Skip to content

Ben Clymer (Founder, HODINKEE)

Published on Mon, 23 Jul 2018 09:50:00 +0000

We decided that there was only one way to kick this series off properly: We had to go back to the beginning. Your host Stephen Pulvirent sits down with HODINKEE founder and CEO Ben Clymer to talk about the early days of HODINKEE and to take a little trip down memory lane. Together, they revisit the good ole days and talk about things like how HODINKEE got started, how watch collecting has evolved over the last decade, and that one time Ben was late for a journalism class because he was hanging out at Jay-Z’s house. Enjoy.

Synopsis

This inaugural episode of Hodinkee Radio features a conversation between host Stephen Pulvirent and Hodinkee founder and CEO Ben Clymer, exploring the origins and evolution of the influential watch media company. Clymer recounts how Hodinkee began in 2008 as a Tumblr blog during the financial crisis, when he was working at UBS with virtually no responsibilities and spent his days researching watches and writing about his grandfather's Omega Speedmaster. What started as a creative outlet born from boredom at work gradually transformed into a legitimate business as Clymer realized there was an appetite for accessible, authentic watch content that bridged the gap between the intimidating luxury watch world and everyday enthusiasts.

The conversation covers numerous pivotal moments in Hodinkee's growth, including the launch of their popular NATO straps in 2012, early collaborations with celebrities like Jay-Z and John Mayer, and the evolution from a one-person operation to a team of nearly thirty. Clymer discusses the company's philosophy of covering watches with genuine enthusiasm rather than treating editorial as transactional, their successful limited edition watch collaborations with brands like MB&F, Zenith, and Vacheron Constantin, and how they've maintained their authentic voice while growing into a significant commercial force in the watch industry. Throughout, both Clymer and Pulvirent reflect on the surreal experiences, chance encounters, and persistent hustle that characterized Hodinkee's early days, painting a picture of an unlikely success story built on passion, timing, and authenticity.

Transcript

Speaker
Unknown For anyone familiar with Hodinky, this week's guest needs no introduction. It's none other than our founder and CEO, Mr. Ben Clymer. We figured that sitting down together, just the two of us, to discuss the early days of Hodinki would be a fun way to kick off this new show. It's a trip back to the good old days when we showed up every morning trying to figure out what the hell we were gonna write about, and then we would hand pack watch straps on the floor every time a shipment came in from Italy. Since then, a lot's changed, but a lot hasn't, and we're gonna get into that. I hope you enjoy. I'm your host Stephen Pulverant and this is Hodinky Radio. This week's episode is brought to you by Tudor. Stay tuned later in the show for a look at the Heritage Black Bay Chrono, a new take on one of Tudor's most iconic watches. You can also learn more at Tutorwatch.com. Alright, thanks so much for joining us, Ben. It's my pleasure, Steven. Can't think of a better way to kick this thing off. Episode one of Hodinky Radio, and we've got uh our fearless leader, Mr. Ben Climber. Let's go all the way back to the beginning. Let's start this thing off right at square one. What is your earliest memory of anything that we might today be able to call Hudinky?
Unknown Oh man. I mean er earliest memory was m myself sitting in a Kosi of all places on the upper west side where where I then lived, uh thinking about about watches. And this was, you know, I had one I had two nice mechanical watches then. It was a Maurice Le Croix that I bought uh on layaway at Torneau, no joke. Okay. Uh which was actually wonderful. It was a hand wound Pissau uh powered movement, which was which was really kind of really special, actually, in thinking about it. Uh turnout offered like zero percent interest for two years. Uh so I bought that. And it was really like a lovely watch. That's cool. And then I had the Omega Speedmaster, the Mark 40, that my my grandfather had given me. Uh and then I was just sitting there one day, I I realized that that my career in in what was effectively management consulting at the time wasn't really what I wanted to do. I knew that from the beginning. Um and I started writing about my grandfather's watch, the Omega. On Tumblr, right? On Tumblr. Yeah. Which is funny since because I've since met David Carpenter's like oh dude, like I started Honinky on your platform. He's like, no way. Uh and he's he's become kind of a friend of the show and is is a watch guy. And so I started it on Tumblr uh and then quickly moved to Squarespace, which was a much more robust platform. But you know, it was just me. And the the one thing that I've said a thousand times, but I'll repeat, you know, this was never intended to be a business. This was really like me biding my time at at my job, which back then was in finance. Uh in two years, two thousand eight. Two thousand eight, yeah. So the the the financial crisis of of two thousand eight occurred. Uh the those in the room I think are a little bit too young to remember that. Yeah, okay. A little bit little bit. Uh so yeah, I mean I was two and a half, three years out of school. I had a great job at a boutique consulting firm uh for two years. I left to start another company that that didn't end up going where going anywhere. I didn't really have any idea what I was doing. Um and then I joined UBS because one of my managing directors for my consulting company ended up over there and was like, I've got a great job for you. And so I was young. I was 24, 25, I was making, you know, what I thought was great money is great money. But you know, they they promised me and all the the analysts in my class uh all these these things. And back then, like, you know, finance