The Fourth Wheel, Issue 113

Five things Hodinkee might consider doing as it hits the reset button

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that has spent most of this week in the podcast studio¹. This is a project you’ll be hearing more about in due course - all will start to be revealed from September onwards. It’s a really exciting thing to be doing, though, and I’ll tell you a couple of things right now to whet your appetite: it’s really not like any other watch podcast out there, and although it’s not ‘the Fourth Wheel podcast’, my paid subscribers here will get the first chance to listen. In the meantime, I’ve taken the bait and reacted to Hodinkee’s strategic ‘back to our roots’ move, and my thoughts on that are all in front of the paywall, because I have a funny feeling you’re all going to have your own opinions on that one. Behind the financial curtain, I’ve got some potentially quite significant news of a consumer journalism kind, the latest chapter of ‘Downturn Abbey’², plus the usual recommendations and reactions to what I’ve seen and heard this week. Enjoy!

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The Fourth Wheel is a reader-supported publication with no advertising, sponsorship or commercial partnerships to influence its content. It is made possible by the generous support of its readers: if you think watch journalism could do with a voice that exists outside of the usual media dynamic, please consider taking out a paid subscription. You can start with a free trial!

Here’s a little taste of what you might have missed recently:

CEO swaps and GPHG embargo-breaking
Ask Me Anything Vol. 11
Can Switzerland Ever Embrace Quartz?
World Exclusive: Horological Dicktionary On The Record
Review: The Schofield Obscura

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Hodinkee founder Ben Clymer posted a long-awaited editorial message on Wednesday, signalling a refocussing of commercial and editorial strategy. The key points were:

• The pre-owned retail business is effectively over, with Ben writing that no new models would be added to Hodinkee or Crown and Caliber, the pre-owned site it acquired in 2021 and which has become something of an albatross for the business.

• New watch retail will also slow/cease, depending on how finely you parse Ben’s statement. ‘Nor will we add any new models to our modern watch business.’ This could be taken as meaning that Hodinkee would continue to sell the watches it already sells, but I think what’s really meant is that as with pre-owned, Hodinkee will sell its stock on hand, won’t replenish it and draw a line under new watch retail (with one caveat, below), for now.

• Limited editions will continue. These remain, if not the golden goose, then at least the most sensible type of watch retail for a content-to-commerce business like Hodinkee to be involved in. I would hope and expect them to perhaps return to the glory days of collaborating with only the best watchmakers in ways that other companies haven’t been able to - Laurent Ferrier, Vacheron Constantin, Ressence all spring to mind, rather than G-Shock, Merci, Timex et al, but that’s just me. There are pros and cons to each.

• Some former writers are being lured back to the fold. For what it’s worth, despite the pretty constant level of demand, I don’t think this means Jack Forster, although of course I could be wrong. For more on who I think Hodinkee might usefully add to its roster, read on…

• Hodinkee Insurance will remain. That’s really just a factual statement, although I do have some thoughts on how this could be better integrated into Hodinkee’s wider business.

• For the foreseeable future, Hodinkee will focus once more on editorial content. The editorial team, Ben says, is growing, and there is a ‘back to our roots’ mindset (while also staying ‘ahead of the curve’).

More of this kind of thing please: Vacheron Constantin Cornes de Vache for Hodinkee, 2017

The Hodinkee post was accompanied by a more personal note on LinkedIn from Ben, which confirmed what some might have immediately assumed: as the retail side of the business winds down, some more jobs are being cut. No great surprise, but Hodinkee will desperately want to leave the narrative of regular rounds of layoffs behind, and with this reboot, hopefully is going to do just that.

Ben’s statement didn’t specifically address a couple of things; it can be assumed therefore that the non-watch retail side of the business remains unchanged. Hodinkee will still be selling straps and books and cameras and so on. When it bought C&C, Hodinkee got a service centre as well - I don’t know whether that’s been shut down, or will be now. Ben’s post also didn’t say anything about his personal role - the assumption might well be that he’ll do more front-line content creation, but we’ll have to wait and see.

This was not unexpected. Hodinkee has been put through the wringer in a very public way, with critical articles in AdWeek, Bloomberg and the Wall St Journal³. The comments section has been singing the same song for a long time, and while the “we liked things the way they were” brigade aren’t always the ones you should listen to, taken in conjunction with the commercial realities of buying into pre-owned at the height of the market, a back to basics retreat was inevitable.

It raises one fairly major question: how will Hodinkee make money going forward? Editorial content businesses introduce commerce because they can’t make enough scalable revenue from content alone, so they look for other ways to monetise that loyal, dedicated audience. Hodinkee’s investor structure has, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, not changed, and while winding down the retail side of things will obviously save some costs, it seems clear to me that it will still need to monetise that audience - hence the insurance and luxury lifestyle retail elements remain. For all that I expect to see plenty of the kind of content the fans are demanding over the next few months, I expect we’ll also see more initiatives aimed at replacing that lost revenue as well.

With all this in mind, I took the liberty of jotting down a few thoughts on what Hodinkee might do next to meet the joint goals of reestablishing its audience’s trust, cementing its position as the leader in its class, and creating revenue without alienating the faithful. Before we go on, however, I would like to say that I’d be thrilled to have built something one tenth - one hundredth! - the size of Hodinkee, and what follows is not meant to imply that I know better than Ben or any of his team. I speak with the luxury, and the freedom of an armchair pundit - ideas are easy; building things is hard. For once, though, it’s my aim to be constructive rather than critical. These are five things, of varying degrees of practicability, that I’d suggest.

