How many reps do you have to buy?

[Jawo]

For this past year, I have purchased over 50 reps. I considered this a fairly large number for rep purchases especially when I also collect gens. Something happened today that has dumbfounded me. It started 2 months ago when I bought the new TT3 from Andrew. Most of my reps have come from him, over 30 pcs and closer to 40, all for personal wear and not reselling. I had a problem wearing the watch the first time and the crystal popped off rolling in my sleeve. Also, the watch ran +30 mins a day. I requested it to be replaced, but Andrew complained about tight margins with the USD the way it is. Whatever, so I sent it back for repair. The repair was quite prompt and I got it back in a couple of weeks. After getting it back, it then ran +1hr a day and then died. As you might imagine, I was and still quite upset about this. I e-mailed Andrew, and he told me to ship it back and he will pay for shipping. I sent the watch to him and asked him to put it on priority since it is the second time sending it back.

Here is his response, "OK, ... but seems that you havent been ordering. I have tons of customers on priority list too...hahha

Thanks and have a nice day"

Suprised by this I responded with, "Lol, check all your records. 30+ reps from you in a year. If that isn't a lot, I don't know what is

He responded by "LOL.... Thanks, pal.

**I sell more than 50 pcs a day... so nowadays.. 30 a year isnt alot. Small collectors like you... many collect like CRAZY.. every month, they buy at least 10-15 pcs... =P

LOL

Have a nice day

WTF??????? How many damn watches to you have to buy to be considered a good customer or big collector? That comment makes me feel insignificant and not important. I have to rethink this hobby.

[jfreeman420]

That is a horrible thing to say to ANY customer. Evern if you just bought ONE watch your business should be just as important as anyone elses. I have been in business for myself many times and I have never discounted a customers requests or concerns once I have done business with them. The reason he sells 50 pcs per day is a combination of the little guys and the big guys.

30 watches in a year is a good purchase. I remember the old dealers gave me great treament after a second purchase. I have one in particular I email every now and then and he still remembers me and appreciates my business, maybe 2 watches per year. Andrew is getting too big for his britches. Remember where you came from.

[Sir-Lancelot]

IMO, that was tasteless and condescending. I bet he would miss 30 watches a year if he lost the business.

I would say if you mean so little to A, then screw him and buy from someone who would appreciate it. He must be doing pretty good to not need you anymore.

I would classify member TANFOGLIO as a large collector. OMG, his disposable income must have no end.

[surpur]

Well I guess I am not buying from Andrew again - unless I hear clear evidence of this being some mistake....

[Jawo]

The reason I bought from Andrew was because he has given me good service the past year. I didn't mind paying extra as long as the service was maintained. I just don't know what to make of his email. Was he being condesending or just joking?

[Manitou]

I actually get the same kind of arrogance when I buy. I buy 3-6 reps a month, and still I have to hear the whine about the dollar and how hard it all is, and how others buy significantly more.

And that is utter crap. Spending 1-2000 dollars a month from any retailer of anything, is more than most pay monthly on their car, which is normally considered one of the bigger household items.

My 2c

[jkerouac]

That is a very sad commentary.

If some of his customers are buying 10-15 a month, month after month, then I wonder if Andrew feels he is moving more into the wholesale business? If that is the case, then direct retail clients are a bonus -- as long as they don't become too uppity.

If I were you, I'd take my business elsewhere.

[alligoat]

If you sell 50 watches a day, say work 300 days per year, that's 15,000 watches per year.

If you make $50 per watch, that's $750,000 per year.

If you only make $25 per watch, it's still $375,000.

Heck, maybe he only works 250 days per year- still not a bad business!

I don't think Andrew gives a rats a$$ about you frankly!

[Stephane]

This is just not acceptable.

If you buy 30 watches in one year you are a serious collector for sure!

But that is not the point.

A customer is a customer.

[Jawo]

It is hard to tell whether Andrew is just being cynical or serious. I would think he cares based on customer service he has given me in the past.

[Stephane]

It is hard to tell whether Andrew is just being cynical or serious. I would think he cares based on customer service he has given me in the past.

