Credits: Article and images by Wei Koh @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/watchbox-justin-reis-interview/
How did the investment in De Bethune come about?
As you know, I didn’t start in the watch industry. So, when I got involved, I started looking at the various operators and entities that sit within the industry. I immediately found the independent watchmaking sector very interesting. The majority of them are actually quite handicapped by where they sit in the watch ecosystem, given their general lack of marketing and financial resources; hence, it is harder for them to succeed. Unless they really hit it out of the ballpark to begin with, it is a struggle for them. A lot of this has to do with the fact that most of them don’t have adequate starting capital. As such, they are unable to market their brand powerfully, and they don’t have the infrastructure to distribute globally. When they are able to find distributors, these distributors often dictate terms that are unfavorable to them. Basically, the watch world is not really set up for independent brands to succeed.
Our focus became finding really interesting brands and watches for our clients. At WatchBox, we are surrounded by a team that really loves watches, which Danny leads admirably, and we eventually landed on the independent watchmakers. This segment really resonated with me, as I have always liked to support the underdog. I wanted to find a way to help promote them so they would be as respected and recognized in the same realm as the leading watch manufacturers. We asked ourselves, how can we be supportive of the category, bring great product to our audience, while also creating much greater awareness for these brands and watchmakers? Well, the first thing was to identify what was truly great. That was when we recognized how special De Bethune and Denis Flageollet are. De Bethune is such an incredible brand with unique DNA, and we felt we could help it reach its full potential with support building global awareness and help architecting a more effective distribution model.
Interestingly, this was never part of our original strategy when we started WatchBox. But it became clear there would be great synergy if we invested. We provided them the capital they needed and connected them with our family of customers. We have no intention of disrupting what they do; we just wanted to give them our support and shoulders to sit on.
Credits: Article and images by Wei Koh @ Revolution Watch Magazine. See the original article here - https://revolutionwatch.com/watchbox-justin-reis-interview/
