Personalities
The Shanghai Watch Gang
Personalities
The Shanghai Watch Gang
At the same time, the stellar growth seen in Australia can be attributed to both visiting Chinese, as well as, Australian Chinese. I would hazard a guess that Chinese Americans represent a disproportionately large percentage of local American watch buyers. Singapore, one of the commercial meccas for the luxury watch world, has a population which is largely Chinese.
I have always believed there are two reasons for this. First, it is deeply ingrained into our culture that a watch is one of the most important objects you should own. It is a priority in life to have a quality watch. The second is, of course, our deeply acquisitional nature, which in some ways is profoundly connected to the Chinese concept of mien-tzu or ‘face’. But let’s also be honest… buying things is fun. It just feels awesome.
Although, just a few years ago, there were two types of Chinese buyers. The first was the international Chinese buyer: A person who is ethnically Chinese and grew up in, or was exposed to, the West. As a customer base, they are a dominant force in everything from the booming vintage market (Eric Ku), to Patek Philippe (Zach L.), or Richard Mille collecting (Wei Koh… I wish).
Then there was the Mainland Chinese customer, who for many years was buying a very specific type of watch created expressly for the market. But times have changed. Says Chu — better known as @horoloupe on Instagram — one of the founders of Shanghai’s one and only watch collecting community, Shanghai Watch Gang, “The Chinese all know they bought the wrong watches before. This time, we want what is universally acknowledged as the best. We want to be on the forefront of the watch collecting scene and eventually lead the way.”
Such is the lighting speed evolution that is happening in the Mainland Chinese scene. With the modern collector being a young, wealthy — often, self-made — Western educated individual that speaks more languages than the average UN translator — including accent-less English, Mandarin and Shanghainese — is entrenched in the social and business scene, has an equal passion for Jean-Georges caviar eggs and traditional dumplings, and who knows more about Richard Mille and Off-White than I do. Ok, not Richard Mille. But, you get what I’m saying.
As stories go, the way that the Shanghai Watch Gang met, is about as unconventional as it gets. The commonality that founding members Chu (@horoloupe), Daniel Sum (@dan.sum) and Kelvin Sa (@mr_kelvinator) shared, was that they had all been scammed and ripped off, in some cases for up to USD 400,000, so that the first time they met, they eyed each other with considerable circumspection.
Says Chu, “We had all met this guy named Kevin, who was a fantastic car modifier and race car driver. We became friends with him and he asked us to help loan him cash to buy cars to start a racing school. But in addition, we discovered that he was trying to sell us each other’s cars with forged paperwork.
Once they located him, holed up in his apartment, they hired men to stand outside and essentially starve him out. Says Chu, “We all went to confront him together and he eventually relented and returned our money.”
Says Sum, “The best thing to come out of it was our friendship and our mutual affection for watches. What’s interesting was that despite Shanghai being such a huge market for timepieces, no one had made an effort to create a collector’s group to share the passion and broaden and deepen our knowledge. So that’s how Shanghai Watch Gang was created.”
Says Sa, “That’s what’s cool about our Group. That we all appreciate all different genres of watches. From independent watches to watches from the most established manufactures. The common thread is simply that they are cool, that each watch has a perspective. For example, I became an URWERK collector because the first time I saw a UR-110 at The Hour Glass in Singapore, it blew my mind. It was the first time I had seen a watch that reinterpreted time from a civil expression into something artistic. I thought to myself, ‘Man I gotta have that’.
Chu laughs, “It’s funny that people consider China to be an emerging market. If you go to the Patek museum and look at the enameled, jeweled, high complications made as paired watches, dating back hundreds of years, you’ll see that a very high proportion of these watches were created for the Chinese market. We’ve always had an innate cultural appreciation for craft.”
So what kind of watches are the young successful Chinese buying today? Chu who sold his first company when he was still in his teens, explains, “Look, everyone knows that the Mainland Chinese bought a huge amount of watches, from the mid ’90s to 2013. But now that we are coming back into the market in a big way, everyone knows that they bought the wrong watches.
Says Sum, “It’s like this. When the Chinese become interested in something they become obsessive. They want know everything about that brand, or that reference, or that complication. At the same time, we are very aware of the reputation of the brand-obsessed mainlander, who gets it all wrong. We are now in a moment of incredible evolution and it’s happening so much faster than anyone thinks. Right now the vintage thing is only starting [Aurel Bacs take note]. Wait until we get fully into it.”
Says Sa, “What takes five years in the West, happens in one year in China. Each time you leave China and come back in a year, it’s progressed. Traffic used to be super chaotic and loud. But we invested in highways and educated drivers to drive in an orderly way. We even outlawed honking your horn. So now, China’s traffic is super-efficient and quiet compared to the West. We move on and we move fast.
“It’s funny because the guys from URWERK came to a get-together we organized and they expected the URWERK collector to be a guy in his 40s, who has already gone through the normal traditional watches. No dude, the URWERK guy here is in his 20s, or 30s. This guys is buying an URWERK as his first watch, because he thinks it’s cool. He’s also done all his research, by talking to me, or through forums, websites and magazines.”
Says Chu, “One of the reasons I love my Audemars Piguet Double Balance Wheel Openworked, beyond how awesome it looks, is the idea of creating more concentric breathing by placing the spirals in opposing directions. It’s after the same effect of a tourbillon, but using a completely different approach. When I explain this, people here love it.
“People here are greatly receptive to other kinds of watches, because you want to learn, you want to gain knowledge. An AP guy will still want to learn about De Bethune or Kari Voutilainen.”
Says Sa, “Yes, but brands also have to be aware of what doesn’t play well in China. Like when Kari Voutilainen worked with that Vertu knock-off mobile phone company. We all used to really love Kari and probably still do, but when you see that ad with him holding the phone, it makes you go, ‘Dude, what the…’”
In a very short period of time Richard Mille has laid claim to the hearts and minds of the most elite Chinese watch collector. When asked why, Chu drops the following science: “One major appeal of Richard Mille is pretty simple. It is exactly the same reason for the brand’s success in the West. When you’re in a certain situation, a sort of unspoken competition, for who has the most baller watch, when you have a Richard Mille on, you just win.
Says Sa, “From a social perspective, the other cool thing about the Watch Gang is that it attracts a certain type of person. Someone who is sincere and receptive to knowledge. What I also really like about watches, is that it isn’t like fashion, where you can just make up some bullshit. With watches, you either know what you’re talking about or you don’t. You cannot wing this stuff. You might not have a lot of specific knowledge about certain watches, and that’s fine. But you can’t bullshit people. And so it attracts very real people.”
Says Sun, “I’m in charge of the vetting process for new members, so I’ll usually meet them first, before they join us at a gathering. I want to make sure they are sincere, that they are passionate and that they handle watches respectfully.”
Says Chu, “What’s cool about the group is that no one rejects any watch or brand. Everyone is open to learn. Everyone is appreciative when another member shares his passion and knowledge.”
There you have it. Evidence. Proof positive that in the blink of an eye Mainland China will totally evolve. This is not to say the pig farmer, who found natural gas on his land and has now turned into an oligarch, whom I sat next to, on my Dragon Air flight to Shanghai,will disappear overnight. But I’m pretty sure there are guys like him in other countries too. And he is the past. The Shanghai Watch Gang is the future.