was like finance was what entrepreneurs are now. You know, back then everybody wanted to be an investment banker, work for UBS or Goldman or Lehman Brothers, which doesn't even exist anymore. Right. Which is fucking crazy. Not a bad thing. Exactly. And so I I took this job and I knew it was kind of soul-sucking. You know, the UBS is really a strong bank, but I mean it's it's just a giant Swiss, you know, you know exactly what it is. And it was just it just wasn't the place for me. But so the financial crisis hit, and my group had literally nothing to do. And I'm not using that that that lightly. Like they literally had no work. Uh and so many people were laid off. Uh I was young and relatively inexpensive, you know, comparative to to the other folks. Sure. And my my boss, managing direct director was like, you know what, like this is gonna pick back up. Like, you know, we like you, you should hang around. And I was like, okay, well, like what do I do all day? And he's like, eh, whatever. Basically, whatever. And I was like, okay. And so I would come into my office and sit in my cubicle and put on a little like you know blue blazer and like Joseph B. Bank shirt and tie. And uh and I would just sit there and I would just kind of dick around on the web. But because UBS is UBS, everything was blocked. So like Facebook was certainly blocked. Most of like the sports websites were blocked and all that. Watch websites were not. Uh I wasn't really on the forums or anything like that, but allowed me to do my research. Uh and then I started, as I said, started writing on Tumblr and started researching more and more and more. And then quickly I came to the Paul Newman Daytona, which obviously uh and then all the Steve McQueen watches. And then I realized the first ever hodinky post was about the albino daytona. Eric Lapton. Eric Clapton's watch, yeah. Eric Lapton's albino daytona, which was crazy because like nine years later it ended up selling again at Phillips. Right. Uh yeah, that was the first post uh that I wrote about it. And that was literally just like me reading it off of I don't even know what GQ. Not even GQ, it's Luxist or some like you know high. I know, seriously. That was an AOL owned property. Uh might have been Luxist or something like that. And I was like, oh cool, like Eric Clapton's into watches. That's neat. Uh and so then I just basically re-blogged it and said Eric Clapton's watch sold for I think it was half a million bucks or something like that. And then just it got into the this idea of like provenance-driven watches. And at that point, it was a big big deal in the watch world, uh, but not big anywhere else. Uh Gandhi's watch uh came up for auction. Gandhi's watch, and then Einstein's watch, uh, and then McQueen's first Samariner, um, you know, not the one that's obviously coming now, they all started coming up, but like nobody gave a shit. You know, like nobody outside the watch world gave a shit at all. And like, you know, thinking back on the prices that these things made, I mean it was nothing. So I would go into Anticorum, which was the eminent auction house at the time, with my like, you know, I I had an icon, I think D seven thousand or something like that. And I'd go there and I would just like talk to people and just like take pictures of this stuff and put it up on my site. But it was really like I was doing this because I was bored at work and 'cause I've always liked to write, I've always liked to take pictures, I like watches, I like the internet. Uh so I just started putting it all together and having fun with it. Uh and then it just kinda got bigger and bigger and bigger. Uh and then people started, you know, I remember the first time we broke a hundred uniques uh in a day. Yeah, and then I remember the first time we broke a thousand uniques and now we see I think like a hundred and twenty five thousand a day or something like that. Um you know it's it's just wild to think about but I mean it was really out of out of boredom at work, honestly, and then just the love for for all the that that that this represented, which again was was more than watches. It was the creative freedom to to take photos, to be cre you know, I I always kind of fancied myself a writer and photographer and creative in some way, but never really had the the proper outlets. Because growing up where I was like I wanted to be in in business. I'm using your quotes. I'm from upstate New York, Rochester. And being in like being in business, I don't even know what that meant. You know, and I I was under the impression that you needed to go to an undergraduate school that had a business school. So I went to Syracuse undergrad and did that with a double major in information studies. And uh and then came to New York and I wanted to be in business, but didn't really know what that meant. And uh and then Hodinki just began. And uh, you know, again, I remember the first day that somebody contacted me saying, Hey, can we pay you for advertising? It was like fifty bucks a month. Uh now it's like fifty three bucks a month. Yeah, it's like sixty bucks a month now. Um and uh and it was just one of those things where like this there was no business plan. There still isn't, uh much to the dismay of some of our investors. JK. Not really. And yeah. And uh and it just kinda it it grew from there. And it it's always been fun. It still is fun. I mean I wouldn't be wouldn't rather be anywhere else right now on a Monday, a sweltering Monday. Stephen J. Polvern's twenty ninth birthday. The things that I've been able to do, the people I've been able to meet, present company, certainly included, uh, has been, you know, one of the greatest aspects of it. You know, it's you'd be surprised at how many interesting people watches can can put you in front of
Unknown . Yeah, it's totally true. I think, you know, when you tell people that you do something related to watches for a living, you often get these like puzzled stares. And and then they go to the site and they see who all's involved and who we interview and who kind of ends up in our orbit and are blown away by it. Yeah. Yeah
