patrick_y
[PuristSPro Moderator]
33677
We do disclose it...
In each article if a watch was loaned to us, we disclose it. If it's a moderator's personal watch, the moderator can choose to disclose it or not. But if it's a supplied watch from the brand, our moderators disclose that. Also, our moderators agree not to accept gifts (we have to report to our moderator group of any gift received that has a value of over $200) from brands. We also disclose if a brand has flown a moderator over to their factory for their factory tour. For the past ten plus years, we've had the highest transparency standards of any watch review website in the world. And that's to show that our moderators are not biased towards their brands due to expensive gifts nor recipients of free travel. In fact, I feel we are accepting so little of these "gifts" that it's hurting us... Because we generally haven't accepted any factory tour with a flight, a lot of these PR Companies are not working with us, since we're often saying NO to their events. There are some brands with lavish events, where if you look at the itinerary, less than 20% of the 8 hour day is spent talking about watches, and the remaining 80% of the day is "free time" and at night, it's party-party-party, plus the PR company will sometimes fly you over, usually business class or First Class and comp your hotel room and meals... Our moderators simply don't accept. But other journalists do; and some journalists do mention that the trip was paid for by the brand's PR department and some journalists don't mention it. And perhaps we should accept more often - as it's hurting us for not accepting, since when you don't accept too often, they will likely stop inviting us. But let's say this... Let's say Zenith, which is a very cool brand, but not a popular brand on WPS, invites us to their factory; would someone from our moderator team go? Hard to say. First the schedule has to work - all of our moderators are volunteers with other primary jobs. Secondly, would the article appeal to a large percentage of our readers? And third, considering Zenith invites us and flies us there - is there a better way to do this? Maybe we should just fly ourselves over?
For me, I flew to Dubai Watch Week this year and last year on my own dime. Last year, I flew to Dubai in COACH! That's a super long flight from California; two stops too! Stayed in an awful hotel too! It was painful. I was showing the other journalists photos of my hotel room's bathroom - the other journalists really felt bad for me. But, I did this because I was curious about Dubai Watch Week. And now, when I say Dubai Watch Week is worth your time to go, I can say that with full credibility! Dubai Watch Week and their organizers totally didn't buy my opinion, I flew there myself.
I also flew to Vienna to visit Dalibor Farny (he picked me up in Vienna) and we drove together in Farny's car to visit his clock factory in Czech Republic. I toured his factory for a few days, staying in a countryside hotel. After we finished, he dropped me off back in Vienna. I flew to Vienna at my own cost. I stayed in the hotel at my own cost. And I was happy to do it, because I thought his product was a really cool product that I wanted our members to know about. And it's too bad that these articles don't get a lot of views since clocks aren't as popular as watches. BUT! WatchProSite has always been a trendsetting website. WE've identified cool trends before anyone else. WPS was the first website to support the AHCI and various independents. And several of our members have bought a piece.
This year, I flew to Switzerland on my own dime (again in COACH) to tour Bulgari. As a client at Bulgari, I probably wouldn't have felt too bad if they paid for my flight, but as a moderator, we want to operate in a manner above reproach. As a client, I felt really entitled to be as harsh towards Bulgari as I could. But honestly, I was really impressed with the factory. Very reliably made products. And made with no shortcuts. And with the best investment in technology and top quality machines and techniques. That's the beauty of a big brand, they're willing to make the long-term investments.
I also flew to Switzerland twice to meet with Miki Eleta - just incredible work. The brand didn't fly me over, but Mr. Eleta and his wife did meet me at the airport and paid for my train ticket to town. This is typically small enough that we don't mention ground transportation in our reviews. When I met Vincent Deprez in Geneva, I didn't have a rental car, so I even had to take the bus to visit his workshop. It's not unusual for a journalist to request a watchmaker to send a colleague or an assistant to pick him up. But Deprez is truly a one man show, he doesn't even have an assistant. So I didn't ask if he could come to pick me up. At WPS, we do this truly because we want to help small independents. Do any other journalists cover these tiny independents like Deprez and Eleta? Hardly any other journalists even know of these guys. Because these guys aren't going to cough up any advertising dollars to advertise in magazines. Neither of these articles generate a lot of views for WPS, so they didn't help the site a lot. And views are important. That's what gets our standing with Google and the PR agencies. When we can tell these PR agencies how many hundreds of thousands of views we have, they're impressed. They say, "please mention our products."