I some times had the impression that our main dealers were not answering their mail themselves.

I mean, who the hell know if Andrew or Josh isn't infact a nickname used by a "staff" selling the reps.

It doesn't make sense to shout loud "I sell 50 watches a day". No true manager would give these figures.

[Jawo]

I sometimes wonder about this too. Andrew seems to answer emails any time of the day. It is hard to believe that 1 person can single handedly manage over 50 orders a day. The way he runs his business still remains a mystery.

I some times had the impression that our main dealers were not answering their mail themselves.

I mean, who the hell know if Andrew or Josh isn't infact a nickname used by a "staff" selling the reps.

It doesn't make sense to shout loud "I sell 50 watches a day". No true manager would give these figures.

[jot9011]

If you sell 50 watches a day, say work 300 days per year, that's 15,000 watches per year.

If you make $50 per watch, that's $750,000 per year.

If you only make $25 per watch, it's still $375,000.

Heck, maybe he only works 250 days per year- still not a bad business!

I don't think Andrew gives a rats a$ about you frankly!

My guess is the margin on these watches are well over $50. On the higher priced watches like the BB he has to be making at least $200/watch. For sure the margin on the cheaper watches are less, but these days there are less and less of these lower priced reps.

....and the only time they stop working is the period around CNY

[jfreeman420]

To sell 50 watches per day he (or they) must receive at least 1,000 emails per day. If your inquiry to sale ratio is around 5 to 10% in any business you are doing great. It is physically impossible for any one person to respond to over 1,000 emails per day.

This brings into light a new theory. Call me mr conspiracy and flame me if you will, but tell me if this makes sense.

We know the Andrew and Josh are made up names to sound more americanized in the first place seeing that us americans or other foreigners have trouble pronouncing Asian names. I have never had a problem with that. It has been going on for years starting with Mohammed calling himself Mike or Sam at every convenience store. I think that maybe Andrew and Josh started out as small individual dealers. They are obviously great marketeers because they have built up quite a nice business. Somehwere along the line they joined forces forming a conglomerate. They tried to suck in King and Angus, but those two went their own directions. These two dealers have become very high volume and have hired some help. The emails are reponded to according to which site they are generated from to still give that personal feel. Maybe they go into the same inbox and are distributed in the same office for replies. Andrew and Josh have become the Ronald Mcdonald or Colonals of the replica watch industry. They have branded themselves and continue to project their image but in reality emails are coming from some $2 per hour assistant.

I don't care if this is the case, but there is no reason to talk to any customer like this. If my assistant eer made a comment like that she would be fired in a heartbeat. Just some food for thought that our dealers aren't as personal as they seem. Why do you think some dealers actually post on the boards regularly and others don't? Andrew and Josh are like the big box store of reps. Not a bad thing, but just also an assumption.

[Flashman]

Sounds about right, especially if they are at the heart of a global trading business. 50 a day to the Western world is still small cheese in the big picture of things. But as with all businesses, you treat every customer with respect, especially ones you have a sales history with, they are the easiest repeat business customers. Why shoot yourself in the foot, even if you are successful. Sometimes the tides change........

[gbc]

To sell 50 watches per day he (or they) must receive at least 1,000 emails per day. If your inquiry to sale ratio is around 5 to 10% in any business you are doing great. It is physically impossible for any one person to respond to over 1,000 emails per day.

This brings into light a new theory. Call me mr conspiracy and flame me if you will, but tell me if this makes sense.

We know the Andrew and Josh are made up names to sound more americanized in the first place seeing that us americans or other foreigners have trouble pronouncing Asian names. I have never had a problem with that. It has been going on for years starting with Mohammed calling himself Mike or Sam at every convenience store. I think that maybe Andrew and Josh started out as small individual dealers. They are obviously great marketeers because they have built up quite a nice business. Somehwere along the line they joined forces forming a conglomerate. They tried to suck in King and Angus, but those two went their own directions. These two dealers have become very high volume and have hired some help. The emails are reponded to according to which site they are generated from to still give that personal feel. Maybe they go into the same inbox and are distributed in the same office for replies. Andrew and Josh have become the Ronald Mcdonald or Colonals of the replica watch industry. They have branded themselves and continue to project their image but in reality emails are coming from some $2 per hour assistant.