Unknown . I had no idea. I just thought there were watches. Like you know, what's an authorized dealer? Who who knows? Um and then that was a shock to me. Uh and it was just like the first time I got invited on a press trip, which was really by Automar P Gay in like two thousand nine or so, they they flew me business class, which I had never flown in my life. Uh like a normal like a normal movie. Yeah. Uh now I scoff at not flying business. Um seriously. And uh anybody listening. Um and you know, they put me up in a swanky hotel and this was a crazy trip. It was we we saw the the AP factory, which was really amazing because AP really is a very high-end special brand. Then we flew down to Nice they had a yacht, like a proper like 120-foot yacht waiting for us in Nice. We sailed or we we cruised to Saint Topay, uh where they had the world's fastest sailboat waiting for us. As one does. As one does. They sponsored it. And then they they took us on French marine uh like kind of like rubber like Navy SEAL style boats to get on the world's fastest sailboat. Did that, came back, we stayed at Beeblos, which for those of you who know Saint-Tropez, that sounded really condescending or really pretentious. Uh Biblos is like a super swanky hotel in Saint Tropez. And like I'm not even kidding, my hotel room was probably the size of the house I grew up in. Like it was like it was gigantic. You know, it was two stories, multiple terraces. And this is your first story. My very first one. Yeah. And that was just like, what the fuck is this? You know? And at the same time, which is a story I often tell. I was in graduate school uh in journalism school and I was writing my it wasn't a thesis, but it was like my my first final paper of something called RW one, which is what it's basically like you're assigned to beat uh up at Columbia and you have one neighborhood and like this was my final project of that. So this was about like a double homicide. This like boo um bodega owner was like murdered with a fucking hammer. Uh and I was writing this story and I'm not even kidding, it was due. This was this was August in in 2009. Uh this story was due because I I started over the summer. It was due that week and I was like, I need to finish this story. So I was literally writing, finishing the story, first like riding up in the mountains of of Switzerland, and then I finished it on a yacht in San Trope, uh which is a true story. Uh and so then like I'm just thinking like what the fuck? Like I'm sending this story in and like my my classmates at Columbia, one of which is is a longtime employee with us or coworker with us. Um, you know, it's just like they had no idea. They were like, What'd you do this week? And I was like, I we're not talking about that. So it was this weird kind of juxtaposition of this like hyperlux world, which again I didn't know existed. Uh and then and then like real journalism, you know, which was journalism school. Um and that was that was a memory I That's kind of what we do, right? That seems kind of like the perfect fit for us, right? Yeah. No, absolutely. I mean that that's a memory I I think back on often because it's like that was a moment where like kind of like things changed, you know? Yeah. Um and it was just a surreal experience. And then you know, a similar experience back then, uh I was helping uh Jay Z launched this website in two thousand ten called Life and Times. Yeah. Which was his like lifestyle take, you know, fashion cars, whatever. And my friend Rich, who was the CEO of Complex, who I'm still friends with, was like, oh, like, you know, you gotta talk to this young guy, Ben. Um, he'd be great to do your watch stuff. And so I started writing for Life and Times and I got to got to meet you know Jay-Z a few times and one time I helped him buy a few watches and one time he wanted to buy this is when he wanted to buy the watch for his Carnegie Hall show, which he was like, I want something that's like the least rapper watch ever. He like, you know, he was wearing a tuxedo. I I was there in his apartment on Hudson Street when he when uh Tom Ford was there with all his tuxes which was fucking crazy. Yeah. Um and also like back then, I mean even still now, like I was wearing like sperry, you know, dock siders. I'm not today, but I usually am. Uh and like they I came into his apartment and they're like, Hey, take your shoes off, and so I take off my like literally like forty nine dollar dock siders. And uh and Beyonce has these like you know, Lou Buton wedges and then he's got remember those spiky men's shoes that we put on that. And so I put my like dock sliders next to those two things like what the fuck is going on? And so then I go in there and his assistant's like, yo, chill while while he does the suit fitting. I was like, of course. And uh and it takes a while, like you know, he whatever. Uh and I'm looking at my watch and I'm just like, oh fuck, I've got I've got a consumer journalism class right now, like I'm gonna be late to class. And I was like, which is more absurd, like telling Jay-Z I gotta go because I gotta get to class? Or telling my professor that I was late because I was at Jay-Z's house. So I ended up I ended up staying, of course. And I helped him buy uh that rose gold reverso, which he wears all the time now. That's super cool. Um but th those were some surreal times because I had no money to my to my name at all. I was really hustling. It was just me at at Hodinky back then. Um and we were publishing every day while I was in full-time journalism school and and trying to trying to pay my rent, you know? That's uh yeah. It's real
Unknown real life. Those are crazy, crazy days. Do you remember the first time you thought like shit, maybe this could be something? Like maybe this isn't just a hobby
