October 4, 2024

Hodinkee Sold to Watches of Switzerland; Founder Returns

By: Christiana Sciaudone and Jacob Donnelly

Hodinkee, the website for watch-collecting aficionados, sold to UK-based Watches of Switzerland Group, with founder Ben Clymer returning to the helm as “president and primary decision-maker.” 

He had originally stepped down from leading the company for personal reasons, taking on the role as chairman in late 2020. At the same time, the company raised $40 million in a round led by TCG and including investors like LVMH Luxury Ventures, former NFL quarterback Tom Brady and musician John Mayer. At the time, the company was valued at $100 million largely thanks to its watch sales, according to The New York Times

Following this fundraise, Hodinkee went on to acquire Crown & Caliber in 2021 for an estimated $46 million, according to The Wall Street Journal. It fit the firm’s content-to-commerce thesis whereby it had built a large, watch-enthusiast audience and believed it could sell expensive watches directly to those readers. 

Things started going downhill from there. A year after the deal closed, the price of luxury watches peaked, according to the Bloomberg Subdial Watch Index. The index is down 27% over the past two years. According to Adweek, the year the Crown & Caliber deal finished, the combined entity generated over $100 million. In 2022, that had dropped to $85 million and further fell to $60 million in 2023. As Adweek reported at the time:

Crown & Caliber’s business relied on buying and reselling pre-owned watches, and it found itself underwater, having paid top-market prices for watches and seeing their value decline, according to four people familiar with the business.

Clymer said in July that the New York-based company would focus only on selling its own limited edition watches and add no further stock to Crown & Caliber. As Adweek had reported, the audience had revolted against all the heavy promotion of watches. In his blog post in July, Clymber even joked, “sorry, but you’re gonna have to live with fewer emails offering $300 off your next pre-owned Rolex hitting your inbox” before he was more reflective:

I’d like to say that our focus never wavered from delivering the best content, first and foremost – but the truth is, things did change. And the last few years have been challenging because of it. I’ll spare you the details (only because I know everyone else already has not spared us from anything at all), but suffice it to say, we’ve learned a lot. And now it’s time to get back to basics.

Now, the business is part of Watches of Switzerland Group. Terms of the deal were not shared. AMO reached out to Clymer for an interview, but did not hear back before we published. We also reached out to TCG and Watches of Switzerland, but did not hear back. 

Looking forward, Clymer is refocusing on the company’s roots. “We helped support and build the watch industry of today, and now we must adapt with it,” Clymer wrote in his post today, in which he said that he had had no ownership or control of Hodinkee since stepping down in 2020. “Yes, I remained a board member, and yes, I was still a part of the team, but not in the way I think you would want me to be.” 

The site will “now have more time and energy to focus on what we believe truly makes us special – the ability to inform, educate, and entertain,” Clymer said. He promised to cover all brands of watches and retailers unrelated to the new owner, and plans to do events around the world. 

As for Crown & Caliber, there are currently no watches for sale on the platform. Whether this was included in the deal is unclear. 

Disclosure: Jacob Donnelly did consulting work for TCG on the Hodinkee and Crown & Caliber deals in 2020 & 2021.