The world of watch trading can seem overwhelming. Especially when you’re just starting out and you don’t know every luxury timepiece brand. How do you know which brands and models are winners and which ones are duds?
Fortunately, this piece of the puzzle is easier to understand. PJ, myself, and the community members at Watch Trading Academy have spent years sharing data and case studies to help answer that question.
The question that you have to find out on your own trading journey however, is what brands & models will make you the most money. Each of us is different in regards to which watches we’ll trade more frequently, and what the buyers in our network will like. But you can start shaping and understanding your unique niche even after observing yourself for a few months.
Things to take note of are: What kind of watches do you find yourself researching the most? Is it a certain brand like Omega, Panerai, Rolex, Breitling, etc? If you find yourself naturally looking at, learning about, and making offers on a specific brand/model that could be a hint.
Another signal you’ll get over time, is from your customers. What are they interested in, and what do they keep putting on their wishlist?
If you’re a part of the Knight Watch Trading Course (part of the WTA education), you’d know about writing down what your buyers like in your CRM. This data set can be critical to helping you shape what to inventory vs. what to broker or pass on in terms of deals going forward.
That way, you only are inventorying deals that are at a great price (close to bottom cash value), and/or that you know you can trade to one of your clients because they like that make/model/aesthetic. So you are now buying with a target audience in mind, not just buying in hopes of finding some random person who will hopefully like the watch.
To clarify, this doesn’t mean that you’re not going to trade other watch brands and models anymore. You should always try to diversify if the deals make sense, and it can help you get a well rounded understanding of the luxury watch landscape.
It just means you can specialize in a specific category. By finding focus, you become known as the go-to person for anyone looking to buy/sell/trade that brand.
An example of someone who has done that well is Camden in WTA. He started out focusing his watch trading on Breitling timepieces. Through that niche, he was being contacted frequently when someone had a question on one or wanted to buy/sell. As he rolled his profits from those trades into more expensive pieces, he started experimenting with Hublot, and then Rolex, and so on. To this day, he still trades a lot of Breitling watches and has broken the $100K+ profit mark/year at only 19.
Of course this is just one example. Many others in the WTA community are doing the same, and I highly recommend you start thinking about pursuing one that you can enjoy learning about on your journey.
When I suggest that my students find a niche as a strategy, the questions I get asked most are, “Won’t there be oversaturation in the market?” or “What if someone else is already a specialist in that brand?”
The good thing about finding your niche in watch trading is that you don’t have to worry about those concerns. As long as you are the “go-to person” in your own network, you won’t have any overlap or competition. So, you see there could be 10 traders in our group that have an Audemars Piguet niche, but who have entirely different customer bases all over the world.
Don’t force yourself to have a niche. Just pay attention to what you’re naturally spending more time researching, asking questions about, looking at, and trading with other people. As you gain more experience, you’ll have more and more data to go off of as long as you’re keeping a record of your trades.
I always recommend that people keep track of their trades no matter how detailed or simple they want to keep them. I organize everything in my CRM sheet which can be opened quickly on mobile or laptop. This allows me to make deals on the go from anywhere very quickly, and also helps me analyze the health of my watch trading at any point. I can figure out which models I’m trading the most, which models give me the highest profit margins often, and even which ones I move the quickest. If you want a copy of the CRM sheets, they actually come with the Knight Watch Course in the resources section.
If you’re not measuring your actions, then how are you ever going to be able to grow and get better?
In summary, find a niche that interests you and helps you grow a customer base that wants similar watches is one of many strategies to help you grow your trading efficacy. You have to start somewhere before you can master a category, so start small and remember just be observant and take note of the brands/models you’re leaning towards. Even learning one thing a day about them via YouTube, Instagram, article, WTA Community, etc. can make a large impact over time.