Unknown . Uh I mean certainly meeting Jay-Z or being recommended to to work with Jay-Z on Life and Times was a big thing. You know, to be clear, at first it was just a writer uh and then got getting to do more stuff there. Uh I remember the I mean a a seminal moment or seminal seminal memory for me was, the first time Mayer emailed. We had launch straps. You know, you know, we had I was buying these straps from JP for for years or for a few years. People would always ask where I got them. I ordered 30 instead of one, things like that. Put them up on Shopifyy and then Hpe Beast and GQ and Square. And really everybody covered it. It was a totally new thing to put these straps out there. I think something that that you know a lot of people don't get enough credit for is the fact that like every strap before these straps were made for new watches. And if you think about how many new watches are versus old, like there's a lot more old watches. And so these traps were designed, you know, with by us in conjunction with JP to really focus on old things. And they wanted them, even though they were brand new, you know, the we wanted them to look and feel old. So we launched that and hypebies picked it up. And what? That was like April 2012? That was April 2012. And so that was right as I was about to graduate from journalism school. So still early days. I was still the only full-time employee. Uh and we launched it and people just fucking loved them. And they got picked up everywhere. And then I got this email that said, Hey, John Mayer here, love what you do. Let's talk. And I'm not super casual. Exactly. And I was like, okay. Uh and it it came in through Hype Beast, um, of course and uh so I emailed him back not thinking it was the John mayor who I knew was obviously a watch person at the time and uh it was him and we chatted and uh you know we we became kind of fast friends and he he ended up being a a really close friend and and a really you know strong advocate for what we do. Um and then he agreed to write for us and he wrote an intro in an introductory post that said, hey I'm John Mayer, I love watches or something like that. And then he did another post, you know, the the best uh vintage role X's is under eight thousand dollars, which is still online. Yeah, that's still one of our best performing posts of all time. How could it not be? Still crushes it. Absolutely. So sadly most of those watches are not those prices anymore. At least double in most cases. Um he did that, and that was 2012. And then we we hadn't met yet. We we met this is a crazy story. The first time that Will, so Will was a classmate of mine at Columbia. Uh he's our head of content and the guy responsible for much of the video content. Um he uh John emailed us and said, hey, I'm gonna be in New York. Uh I'd love to meet you guys for the first time. Uh this is after he'd written a few things for us. And so Will and I go over to his apartment on Lafayette Street and shoot the 5396 Tiffany, which is now known as the John Mayer watch. And and I was like, oh, thanks so much for writing, you know, writing those stories for us. Oh yeah, like I wrote that backstage the other night, and I was just like, where? And he's like, Oh, in in New Jersey, I was playing with the Stones. And I was just like, the the what now? And he's like, Yeah, I was playing with the Rolling Stones. And I was like, So you like you're literally sitting backstage about to go on with the Rolling Stones and you wrote a hodinky story. And he's like, Yeah. And then I realized that like there are different levels of like badassy and just like holy fuck, you know. Where do you write most of your stories? Uh on the toilet. Okay. Totally kidding. Cool. Um you know here and there. Um but yeah so that was the first time that that we met John and he showed us a you know cardiacine Daytonas and just fucking
Unknown Yeah. Uh you had just gotten back from Europe, I think the night before. John was coming through on tour and Will and I had just gotten back from a red eye after covering Pebble. I think we'd slept like three of the last forty hours or something like that. And we somehow put together a three camera shoot in a restaurant uh in the West Village. Yeah. Just made it happen
Unknown . Uh so I it wasn't Europe. I was actually coming back from Nantucket. This was one of those crazy press trips that could only happen in like the pre two thousand like fourteen, fifteen era. The good old days. The good old days, yeah. Uh I was on Antucket with Panorai, and it was myself, my then girlfriend, and uh Daniel Balud, and and his wife. Uh and we um you know, for for some reason we were were deemed worthy and they flew us private from Nantucket to to to Teterborough. And then I but I hadn't showered. I was like kind of a mess, which is kind of my thing. And we we got down there and Will was like, hey, like JM is in town, he's doing Jimmy Kimmel or some shit. Uh let's meet and do this this video. I found this restaurant called Little Prince down the road from our office. We were at a wee work on the backstream. Showed up there, shot the video with John in like, I don't know, 30 minutes, something like that. Yeah, while
Unknown people were having lunch in the background. They did not close the restaurant. They did not. So we were doing this with like probably a dozen, a dozen and a half people having lunch, all pointing at us, going, It's John
Unknown Mayer. Holy shit, it's John Mayer. It's funny like Will had gone into the restaurant like earlier that day or maybe the day before and was like, Hey, like we're gonna do this video with John Mayer, and like it was pretty clear they didn't believe. They were like, all right, whatever, like you know, like if you buy lunch, that's fine, you know? Uh and so they also like just opened and then like little prints from it's you know it's still not a huge restaurant, but it was nothing back then. And uh and then John showed up and we did the video and and the rest is kind of history and you know obviously huge credit to to Will Holloway who who did that entire shoot by himself through cameras. Um it was a wild experience. And that that is what set us off on this kind of crazy journey. Yeah. Are there any other c stor