Overall, to my knowledge, we have some of the highest journalism standards possible. I will look at how Hodinkee discloses and I will evaluate if their standards are higher than ours or not. Hodinkee's journalism side and commerce side are separated internally. There's almost a Chinese wall between the two sides of the business. So Hodinkee's journalism side isn't affected by the commerce side very much. Although, the fact that they sell watches certainly does make them more partial.
But WPS is also a bit tougher to work with. We don't get overly romantic. We don't repeat marketing slogans. We don't perpetuate those romantic exaggerations that brands want us to suggest - an old watchmaker labors at his table for a whole year to make a watch - they want us to paint that image. We know that's not true so we don't paint that image. But other news outlets play ball the PR Agency's way...
Our moderator team's opinions cannot be influenced. All of our moderators (with the exception of my humble self) are also personally very successful people and are generally not impressed with free flights. I will say though - and most brands don't know this - my opinion can be bought with chocolate! Distract me with lots of chocolate while I'm viewing your factory and I'm sure I'll write good things about your production methods! (I'm joking of course, I need to stay away from massive amounts of chocolate, I've got expensive pants to fit into).
In the end, if WPS ever needed commercial success... We'd put up some click-bait titles. "Best Watches for Investment" and "Best collections of 3 watches at every priepoint." And fill these articles with watch companies that will advertise and sponsor WPS. But our Manager doesn't believe in that. And neither does our Moderator Team.
Why aren't more people talking about this?
Cristopher Ward Bel Canto: a watch for less than 4k that chimes once every hour and with a forward looking design, similar to brands like MB&F. The base movement is sellita, which for the price is more than fair. It's not often that we see avant garde...
Whole industry was caught off guard with this piece...
It's an unknown brand. Small production number. And they didn't do much PR in advance. Thus, much of the entire watch manufacturing, watch retail, and watch-journalism industry was caught somewhat off-guard. I reached out to the brand earlier requesting m...
Agreed.
Hopefully it's reliable. A lot of times these cool pieces aren't very reliable - even if the base movement is a reliable Sellita or ETA. I don't want to speculate with this one, as I haven't seen it yet. It's definitely very compelling!
Reliability should be at the forefront of priorities in R&D
Hopefully it is, I wouldn't mind owning one, but it has sold out already, maybe next time!
Christopher ward
Has been what I would consider the leading player in the microbrand space for many years now, to the point where I don't even know if I consider them to be a microbrand anymore. I think they were one of the first to do online sales directly to the consume...
I agree. I don't feel it it an "unknown brand" at all. They have been around for awhile now and actually quite popular.
They even did a special edition for the Canadian watch forum. (Not my photo) ...
It's fairly unknown.
Case in point: it's only been mentioned a handful of times in our forums in the past 3 years! Furthermore, our watch website does seem to favor discussion of more expensive brands and high horology brands in general. Christopher Ward is thus less on our r...
Ageed.
This site focuses on more expensive watches and CW is a more attainable brand, so this site isn't their audience. As you said, they have only been mentioned a small handful of times: this site isn't their market. That doesn't make them an unknown brand, h...
We do disclose it...
In each article if a watch was loaned to us, we disclose it. If it's a moderator's personal watch, the moderator can choose to disclose it or not. But if it's a supplied watch from the brand, our moderators disclose that. Also, our moderators agree not to...
I really appreciate the time you took to post this - It's something I have never seen discussed here.
As a member, and maybe I am alone here, I have never seen the mention of brand influence mentioned here in any fashion. So I am clear - Brands do influence what posts stay or don't stay up on WPS? I'm not judging either way (I understand that this site is...
Everything stays up on our site...
Everything that is posted stays up on our site. What you see in the front page are the newest posts in chronological order; thus, the newest posts are on the top. What you see in the sub forums like Horological Meandering and the branded forums are all ba...
Thank you for this insightful message.
I’m happy to learn more about this amazing place which is WPS. Every time I log in here I discover new timepieces, I got more knowledge of horology, I enjoy whatever the members are kind enough to share with us… great work !! Kudos to you and everyone con...
Thank you for your kind words!
We try. We really do try. We've got a passionate team of moderators whom are passionate about the subject and try to share what they can with the group. And we try to do it in a way that's mostly free of the marketing dribble and we try to cut the "noise"...
Hear, hear!
