DON’T CHASE YOUR MARKET, MAKE YOUR MARKET.

FIELD REPORT / SEC. 01 / CLASSIFIED

Twenty years building brands. Fifteen minutes up the road in Irvine. I'd rather show you how I think than send you a resume.

You have the market authority.

You’re not expressing it.

FILED 09.24.26 / RECORD RETAINED
FIELD REPORT / SEC. 02 / CLASSIFIED

Hodinkee charges above market and people pay it on purpose. The 1916 Company charges above market and people call it expertise. You charge above market and the forums call it a markup.

Hodinkee sells taste. The 1916 Company sells expertise. You sell transparency, which is the hardest of the three to copy and the only one that currently reads as a utility instead of a brand.

Same premium. Different story.

FILED 10.13.26 / RECORD RETAINED
FIELD REPORT / SEC. 03 / CLASSIFIED

These watches outlive the people who buy them.

Heirloom. Craftsmen. Heritage. Provenance. None of that language is on the site right now, and it’s the vocabulary the category actually runs on.

A Submariner gets handed down. The copy around it reads like inventory. That gap between what the object means and how it’s described is the whole brand opportunity, and it costs nothing to close.

FILED 10.13.26 / RECORD RETAINED
FIELD REPORT / SEC. 04 / CLASSIFIED

Where I’d take it.

A real credibility layer. The recurring critique in the forums is that you carry a markup versus private sellers. You don’t beat that on price. You beat it on everything the private seller can’t offer, made visible. Authentication, servicing, provenance, the people who inspect the watch. Right now that trust is claimed. It should be shown.

Collector advocacy, not an affiliate program. Affiliate mechanics don’t fit a purchase someone makes once every few years, and commission programs pull in coupon sites, which is the wrong company to keep. Pay in access instead. Early looks, first refusal, real standing in the community. Then point it where the business is actually constrained, which is acquisition. A network of collectors who bring you watches is worth more than one that brings you clicks.

A digital buying experience nobody else offers. Genuinely white glove, online. That’s a creative and product problem more than a technology one, and it’s the single biggest differentiator available to you.

Margin you own. Subscription watch care kits and ancillary products built in house. Hodinkee already runs this and it’s part of why they feel like a brand instead of a dealer. Every watch you sell carries a wholesale margin. Products you make yourself do not, and they keep the customer in the ecosystem between purchases that happen years apart.

FILED 10.13.26 / RECORD RETAINED
FIELD REPORT / SEC. 05 / CLASSIFIED

You asked for AI-assisted creative.

I already work that way.

I build AI product imagery from tech packs straight to catalog at about a 98% success rate. No sample, no shoot, no studio day. Cheaper than photography and it performs best on PDPs. I’ve done it directly and through a partnership with Qreal.ai, including work for Walmart in consumer electronics.

For an inventory business where stock turns constantly, that’s the difference between shooting what you can afford to shoot and showing every watch the way Hodinkee shows one. Context, multiple angles, consistent lighting, same day.

The part that matters is knowing where it degrades. On a $20,000 watch the dial has to be exact. I’d use it for context and volume, never for the thing a buyer zooms in on.

FILED 10.13.26 / RECORD RETAINED
FIELD REPORT / SEC. 06 / CLASSIFIED

I began at Liz Claiborne as a knit designer at Juicy Couture. Then I built Stone and Cloth, a domestic-made premium bag line, from nothing.

Today I’m the creative lead and a partner at Freeman in Seattle. 100% domestically manufactured, $425 waxed raincoats and sashiko coats made in our own factory. Our line is Better With Age. Limited-run capsules with Filson. I designed the retail store.

That’s the same thesis I’m pitching you in section three, except I’ve already built it.

You’ll find people with more luxury houses on their resume. What they won’t have is twenty years of taking brands from nothing to shelf on a calendar. You’re a $108M business growing 30 to 50% a year with 60 people. That’s not a maison, and it shouldn’t be run like one.

I started in luxury.

I never left the language.

FILED 10.13.26 / RECORD RETAINED
FIELD REPORT / SEC. 07 / CLASSIFIED

The Oyster turns 100 this year. You’re the ones who have them.