Unknown ies from those days, like the early days when it was either just you and me or you, me, and Will of crazy stuff that happened? I'm trying to trying to think
Unknown back. There there definitely are some I asked you to do something
Unknown . Yeah, so this was a really weird first day at work. Um speaking of Jay-Z, uh the Sky Dweller had just come out, and Jay was looking to buy one, or maybe more than one, uh, and you had helped procure these watches, and you went down and, you know, made sure that Jay was happy with them and everything was good. Uh but until he was happy with them, Rolex held on to the box and papers so that they could fill the papers out. So they got sent down to our office and you had to run somewhere. So you were just like, Hey, can you uh can you run a quick errand for me? And so on my way home, I took these Rolex boxes with papers that said Sean Carter in them and ran them down the street and had to drop them off at the doorman and I showed up with this like shopping bag like some we found some generic shopping bag full of Rolex boxes and just looked at the doorman and was like, I have a package for Sean Carter. And he gave me this like total, not like disgusted look, but like he obviously knew that like I was some schmo dropping something off. And he was like, I'll I'll take it fine. And I was like, Do you sign? He's like, No, it's fine. And I was like, Alright, fine. And uh presumably I hope Jay Z, I hope you got your Rolex boxes. Ye
Unknown ah, I would I would hope so. But it's funny, that that that you know, he he bought the I guess the the yellow and rose gold, and that's in OS or one song where he says like I got the new big face rolly, yellow and rose gold or something like that. New wax alert or the big face rolly I got cubed But it's funny to to then hear like, oh my god, like that that that happened because of us, you know? Totally. Um and it's really that that was a a crazy experience and obviously Steven joining the team wa was you know obviously another m super meaningful moment for for the company and and for myself. Uh Steven was with us and then Will, who I've mentioned a few times, even though I I knew Will before I I met Steven, he joined us later. He was a managing editor of a an uh I guess a Vic Victorian's magazine? Yeah. Which if you know Will and some of you do is just like a mind blowing absurd. Uh he was living behind like a barber shop in like some sketchy fucking place in Brooklyn. Uh he like had whatever we don't need to talk about
Unknown will but um well I remember when when he got hired full time he was already writing or uh he was already working for us but on a freelance basis and I went to Germany on a press trip and I'm sitting in the hotel room. It's like two o'clock in the morning. I'm jell lagged and I'm like catching up on emails. And I get this email that you sent to me and to the couple of guys who were working for us as freelancers announcing that Will was joining the team and that you had adopted a dog. And I was like, wait a minute. I leave town for like 48 hours and the team doubled in size overnight. We had four of us, including uh Henry the dog. When I when I showed back up
Unknown . Yeah, R.I.P. hence memory. Although I think he's still alive. He he uh I hope he's still alive. He was a great dog. He uh he went with an ex-girlfriend of mine back to back to Paris. Lovely dog, though. Yeah, great dog. Great dog. Got us in trouble that we work a lot. He did. He was in he was this little tiny doch and he was adorable. He used to like pee ever The ladies did love him. Yeah. But yeah, so I hope he's he's happy and like you know life filled with biscuits and you know fields and things like that. Exactly. Here's one for Henry. Poor one out for Henry. I really do hope he's still alive. He'd be very young. Yeah. Um yeah, and then so so SJP who's who's present company and then Will Holloway and then uh writes well, there was another employee, but we don't need to talk about him. He didn't he didn't last. Yeah. And then Ashley Kinder, who is kind of the unsung hero. She was fresh, basically fresh out of undergrad. She completed a program at NYU in publishing. She was about to go work retail at Apple. You know, in Apple an store. And we hired her. And uh and that that was a life-changing moment. At the same time, we lost Stephen J. Pul
Unknown verant. Yeah. I went off into the wilderness. So I was at Hodinky, it was I think two years to the day was my last day. It was it was definitely the same week. Uh and I left and I went over to Bloomberg to work on the new pursuits team. And then I went and relaunched digital products for Surface Magazine, who we had done some stuff with way back when uh doing some watch stories. And then I came back. Uh we always do. Yeah, they always do. They always do. JK everybody. Yeah. I mean we had always stayed in touch and obviously being in the watch world it's not that big, so we saw each other quite a bit, uh the two of us and then also Will and you know, we got breakfast one morning and I remember you were just like, so would you ever think about coming back? And I was like, uh, I don't I don't really know. That seems kind of weird, like whatever. Uh and then you told me what was going on, and I f had this moment where I was like, you know what, if I don't do this, I'm gonna wake up when I'm like 50 years old and be like, what the fuck did I do? Like, man, I blew it. Yeah. Well we're we're we're happy to have you. I can tell you that. Thank you. Um I'm doing this, sitting here, we're chatting old days, and you know. It's weird that this company has old days. Like it still feels in many ways you know, people ask all the time, like, Oh my God, so you know, you started and it was two of you guys and now we're what, twenty uh seven? As of this Monday we'll be twenty eightight.. Twenty-e Yeah. So you know what what's that like? Is the company totally different? Is it whatever? And in some ways it's different, but in some ways it is exactly the same company it was when it was two of us, three of us,
