The online-only DTC business model of microbrands is not sustainable long-term and is limiting their growth potential

I might be biased because I’m living in a market that is very hard to get shipping to unless you know specific channels. But watches nowadays are a non-necessity, luxury purchase with a certain degree of personal preference in it, so it’s logical for the purchase to be offline, either at a boutique or an AD. Wearability and physical presence of the watch is detrimental to its value, yet most microbrands are operating under the motto ‘trust our heavily redacted pictures and we will deliver’.

I know Christopher Ward is doing well financially and is selling a lot of watches, but I also saw too many cases on Reddit where dissatisfaction upon delivery, either with visual presence or quality, resulted in countless returns and back-and-forth actions. All these issues could have been solved at an AD instantly: the watch didn’t fit you well upon wearing - didn’t waste the money on the purchase; the crown had an issue - asked AD to change the watch before paying and etc.

For me watch retail must exist in both offline and online channels. Therefore, unless microbrands expand their physical retail channels, it’s unlikely they will ever grow to the size of real contention to the heritage brands.