order to express a perspective a narrative an idea or creativity into what they do almost more as a a collaborative piece rather than a a facist behind the scenes project um and it seems to be emerging more and more that creators who have a passion for watches but also uh a personality that they’ve got to to put out there are doing really well so like so take for example labic he’s the guy who cuts out those cardboard shapes of watches puts them together and you have this sort of 3D crap version of a watch but is somehow really nice and just really charming and lovely um and I I have one of those and he is doing phenomenally well because he has a voice and an identity and a personality and I think now more than ever that’s what brands need so they can stand out from just being yet another we have been making watches for a hundred years in the Swiss blah blah blah you know it it all starts to get a little bit too much noise doesn’t it so that that’s what I’m that’s what I’m attempting to do that’s why I love the stuff that MOS are continuously put out with their videos because if you look at the watches you would think yeah okay that’s that’s fasher on that’s GLC level of History Heritage and then you’ve got Ed sitting there in a video where the watch is talking to them telling them to get the marketing guy to so yeah it works it works phenomenally well and uh yeah I’m looking forward to all your future stuff we’ve come to the end of our time here but as we talked about earlier I think we’re going to do a more regular thing it might be something like this it might be slightly different but if any brands are looking to get in touch with you about what you can offer them behind the scenes or in front of camera definitely do so all the contact details will be in the show notes and likewise if anyone wants to jump on here any brands are interested in collabing with us get in touch too because we do loads of things with loads of companies some of it you’ve seen before some of it we’re working on behind the scenes and as much as you are putting off buying that new 12K video camera I have been spending some pennies that I shouldn’t have cuz I’m still in the house hunting phase of trying to get a new place but I have got some new tripods some new cameras some new bits and Bob some new lenses yeah actually avoided going to a camera event this week because I thought there might be something there that again would eat into a house deposit so yeah I’m trying to be on the good side of Simona these days but that is it do you want to tell people where they can find you as if they don’t already know if you want to find me I’m on social media I’m on uh the website the webs Andrew Morgan watches.com always good to be on interwebs obviously you have got an Instagram that is growing you’ve got a YouTube channel that doesn’t need to grow any further but it is doing great guns and obviously if you want to check out we up to probably the quickest place to see the new stuff is on Instagram so that is otates there our website scotch watches. cuk and we are on YouTube when we find the time to edit and upload gav is doing a great job it’s all my fault I never get to stuff to In Time same with M you know it’s always falling on me I put my hands up especially when people email and they don’t get a reply this guy anyway that is it so thank you for joining us and yeah we’ll catch you again soon thank you for having me uh