Unknown four of us. Trevor B Yeurrah.us And then that that's something that I'm you know profoundly proud of. You know, it's still very much excuse me, our company. And it's something that, you know, when when Stephen left, I remember texting my then girlfriend being like, what the fuck am I going to do? And it was obviously very difficult without Stephen. He's obviously an immensely talented guy. And then, you know, we went on and and and life went on as as it tends to do. And the the company continued to succeed and and grow. And then in 2014, right around the time Steven left, uh, a big, big company came to us and said, Hey, you know, would you ever think about selling? We were a really small company at the time, four people, but really profitable. You know, we had a pretty good stranglehold on the luxury watch market, and we were contemplatinging sell the whole company. I owned the whole thing at the time to this big company. And you know, went down that road in a very serious way and had lawyers and were negotiating and all that. And then it was at the same time that I became friends with some Silicon Valley folks, so Kevin Rose, who's still a good friend, Tony Fidel, things like that. And uh it was really Kevin and Tony that said, Hey, like, you know, you can sell and you can, you know, you can have some money and you'll be you know, you'll be fine. It wasn't like, you know, it wasn't fuck you money or anything like that, but it was, you know, some some millions of yeah, it was a few million dollars, you know. Um and uh and I was just like, you know what, like it feels like we're not really done yet. Like we were a four-person company. We had one videographer, we had one content producer, we had me and we had Ashley. Uh and it was just like this just doesn't feel right. And so Kevin, who I'd gotten to know as a watch collector and friend, was like, hey, like let's like I've got this thing called watch fill, uh, which I kind of helped him with, uh, you know, like talked to him about early on. Which we still have. Which we s which Hodanky still owns, yeah. And um and he's like, let's just do this together. Like you have the content, you have the watch knowledge, I've got the tech and design chops. Like, let's just merge and do this together. Uh and so we did. And so in 2015, we we merged, we raised a little bit of money, a few million dollars, and and hired Jack. We hired Kara. Uh we hired uh Adam Kopak, who's our head of design, who you know has as much of an influence on what you see on on Hodinky as anybody, really. Yeah. How it interacts with you, like that is Adam Kopec, the app, everything. We hired a few other folks and kind of went off to the races. And and then um that was not that long ago. That was three years ago. Yeah. Wow. Three years ago. Yeah. And uh then, you know, then we when we merged with Kevin's company, Kevin moved to New York. We doubled in size to seven or eight. And then hired more people. And obviously Jack coming on board was a big deal. Jack was you know he was a friend of me slash just friend. Yeah. Uh for for years, you know, we were kind of two of the the the I would say more popular you know English speaking watch writers. So we would get invited on trips all the time. You you can't help but have respect for the guy and the knowledge is just incredible. He's a nut in like the most fun way. Uh loves bow ties and and cargo shorts. Um sometimes together. Sometimes together. And you know, to to bring him on board and I remember the the dinner that the Kevin and I took him out to the Beatrice Inn. Okay. Uh and just kinda like wedind him and din him a little bit and be like, hey dude, like, you know, we're like we're gonna do this thing, and like we we want you on board. And he was like, okay, let's do it. And then Carr Barrett, who I knew from a not a previous life, but I knew her at Sotheby's, I always you, know th,ought she was just like super warm and super engaging and really what was wonderful with people. Also wanted to push into women and say, like, you know what, like this doesn't have to be only for men. And so I went down to Sotheby's one day and kind of you know did the same thing and I was like, hey, you know, like we're we're we're expanding. Like if you ever want to think about about doing something different, let me know. Um and you know she she joined us at the same time Jack did. Uh and then, you know, we've since then hired John Buse and and obviously new Stephen Kim back and one a bunch of other wonderful editors. And that doesn't even talk about the people that you don't know, like the the shop team, the designers. We've got full time designers and engineers that are working around the clock to to make your experiences as great as possible. Yeah. Uh commerce has been huge for us, obviously. Right. It's been
Unknown a it's been a wild ride. Yeah. I think the people behind the scenes are one of the most fascinating things for me is like we see every day all the things these people do and how much they improve the readers and customers' experiences and how like you would not have Hodinky without these people. It's insane. It's crazy that most people just never never get to see these these facts. I