I don't care if this is the case, but there is no reason to talk to any customer like this. If my assistant eer made a comment like that she would be fired in a heartbeat. Just some food for thought that our dealers aren't as personal as they seem. Why do you think some dealers actually post on the boards regularly and others don't? Andrew and Josh are like the big box store of reps. Not a bad thing, but just also an assumption.

Many Asians have Christian names now. Nothing strange about it at all.

That being said Andrew & Josh probably have some retail concern ... so 50 watches a day would not be surprising.

I've been to a couple of better shops in the Far East & the owners do most of the internet sales themselves but do delegate if they're busy.

If the response was not typically Andrew, it might have been one of his staff who was probbaly disgruntle seeing how his boss was "rolling it in" with 50 super reps a day

Edited June 25, 2008 by gbc

[P4GTR]

Maybe it is just a few watches, but unless we all missed the memo, our "collectors" have RETAIL sites, and we pay RETAIL prices. I'm also willing to bet, the majority of their customers are not buying 20 watches a month.

This board makes up for 1-2% of their sales. We're small fish.

Ive stuck with my initial collector since my first purchase, and every one since.

I hate complaining. I hate feeling like the only time I talk to my collector is when something is wrong. I send referrals, I stay loyal, etc trying to build a rapor, just like Jawo and the rest of you probably do.

Do you know who I am? Do you know who the people I refer to you are talking about? Do you care at all or is it wasted effort?

I'd rather be told "Just want to keep things business" or something, then be blown off on an off-topic statement during communication. The cold shoulder hurts more then watch problems.

I can't just forget all the good service. We as consumers typically seem to hold onto the bad service and forget the good as it suits us at the time.

But... everyone reaches their limit eventually

[RobbieG]

Well I can't to your particular situation but I do know that customer service varies. Here are two conflicting ones from my own experience:

I constantly hear a lot of negativity about Joshua including lies, dropshipping, market manipulation, etc. and yet I have bought from virtually no one else for close to half a decade and his service and honesty is beyond what I have heard anyone gets from any dealer. Any time I need parts for project watches, dead ones, straps - anything he just packs them up and sends them even if I have no watch purchase at the moment. He just does and IOU and tacks it on to my next order with complete trust that I will pay him and I always do. Sometimes he even forgets and I have to reind him I owe him money. He also has never dropped shipped even one watch to me. I know this because I have given him special QC instructions on every purchase that were way to specific to ever be carried out by a drop shipper. I have even had him install a different GMT hand on a new watch before shipping. He always answers emails immediately and I know him well enough that I would be able to tell from conversations about previous stuff that a "third party" would never know. In other words, Josh is one person and his personality shows through in communication. I have never bought even close to 30 reps a year from him and he just treats me like gold. My purchases mean nothing to him. Joshua is a pretty serious gen collector as am I (where do you think a lot of the alpha watches come from for the 1:1's...). Anyway, we talk a lot obout gen watches and I don't know if we have developed a kind of friendship over that and maybe that is why I get such good treatment. Who knows. Maybe he just likes me. Lucky me whatever it is