Rolex marked the centenary with a two-tone OP 41 that nobody will be able to buy. Meanwhile the whole archive has a reason to be talked about, and you’re sitting on it.

The audience has changed too. The biggest watch collectors in culture right now came up through music, not through Patek dinners. G-Dragon in Jacob & Co, Simon Dominic in a Rainbow Daytona and a Richard Mille, RM in a platinum Day-Date, Lisa in Royal Oaks and Bulgari Serpenti.

Speaking the language of luxury now means speaking two at once: provenance for the collector who buys a Submariner to hand down, and cultural fluency for the buyer who found watches through an artist. Most dealers pick one. You have the inventory to do both.


Sources: Best Watches of 2026 So Far, New Rolex 2026 Releases
FILED 10.13.26 / RECORD RETAINED
FIELD REPORT / SEC. 08 / CLASSIFIED
Form 06 — Anticipated questions Answered in advance

No, and I'm not going to claim to be one. I owned a Rolex Yacht-Master II and proudly parted ways with it.

What I am is someone who knows how to pay attention. To the market, to where it's moving, and to the archetypes customers speak through. That's the part of this job you can't fake, and it's the part I've done for twenty years.

Bob's isn't a maison. That's exactly why you hire people who came out of one, and it's working.

What you also need is someone who knows premium, knows luxury, and knows everything in between, and who will get their hands dirty without a Burberry or Margiela budget sitting behind them.

You want to be the watch worn by the guy who shops Bottega Veneta. You grow into that.

Because the business has outgrown the brand that got it here. Thirty to fifty percent a year is a different company than the one the look was built for.

No team yet is the good part. I'd rather build the standard than inherit one.

I come in with an AI stack already running, which means I can produce at volume on day one instead of asking for headcount first. Then we hire against real work, not a guess.

The goal is simple. The best looking, best sounding brand in pre-owned watches, top tier by any luxury measure.

Yes. The real question is when, and in what order.

A rebrand doesn't start with a logo. It starts with what the brand believes, what it's here to do, who it's for, how it carries itself, and how it speaks. And how it speaks should change depending on who's in front of it and what the moment calls for. That's the strategy layer, and it's the cheap part. Get it right and the visual work almost tells you what it wants to be. Skip it and you've paid a lot of money to repaint the same house.

Full rebrands are expensive, and that's a bigger conversation than a hiring one. So I'd do the strategy first, on the inside, with the team. It costs time instead of budget, and when the visual conversation does happen you'll know exactly what you're buying and why.

The strategy work would tell you one thing fast. You're serving two buyers. Quiet money, Zegna and Cucinelli, nothing shouting. And the younger buyer who came in through music and culture, who sits at the Dior and Celine end. The same site has to feel built for both of them, and that's a brand problem before it's a design problem.

The one thing I wouldn't touch is the name. A rebrand isn't a rename. "Bob's" is approachable, and approachable is why people trust you with forty thousand dollars. WatchBox renamed itself The 1916 Company and now has to warn its own customers about sites still trading on the old name.

Unbelievably passionate. I treat the brand and the product like they're mine, the customers like they're mine, and the team like family.

I'm not precious about whose idea wins, as long as we're all aimed at the same North Star. I lead with execution, I do as much of it myself as I can, and I'd rather solve a problem before it exists than manage it after.

I'm very good at staying in my lane. My lane just happens to operate like a freeway with a lot of lanes inside it.

I want to be there. The best creative I've made came out of a room, not a Slack thread.

Trend forecasting especially. That's a conversation you have out loud, with product in your hands and people reacting in real time. You can't do that asynchronously and you can't build a team that way either.

End of Form 06

FILED 10.13.26 / RECORD RETAINED
FIELD REPORT / SEC. 05 / CLASSIFIED

Where would someone like me be useful to you?

I've applied through the portal like everybody else.
This page is the part the portal doesn't have room for.

Ask me the hard questions in person. I'll bring the rest.

FILED 09.24.26 / RECORD RETAINED