Unknown mean I think that that's something that that at times you, know is, frustrating for me because like in watchful, for example, like that that costs us money to maintain. Like we get we get kind of like snotty emails from the people that whose content we push out to literally two hundred thousand people every month, as if like, you know, they're paying us to do this. They're not. Like we're doing this as a public service to the watch community. Uh and it's frustrating at times that like we've got full-time employees, we pay server fees, the whole thing. Uh, and people act as if like, you know, that that that they're owed this thing. Um and so but again, like we believe in in supporting the community at scale. So Watchville is around uh our apps and everything. Like we've got we've got more people that you don't know, that the average reader doesn't know than than they do. So they know we' usre the editors. But you know, again, we've probably two thirds of the staff is is is back office, is behind the scenes and they they make the whole thing go round
Unknown . And now we'll look at this week's sponsor. Over the last few years, Tudor's Black Bay line has been the gold standard for watches that combine a respect for watchmaking history with modern craftsmanship. The Black Bay Chrono adds an additional complication to the Black Bay family, but all built on the foundation of the iconic snowflake style hands and the sturdy black bay profile. Inside beats the manufacture caliber MT5813, a column wheel chronograph movement which is chronometer certified and fitted with a silicon hairspring. The Tudor Black Bay Chrono is bold and modern, but with just the right dose of nostalgia. Visit your local authorized retailer to see these watches in the metal or TutorWatch.com to learn more. Let's get back to the show So you mentioned snotty emails you get from people. So I gotta ask, you know, what are the questions you get asked the most when we have meetups or when you get random reader emails? Like what's the stuff everybody comes up to you and is like, Ben, oh my god, it's so nice to meet you. Yeah, I mean I I think first of all, one has to
Unknown remember that like I'm a a very normal, you know, kind of humble, quiet, nerdy kid from from upstate New York. So to be asked our opinion on on anything is it' iss an honor and like you know w without the readers, none of this happens. And you know, our audience is is is the best in the world and I think one of the most interesting in the world, all super educated, you know, really thoughtful people that that care about things in in in a really deep way. And then it's like, hey, I want to buy 5513, but I want the cheapest one possible. And I was like, you really don't. Like you know I know you don't get it, but like you really don't want that. You know? The cheapest 5513 has been overpolish. It's probably got replacement hands or bezel, whatever. Like you want a nice one. Yeah. Uh, and so that that is something that I don't think a lot of watch guys really get. Is like you actually want to pay up. Like, you want to pay for high quality because it's not especially in today's world, like like I we were with Eric Wind earlier today, who's a longtime friend and and contributor, he only wants unpolished watches. Like he won't, if it's been if it's seen a polished wheel, unless it's something really special, he won't even touch it. And he's a very he is totally case specific case sensitive. I'm more dial-sensitive. I think the dial is really like the the the charm of the watch. But a lot of people, you know, Eric, the other Eric, Koo, Andrew, these these guys want unpolished watches. Uh and so like you're not gonna get an unpolished watch cheap. You're just not, you know. Um and so a lot of people want they want a deal. They they dream of the the antiques roadshow find or the pawn shop find and like that's just it happens, but seldom. You can't bet on that. No, never. Uh never. And like, you know, we we've all had some wins. I've had some wins finding watches on eBay and things like that. I've also had some losses. And that is just watches. And like the you know, it's a lot of a lot of the questions we get about investing in watches. What should I I've got five thousand bucks, what's gonna be worth 15 in in a few years, things like that. But yeah, a lot of hey, can you get me a discount on X, Y, and Z? And people really think that I can. And like I can't. And that's the simple truth. If you can, please let me know. Yeah, exactly. And and in particular with Rolex and and Omega Paddock, like the the the bigger brands are like, Hey, can you give me can you give me a fifty seven eleven? Like no. I don't. And even if even if I could, like, you know, if if even if I wanted a fifty seven eleven for myself, I have one in in rows. Like if I wanted to steal one, there's no guarantee I would get one in the next three years. And I really mean that. And I think that that's what people don't understand is like, you know, there are we are we have some influence in this world, no doubt, but A, I would never want to take advantage of that ever. I've never asked for a discount on a watch from a brand, period. I don't want to owe anybody anything. Uh and also the watches that I want, you're not gonna get a discount on. Like you're not getting a discount on a gold six two six three or sixty three nine double Swiss, you know? Um so it's it's a it's a frustrating thing for for those kind of like on the periphery of us being like, oh like Ben said he wouldn't get me a discount. Like I won't it's not that I won't, it's that I can't, you know? Yeah
Unknown . And so the question I thought you were going to say that I'm shocked hasn't come up yet