By contrast I strayed and bought one watch from the great Angus who is regarded as such a great guy and famous for his QC and I got the worst service ever. Actually, what he did was downright dishonest. I ordered a ETA 7750 version of a watch. To save money from the factory he told me he liked to just buy the hands for the Swiss versions from them and transplant the ETA himself and pocket extra cash. No problem. So what does he do? The maker decides they won't sell him the hands. He told me this after he said my watch had shipped but it never came so I must have emailed him 4 times to get a response. He says he is having some trouble because the maker won't sell him the hands. I sent him a response saying that he should just buy the complete watch from the maker and if he didn't feel he had enough profit to just tell me what the difference was and i would send it immediately. I mean what customer would offer that. I am much too nice and in this case it got taken advantage of. Anyway - again no response. Three weeks later I write again to ask him if the watch shipped. After three more email attempts he finally said yes so I asked him if he ended up getting the hands after all or if he just got the complete watch from the maker. He then said that it was no problem - his watchmaker just modded the hands. Ouch. You can imagine my frustration at that point when I just found out that a Chinese rep level watchmaker had broached hands on my thousand dollar super rep. Still I gave him the benefit of the doubt but I did say it was completely unacceptable to do this on anyone's watch without asking. I certainly would have waited and if he felt his profit wasn't enough I could have ordered it from any dealer. So I get the watch and it was the worst glue job I have ever seen. The hands were so bad they were cockeyed at almost a 20 degree angle and the glue was visible to the naked eye. Just terrible. I bit my tongue though and told him I was unhappy with the results of the broach job not to mention that it was done without asking. But I told him all I wanted was a replacement and if not to just send me a number of lower priced watches if he couldn't make that one happen with his contacts. I sent that email to him maybe 6 times over a two month period and to this day I have never heard from him again. BTW, if anyone would like to see the email trail I would be happy to share it with you privately in case he feels like weighing in here and lying to the contrary. I have it all in black and white. Anyway, I have since sourced another set of the correct hands, modded the dial, had vac lume it and it is one of my favorite pieces after all, but with no help from the great Angus master of replica service and QC. My nephew could glue hands on better than he did.

Anyway, the point of telling the whole story here as well as the positive Josh stuff is to ilustrate that obviously dealers do not treat everyone the same way, not to plug Josh and trash Angus, but both stories are 100% true and non-exagerated nonetheless. I think each purchaser needs to just shoot from the hip initially. It seems like all dealers have customers that they treat like gold and others to a lesser degree. I don't know why it is but otherwise we wouldn't have such differing stories. The problem is that I think people tend to go only on their own experiences and are guilty of thinking incorrectly that if someone else has a different experience it must be because they were rude to the dealer or whatever. Everyone need to get past that. On many threads that talk about negative experiences they many times turn into others posting to the effect of "...No way, Angus is the best...I know because that never happened to me...you must have emailed him too many times and pisssed him off"...or whatever. IMO people have to get past that and look at the offences themselves for evaluation and not get hung up communicaton specifics. What I just said did happen and our communication didn't cause a crappy broach job. He did that on his own and it was dead wrong - period. That showed me that he was willing to do whatever it took to protect his profit even if it meant delivering a inferior product.

So anyway, both experience showed that at the end of the day I need to judge my dealer's actions only on what they do, not on what they say to me. That said though, I wouldn't want to be talked down to either. It is strange though how dealers seem to choose who they give the best treatment to and it certainly has no connection to the number of watches you buy from what I can tell. But even if a dealer literally hates you to the point of insulting you in emails he should still deliver quality service despite that as it would seem that it could go a long way towards polishing or marring the dealer's image in the small worlds that are these forums. That said, given some poor Angus stories lately I have seen other than mine, I can't imagine it didn't and wouldn't affect his business at least somewhat going forward, but maybe these boards really are a tiny part of the biz as they say. But then one has to ask if they are, why to the dealers watch these borads like hawks and spend so much time here?

[deltatahoe]

This board makes up for 1-2% of their sales. We're small fish.

i hear people make this comment regularly, and to be quite honest, i don't believe it for a second. for these guys, we have got to be a meaningful part of their business.

now in terms of the factories making the watches, i'm assuming we are small fish....

just my $0.02,

deltatahoe

[Jawo]

I agree 100%. They value our business in the forums more than you think. Even if they sold a measily 10 watches a day from the forums, that would equate to over $500 assuming there was $50 profit in each rep. I don't know of any business owner who could afford to lose that much a day.

i hear people make this comment regularly, and to be quite honest, i don't believe it for a second. for these guys, we have got to be a meaningful part of their business.

now in terms of the factories making the watches, i'm assuming we are small fish....

just my $0.02,

deltatahoe

[hiker01]

Drop him! It's not worth it! You need respect and you should have it! I always believe in "the customer is always right" motto! This was where me and TTK had a major disagreement!

This is not an American thing! A customer is a customer, irregardles of nationality, number of purchases, amount of purchase, etc. $10 or $10000 is the same if you're buying!

