Welcome to Watch Affinity, and thank you for taking the time to read about our experiences starting a watch blog. For our first blog post, we thought we would give you an insight into how the idea came about, and what the two of us have managed to achieve over the past year.
As you may have gleaned from the homepage, the world of horology is something which has always appealed to me. As an engineer by trade, I imagine it is the notion of hundreds of tiny little parts working together so perfectly, and being able to wear that on my wrist every day, that I really appreciate. After I bought my first watch – a TAG Heuer Carrera calibre 1887 – it peaked my curiosity further. I soon started exploring different brands, reading articles online, and discovered I had barely even scratched the surface of the world of horology.
After a while, I knew that I wanted to try and do something in this field, I found it fascinating. I spent a year or two toying around with ideas, but nothing that really hit the nail on the head. Until, that is, one chance conversation where I happened to be thinking out loud, and stumbled into the idea of what would become Watch Affinity – a website where people can discover luxury timepieces from across the market that are within their budget, fit their personality, fit the style they want, see a real photo, and most importantly enable them to learn about the history of the brands and collections. Essentially this is what I had spent the previous couple of years doing for myself.
To make this happen, I knew that I would need help. Just before Christmas 2017, I invited an entrepreneurial friend of mine who I thought might be interested in the idea to Starbucks. As a team of two, I knew we could cover all the bases we would need to bring this to life. Fortunately, he shared my enthusiasm for the idea and Watch Affinity was born.
That Christmas break, we set to work, and of course we grossly underestimated the level of work involved. We went through several evolutions of how we thought Watch Affinity might manifest itself, most of which were subconsciously trying to hide away from accepting the sheer size of the task we had committed that we would take on. This helped drive us – we are both ambitious, and our vision for Watch Affinity was not one of cutting corners – we wanted to do it right.
Watch calibres display at Baselworld 2018
As you may know, there is an event called Baselworld happens in March. The event is a showcase where many of the finest watchmakers in the world come to show off their latest releases for the year, and it is a chance for fans of horology to see some a raft of timepieces up close. Baselworld is something I had wanted to do for the past couple of years, and in addition it offered a great opportunity to build a catalogue of photographs. It really was a great day out.
It took us the remainder of the year to get to the stage where we had a working website ready for a friends-and-family trial, and enough content to make the concept work as intended. We had always aimed for 20 brands’ worth of content to launch with, and by the end of November 2018, we were sitting with 21 brands and almost 5000 unique watches in our system. Finally, Watch Affinity was almost ready… a few finishing touches, and we would be ready for official go-live in 2019.
Watch Affinity is something we are both rightly proud of. We have spent over a year working to bring it to life, in our own time, and whilst both juggling full-time work commitments along with the rest of what life has to offer.
We truly hope you find Watch Affinity useful and enjoyed our story. We are just starting this watch blog, and as it grows there will be many fun facts and stories that we have discovered along the way, and we hope that ultimately, we can help you find your perfect timepiece.
If you have any questions, please get in touch via our Contact page, or via our Instagram.
For more information on Baselword, visit: www.baselworld.com
You might also be interested in:
- Our favourite watch experiences from 2019
- Watch Affinity, 2020: A Year in Review
- 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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