Tahnk you kindly for your elaborate reply, which I can only underline over and over again. When "The PuristS" (back then without "Pro" was founded, it was clear from the beginning that our standards regarding the industry have to extremely strict, and we ...
Thank you. I really appreciate the honest reply. My question, however, is center more around members posts.
I've always wondered why in some cases member's (not moderators) posts, though true and not favorable to a particular brand, sometimes are removed. I was more speaking to brand intervention around this scenario and was wondering if that was the case.
Generally, we don't censor posts unless they violate our Terms.
We only remove a member's post if it violates our rules as stated in our Terms of Conduct. Otherwise, all the members' posts are generally available, even going back many years! For instance, I recently removed another member's post because almost the ent...
Thank you. So there is a record of sorts of who "complains" or is deemed as a "complainer" and in a case as you describe they may be treated differently...
Based on the views of the moderation team. I appreciate your candor.
Not exactly... There is no record.
There isn't a "complainer" list. But basically if there's a known frequent complainer or a first-post complainer, we would reserve the right to remove the post. We've definitely had A LOT of complainers who have no real intent to contribute to the forums....
You're welcome!
Hopefully you feel a little bit assuaged that we're trying to do our best. We might not be perfect. And I don't know every single case, so it's possible I don't know what case you have in mind, but we do have good intentions. Nobody on our moderator team ...
Let me illustrate this with an anecdote ....
A short while after I started moderating the Ulysse Nardin forum eons ago, then UN owner Rolf Schnyder, whom I dearly miss since he passed far too early, once asked a member comment to be removed, because it contained false statements about an "endemic pr...
Wow! Amazing!
And yes. Herr Schnyder did pass away too soon. That's an amazing relationship, and these were the amazing days when we really had a connection with the brand. Unfortunately, now that watch journalism is so prevalent, we don't have those relationships as w...
Absolutely Marcus!
Thank you for chiming in Marcus! Yes. We definitely don't give those PR people an easy time. Sometimes, our own knowledge and technical questions stump them, since some of the PR members aren't familiar with the technicalities of the watches themselves. A...
CW is popular among younger collectors, those starting out, and collectors on a budget. It's also made public guarantees that it'll never charge customers more than 3x the cost of production, in an industry where this can exceed 10x or more
The company was a rare British-based success story during the height of the pandemic in 2020, when its exclusively online marketing, outreach and sales model resulted in healthy sales growth. So much so that CW attributes its successes since then in part ...
Thank you
It's nice to see small brands at this level coming up with impressive designs
I completely agree….
I suspect the reason is that people have been trying to get one. The green version announced yesterday has also sold out.
Yes, it sold like hot cakes
And it's completely understandable, I hope they'll release a non limited version in the future
Perhaps it is just the people here not talking about it...
The blue and green dial versions sold out extremely quickly (much to my own chagrin).
It was too much fomo for my taste.
Had the chance to buy both versions, but I passed on both. The magic of the chiming mechanisms is the programming needed to get it to chime the time; this one ding per hour is more mundane to me. I felt like once the initial shock of "omg a chiming mechan...
We are, just not in this discussion board until now. 👍
Am loving these new releases that bring what decades ago was ultra-high to now be at good value. Blue was first, they released green yesterday, and yes both are sold out. Red is said to be next. I'm waiting for the purple or orange dial version (if they m...
My apologies, no one really knew...
...when it was released and i saw it and had hours to get one. i should have posted the news here so WPS enthusiasts could get it. My bad
My thoughts
Cause it is a good tread to discus brands that get not much attention. I think there are more forgotten watches which are treasures and nobody noticed. First i think there are enormous much watch brands, so it is easy to overlook brands. Second, than the ...
The design is surely not to everyone's taste
This piece appeals to people who like weird time displays
An amazing timepiece and it is of course a shame that many independent brands remain firmly under the radar of the many.
Then again it is good for us enthusiasts and collectors is it not? 😆
I looked at it and the watch sold out very quickly
Even the second (different color) batch sold out very quickly. I think they will release some more colors soon . Hope they will release a salmon dial and i will try to get one 🙏🏻🤗. Such a cool watch
I can only concur with all here, really cool proposal for this price point…
And indeed what a pity most of us heard about it when it was too late already 🤷🏻♂️
Concur!
It is definitely one of the best "budget" complications brands out there and this just demonstrate this fact! I did hear on the watchfinder and co's channel that they could actually have included the inhouse movement and it would be the same price but it ...