I have bought my collections mostly from Joshua because he always is upfront with me and always honor his responsibilities as a dealer. If I have a problem, he suggest to have it

fixed locally, if not he asked to have it sent back and I always get it back fixed or replaced! If its a minor thing like a broken strap or a defective case, He sends a replacement without

even asking for proof like pictures or whatnot! I have tried a few dealers, but no one could approach the kind of service and products that I get from him!

Other than Joshua, the only other person I'll buy my collectiojns from are RWG MEMBERS! I have bought and traded from some of our esteemed members (mostly supporters, but some not) from all over the world and I have yet to be disappointed! Zip, Nada......

TAKE YOUR BIZNIZ SOMEWHERE ELSE! HE'S TOO BIG TIME FOR YOU NOW!

[jfreeman420]

I'm with you Delta. I have never met one person outside of this board that has the same appreciation, knowledge or desire to purchase a high end replica. I have met many people that have cheap reps purchased in NYC or elsewhere and most are very proud of their wokky, huge pearl shitinerand submariners that cost $20. They always comment on how real they look.

We are a small group of people who demand the best replicas available. If you go into a department store the average citizen, Seiko, Timex, Croton, etc are all around $100 to $200. Most people believe that a watch over $200 is a lifetime heirloom piece. Most people would cringe at the idea of spending $200, $300 or even close to $1,000 for a fake watch.

Admin can back me up when I say there are many many dealers who have waited and begged to be allowed to trade on tehse boards. Unless these dealers have a booth in the watch district or are spending huge money on pay per click advertising, we are a huge part of their business IMO. We heard this same thing long ago from Paul but yet he still posts offers regularly. Why bother if you don't need the business?

[P4GTR]

Admin can back me up when I say there are many many dealers who have waited and begged to be allowed to trade on tehse boards.

we are a huge part of their business IMO.

When I said we are 1-2%, I was being generous. How many people that post here on a daily basis really know whats going on? Maybe a few. Who really knows?

About 25% of this community is actively buying watches, the rest, some of which are great people, are mixed in with (as it has been seen) people that bicker, pick fights and bash dealers. The dealers that do the most are the ones that don't come here because of the agendas/bashing. If you were on a constant defense from being bashed, would you come?

We aren't the driving force behind this hobby like people think, thats all i'm going to say.

This isn't some shit I just made up.

[jfreeman420]

I still have to disagree with you. 1-2% of 50 watches per day is about 10 to 12 watches per month in sales that are from 3 high traffic replica message boards with a combined 25,000 to 40,000 members? I think you need to rethink your statement. I can only estimate, but reading through all the new posts on a daily basis, Josh and Andrew seem to be the most popular dealers on all the boards. Other dealers do a good business as well, but if he is selling 1,000 watches per month or more and there are many members buying 2-5 watches per month each, you need to recalculate your numbers.

All of these communities combined do make up a large percentage of the dealers' business. Maybe not close to all of it but enough that their pockets would be affected if every board member stopped buying from them. Additioanlly, we may not be THE driving force behind this hobby, but I have only seen improvements in the replica industry since these boards have been around and I have been buying fake watches for 20 years. Quality and accuracy has only come about in the past 7 or 8 years and has made leaps and bounds in the past 3 years due to the fact that concerns and desires of accuracy and quality can be discussed in an open forum.

There have also been many new models attributed to the tastes and demands of this community that I feel wouldn't have been produced otherwise. Driving force? Maybe not, but significant part of the industry yes.

[highoeyazmuhudee]

there's ALWAYS some truth behind every joke. i thikn it was a way to communicate how he felt without offending you under the guise of a 'joke'. its less offesnsive under this tone. but yes i would never tell my client that, every client *should* be treated the same weither they buy 1 or 100 reps a year in terms of service. and if a mistake is made you should get priority over someone to make it right. this just further reinforces what i believed about the dealers not caring about what powered their watches real or clone. take your business elsewhere and maybe he'll have more time for his clients once every one leaves. $$ is the only language they seem to understand once they out grow their humble beginnings.