1. Rewrite the editorial manifesto

This is the one thing we know is going to happen, but this is specifically what I’d change.

Contrary to popular perception, Hodinkee is not overweighted with ‘copy-paste-press-release’ news stories of new watch launches. In fact while we’re on the subject, this is a real bugbear of mine: people love to level this criticism at watch websites when the truth is none of the decent watch media publications actually copies and pastes a press release, or even sentences from them. If what you mean is that Hodinkee carries too many stories that simply inform people of what new watches exist, well I’ve got three little letters for you: SEO. All websites⁴ must run these kind of articles. No, they’re not that exciting, and yes, there is always a way to make them better than the near-identical article on your rival’s site, but it’s unrealistic to complain about them existing.

The issue is the balance of stories, which is tricky, because ‘new watch launch’ stories come along every day, are cheap and easy to write, and the perception that Hodinkee is too uncritical in its coverage. I would commission more opinion pieces, clearly marked as such, and occasionally let the team be more honest about the merits of some watches. I’d stop short of writing no-holds-barred reviews (see my thoughts on watch reviewing here, and the reviews I personally write summarised here) because that’s a high-wire act, but allow some dissenting opinion a space to live and breathe.

Write more, and more analytically, about the industry⁵. I know Hodinkee is primarily a consumer media site, not an industry one, and its recent growth strategy depended on becoming more mainstream, not more inside-baseball, but the core audience will love it, and the wider audience will respect it even if they don’t always actually read it.

With regard to new voices - and the return of old voices - bring in some writers who have been around the block a few times. Joe Thompson was a brilliant addition to Hodinkee’s roster; there are half a dozen really experienced writers I can immediately think of whose perspective would be a welcome balance. Also, look to commission more writers from outside of the USA, outside of the Western world, and outside of the white, male, middle class demographic. It doesn’t matter that most of your audience is white, male, middle class Americans; everyone could do with having their horizons broadened from time to time⁶.

2. Find a way to make vintage viable again

One look at the hundreds of comments underneath Ben’s post will tell you this is a common refrain. I get how hard it is, and I get that it goes against the message that Hodinkee is pulling out of watch retail. But the expertly curated vintage offering was the one thing that always felt truly on-brand. I know the margins are super tight - you’ll be making five per cent, sometimes - so it may not be easy, but there could be a way. Maybe it could be an offering reserved for an elite subsection of the audience, and speaking of which…

3. Establish a premium tier audience offering

I think this is inevitable in some form or other. It could be as simple as a soft paywall, where readers get X number of free articles a month and must pay a few dollars after that, but I think given Hodinkee’s strength in community engagement, it could be more interesting than that. Membership to ‘Hodinkee Plus’ or whatever you call it could cost a couple of hundred dollars a year, and comprise a bundle - an insurance policy, a discount on servicing, a watch travel case, exclusive early access to event tickets, early access to podcasts and video content, unlimited articles, early bird access to limited edition sales, 10 per cent off in the shop, you name it. Obviously within this you can structure membership tiers, if you want - some people sort of hate this kind of thing, but there’s no denying Hodinkee could build a pretty compelling value proposition, and that it has the numbers to make it work. You’d expect to convert 10-20 per cent of your total audience. It would run counter to Hodinkee’s approach thus far, of building an open community, but as I said above, you’ve got to find the revenue somewhere, and I think it’s in-keeping with the general direction of travel within media.

4. Set up an advisory council

Talking of ‘the community’… this is perhaps a little more far-fetched but hear me out. Hodinkee’s woes, notwithstanding its vulnerability to market shifts, have been largely down to the impression that it is out of step with the core community of watch fans. Now, you could hire a PR manager or outside consultant, which might achieve more or less the same aim, but I’d favour something a little bit more open and public. In order for it not to just be ‘the friends of Hodinkee’, i.e. the likes of Auro Montanari and John Mayer rubber-stamping Hodinkee’s brand decisions, I’d set this up to include 60 per cent industry figures and 40 per cent ordinary readers, chosen via ballot (with, perhaps, priority given to those elite members I mentioned above), set to rotate on an annual basis. What would this group actually do, I hear you ask? Certainly not a hands-on role in Hodinkee’s everyday business, but maybe a quarterly review where community sentiment could be digested, feedback given, and certain things sense-checked, like launching a $6,000 travel clock as a global pandemic took hold (fun fact, launched four years ago this week). Joking aside, I think something like this could show that Hodinkee’s serious about listening to and learning from its audience. You’d have to do a bit of work to make sure people on the council weren’t also the subject of Hodinkee articles, and you’d make sure they weren’t privy to commercially sensitive information, but maybe there’s something here.

5. Establish a philanthropic offshoot

You could call it The Hodinkee Foundation. Again this is fundamentally about demonstrating goodwill, demonstrating moral and ethical leadership, and demonstrating Hodinkee’s ability to bring the community together. It would have to be as transparent and accountable as possible and completely separate from the main company, but I think it would be a wonderful idea to fundraise for, I don’t know, watchmaking apprenticeship scholarships for school-leavers from disadvantaged backgrounds, or something along those lines. It could leverage the existing relationship Hodinkee has with organisations like the Horological Society of New York, lean hard on the good relationships Hodinkee has built in Switzerland, and could create some incredible stories. Alongside the chance to do some good, there’s an obvious PR value, and it’s not as if the industry is overburdened with (untarnished) charitable endeavours. It could take a percentage of Hodinkee shop revenues, donations from the elite tier of audience members, plus all the usual charity ideas.

What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts.