Personal Shopping with Watch Affinity – Mr. C’s Story

Perhaps the main aim of Watch Affinity is to help you find and buy the right luxury watch for you. The time between deciding that you would like to make a purchase, and finally finding the right piece, can take a varying degree of time – sometimes this might be years ahead of a first purchase, 6 to 18 months perhaps, or for those who like to shop on a whim, perhaps only a day in the right boutique! More commonly, the timeframe would be a 6 to 18-month period; of course, a luxury watch is a big purchase and it is right that such a decision is given the time and diligence it warrants.

You can always reach out to us directly via our Contact page or our Instagram, and we will be happy to help where we can.

Personal Watch Shopping – Mr. C’s Story

This is exactly what one client did – we will call him Mr. C. Having owned a beautiful Bell & Ross BR-V chronograph for a few years, and having made some serious career strides in that same timeframe, Mr. C decided that it was time to get another timepiece to add to his collection and celebrate the progress he had made. Having taken the time to get to know him, it was obvious that he had a certain type of watch in mind, and indeed had a set criteria for what he wanted the watch to say about him: an ambitious, driven and successful professional, but looking for something a little… different. Mr. C works in the innovative blockchain sector, and so this sense of innovation, disruption and standing out from the crowd was a key theme for him that he wanted to echo in his next watch.

An obvious starting point for our discussions was with Hublot, a brand renowned for pushing the boundaries – their art of fusion concept resonated well with Mr. C and he particularly liked the way that the brand had disrupted the luxury watch market when it shot to fame in the early 2000s under Jean-Claude Biver. Specifically, there was a piece in the Classic Fusion collection that was particularly appealing:

The idea of Hublot hit home even more when in late 2018, Hublot announced a new timepiece in the Big Bang collection, the Big Bang Meca-10 P2P, that would only be able to be purchased via Bitcoin transaction – the infamous cryptocurrency based on blockchain technology. In a similar vein, Franck Muller also released a Bitcoin watch, the Vanguard Encrypto, as part of its Vanguard collection in 2019, showcasing the unique public wallet address on the dial in a QR code. Whilst each of these pieces respectively had certain elements which Mr. C liked, especially with both incorporating blockchain technology, none of them really got his eye to light up in the way that they needed to.

The next stage was to spend a day in London. Mr. C and I travelled up together, talking about the merits of various pieces that he had tried over time, and it was becoming clear that this next piece was going to be somewhat of a stepping stone to his ultimate grail piece – an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak – which is a good 2 years waiting list. This introduced the ever-present dilemma when building a watch collection of “do I spend more now and then save, or spend less now and save for later?”

A visit to the Watch Room at Harrods, followed by a visit to Bond Street and Watches of Switzerland on Regent Street proved to be immeasurably useful in helping Mr. C, and by the end of the day we had narrowed the pot down to two timepieces – the Hublot Classic Fusion which had been on his shortlist for well over a year, and a Breitling Navitimer which had always had the ability to turn his eye, despite Breitling being a totally different brand from the aforementioned Hublot and Franck Muller! Mr. C went away from that day with a much better idea of where his next purchase would be coming from, and the plan was for him to have a think for a few weeks, before heading up to London again to go and weigh up the merits of the Hublot Classic Fusion and Breitling Navitimer together.

However, at the start of 2020, the global Covid-19 pandemic took a stranglehold on the world, forcing life as we know it to change and confining everyone to their households. This put the plans for a return visit on ice, at least that was until Breitling – now very much on Mr. C’s radar – announced their latest release, a reissue of the 1960s cult classic Top Time which was a chronograph produced by Breitling for the young professionals of the 1960s, looking for a chronograph timepiece that was perhaps a little more fun and less tool-watch than Navitimers and Chronomats.

This new limited edition run of 2000 pieces marked a new venture for Breitling as well, with all owner history and registration being put for the first time onto a blockchain system.

I got an excited email from Mr. C about a week after its announcement, after he had seen it on a Watch Affinity Instagram story and then a follow-up article on Coindesk, a blockchain blog that he follows. Having been reading up about Breitling in line with his exploring the Navitimer as an option to buy, the brand, the unique Zorro-style dial, the fact it was a limited edition, and of course the blockchain angle, too – all of these things were ticking his boxes. “Could this be the next watch?” I asked and an immediate “I think so” came back.

The excitement was there to see just through his emails – finally the perfect timepiece for Mr. C was in reach! A few discussions back and forth about size (he was initially concerned at the 41mm size being too small as he likes a big watch, however this piece had noticeably larger lugs and so would wear bigger), and Mr. C decided to go for it. After all, he had spent the best part of 2 years looking for a watch and had never been this excited about one before.

Joining him for the official unboxing via video chat was great – it was clear as day that this was absolutely the right purchase for him, and his enjoyment in opening the box was wonderful to behold. And if one final piece of evidence was needed that the stars had aligned, an email arrived the next morning talking about his “feeling when you wake up the next morning happy to think about the new watch”.

That feeling is what it is all about, having something that you can enjoy every day – a watch that doesn’t just tell you the time when you look at it, but a whole lot more.

Congratulations Mr. C and thank you for letting Watch Affinity be a part of your journey!

 

You might also be interested in:

• Spotlight: Breitling Top Time
• Personal Shopping with Watch Affinity – Ms. S’ Story
• Introducing Watch Affinity Interactive Maps
• Watch Stationery and Gift Ideas
• Watch Books, Watch Boxes and more at the Watch Affinity Shop on Amazon (commissions earned)

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