Interesting article on Hodinkee's declining business

Interesting read. Thank you. 👍

Watch press in general sounds too pompous and snobbish for my taste so I never had much appeal for the content on Hodinkee in the first place. But I can say I don't trust their reviews in the least due to their incentive to sell.

Be it their collabs that they themselves describe as must-have pieces to sway consumers, or their overpriced straps that are cheaply made with the worst quality hardware and stitching, they truly represent everything that is wrong about the Watch industry and its predatory markups. 😕

I had a bad pair of Hodinkee straps a while back. Really poor quality. They did offer replacements, however. 🤷

I am not defending Hodinkee, nor will I, but those watch straps were made in Europe from the same leathers you would find at Hermes. The markups on them were pretty standard for any retail shop. I am all for calling them out on things, but not everything associated with them was/is bad.

Thanks for sharing this - interesting read and it captures a sentiment I have been feeling for a while. I will always have a place in my heart for Hodinkee for having stoked the spark of my love for watches in their early days but it’s getting tough when one in 20 articles is actually interesting and the rest is marketing.

Agreed. A lot of their journalism is really great. I don't have any experience with any other of their products except the magazine, and I always thought that was very very well produced.

I was gifted a strap from them a while back and to their credit it was rather nice. I’m far from a super fan and I’ve never bought any other stuff from them but let’s call it what it is. They’re not terrible or Chinese.

Right here. That’s why I didn’t like reading their stuff. In the past, prior to merger, I purchased 2 watches from Crown and Cailber and even picked those up at their location here in Atlanta. Cool place. Once I heard Hodinkee bought them out, never again dealt with C&C. I just could not connect with Hodinkee.

I’ve been a long-time reader of Hodinkee, and I remember when it came to actual watch sales, it first started out as posting interesting watches from various but not-related websites/sellers. Then Hodinkee started selling a few select vintage watches themselves, posted specs, the history, then their opinion of the timepiece (similar format to Analog:shift). I very much enjoyed that era and did not find it “offensive”…. After that came the purchase of Crown&Caliber which was a bad gamble because it took the “curated” aspect out the timepieces for sale and added a more volume related aspect to it. The “distrust” you perceive in the comments were always there though… the readers/commertors sh*t on almost every review done by their writers since pretty much the beginning (my favorite are the size snobs), but after the Crown&Caliber purchase and the subsequent flood of email ads, the negativity bumped up noticeably

Whenever James Stacey has written a review on Hodinkee I tend to still read them. He likes what he likes and even goes as far as reviewing some "unpopular" microbrands.

Anyway on topic, thanks for the interesting read 👌🏻

Looking at the product pictures, the imprecise stitching and low-grade buckles seem to be the same you find on $15-$20 StrapsCo and CNS straps which I find rather suspicious for the asked price. I would expect much tighter stitching, if not handmade saddle stitching, and better hardware at this price point.

Case in point:

I can't find anything on the website about the tannery nor the manufacturer's location.

I bought a Hodinkee strap, and I was quite satisfied. Ive bought a watch and other accessories as well.

Im also a long time reader of Hodinkee. I stopped paying attention when they seemed to make concerted effort to transition from being watch nerds to being cool. The site is a little cringey now

The media business is a tough one, which is why many outlets are getting into things beyond just having a website with news and reviews.

Getting into the reseller business was doomed to fail as it operates on razor thin margins and is inherently unscalable.

Despite all that, Hodinkee is still the strongest brand in the watch media space. We were recently featured for the first time in our seven years as a company, and unlike a lot of other outlets, Hodinkee still moves the needle for us.

Thanks for the post. I actually had forgotten about the acquisition.

There was one guy on Hodinkee’s YouTube who's content I enjoyed but he left to go to Seiko or GS I think. Other than that I haven’t paid much attention to them in recent years. It started to feel like they were trying to sell me something. I guess they were.

Never purchased something from Hodinkee, but they were one of the first social media channels, showed great collections with a lot of knowledge base and one of the few channels showing still high end watches from an enthusiast point of view. The collection talk became a benchmark for other channels and hearing John Mayer speaking about the past, present and future of IWC Big Pilots will definitely trigger you to buy any kind of Flieger, even Addiesdive count! ☺️

Really enjoyed the content in the beginning. That was years ago. Can’t imagine anything watch related more nauseating and less relevant than a Hoodwinkee collab or article. Thankfully easy to avoid.

Hate that people lost their jobs but I hope Hodinkee does down in flames to never be seen or heard from again.

For years it has been known that their watch selling practices have been shady, at best, when it comes to vintage models.

They even cleared out their watchmakers?? That’s no bueno

That was Jon Bues. He and Jack Forster were two of the best