Unknown Right. So that that that is like a s uh uh a question I'm asked all the time, obviously. And I wish there were a better answer. I really do. But sometimes life doesn't work out that way. Uh hodinki with a Y on the end means wristwatch and check. Uh so Eastern European check, right? Uh I mean not predominantly. Yeah. Like there might be some check in me somewhere. Right. Um but what I did and what I had done, as I said, I had like, you know, in in at Syracuse, I had spent a lot of time in the entrepreneurship programs. Like my senior year, I didn't take any classes, it was all independent study, like starting businesses, things like that. Uh I um translated wristwatch into, you know, on on bobblefish if you remember that back in the day. Yeah, deep cut. Um I translated wristwatch into like twenty different languages and I was like, oh like, you know, Reloch doesn't really sound so great and blah blah blah. And I wanted to kind of googalize it. So Huniki was a funny sounding word. It had it with the with the way that I did, it had the double vowel on the end, so double O like Google. Um and I just wanted to kind of create this like funny sounding thing, but again, I didn't give it a second thought because it wasn't gonna be a business. Right. It was your block. It was a block, it was your tumbler, actually. It was a dumb tumbler. Yeah. Um and on top of that, it was also I realized very quickly that like, you know, the the watch world and the internet had a a had a relationship that could be described as tenuous at absolute best. Uh and all the people that owned world of watches and you know all these other sites were were gray market dealers. And they were also very like kind of champagne and caviar, which was not me at all, coming from you know the the glamorous Rochester, New York. And uh and said Hodinki is like kind of stupid. It's kind of like it's just it cuts you right down to size. Like it you know you can't take yourself too seriously if you're Hodinky, you know? Totally. Um and it really it worked because like as as I have mentioned, like you know, I'm from a middle class family. Both my parents were teachers effectively uh in upstate New York and like I don't you know, my father's not a watch collector at all. He has one or two now just because. Um and uh you know, I think we we did a great job at being the liaison between the champagne and caviar world, which is really obnoxious at times and really scary for a lot of people. Totally. And reality. You know, and I remember my my first boss who owned the consulting company that I worked at right out of school, you know, made who knows what, you know, seven figures probably as the owner of this company every year. And he wanted to buy his wife a royal oak offshore. And this was over 10 years ago, or 10 years ago. He walked in after he plays tennis. He went in on a Saturday morning to the AP boutique in, you know, in like mesh shorts and tennis sneakers. And you know,, he he's's like a upper he's an upper class, you know, white guy from the lives in Tribeca. And they didn't give a fuck about him. And I didn't they didn't look at him, you know? And Randy's like, this sucks, you know, like, what the fuck, man? Like I like I'll put down my my black card and buy an AP all day and like these people won't even pay attention to me. Uh because they didn't know who he was. And he's not a famous guy, but like he's he's affluent. Um and they he they just were not receptive to at all. And I was like, wow, like this is a real problem. And so then we started getting close with A P and a few other brands and I shared with them what happened and of course we we made that right. But we started doing we started hosting meetups at the A P boutique. Uh A P was our first kind of big brand that really got got to know us. Like I credit Paul Erner, who's their publicist, and Francois, who's now the global CEO, he was the US CEO back then, with taking a chance on us. And we started doing these meetups at the AP boutique. And you know, Ape the Royal Oak was the first high-end watch I bought, uh a five four oh two with box and papers. And uh in Cologne, Germany. And uh and it just became like they became like the the brand that we thought a lot of young guys could could get into and they did. Yeah. And then from there we started doing more meetups and more things. But then all of a sudden we started realizing that like not only John Mayer, but a lot of these other guys were like making buying decisions based on what we were writing. Sure. And we started to be able to prove that just with emails. Uh and I'd say, hey, would you mind if I just showed this to the people at paddock when the guy bought a fifty nine seventy because of our story or whatever? And then all of a sudden, like the the marketing folks said, Holy shit, like, you know, these guys like they're driving sales. Like a lot of people in the watch Wldor thought that like Wchat media, the the traditional players, Watch Time, Revolution, which are both great magazines. Um it's just kind of like a cursory thing. It's like, okay, like they're gonna write about us, we give them five thousand bucks a page, which is fucking nothing for for an advertisement in a magazine, uh if you really believe in it. Right. And it's just like it's just kind of weird symbiotic relationship where they kind of scratch our back a little bit and like, you know, we just don't want them to say anything bad about us, so here's five grand, you know? Uh and we were like, that is not us. You know, it's like A, like we're not gonna cover the vast majority of the brands 'cause we just don't care. Uh and then B, like if you're gonna want if you wanna advertise with us, like you're gonna pay because like our audience is buying stuff. Uh and which is very different than like the traditional luxury players even today. You know. The the uh the these super like nouveau riche kind of luxe magazines that are everywhere. Uh we can prove that people are buying. Yeah. And then we started doing that and people started you know paying higher CPMs, things like that. We can prove our audience. And then of course, you know the, the e-commerce thing. It's like, look, there's not a an easier way to prove that you've got people that are willing to spend uh than selling something. You know, and so the first limited edition, you know, we did sunglasses and ties and drakes and all that shit. But the first big thing we did was the twenty three thousand dollar music box. We we bought the water. And John bought one of them, but the rest went to to unknowns, effectively. Uh people we didn't know. And like that's what you want, you know. And then you know, Max who was a longtime supporter and early supporter, Max Booster, said all right, let's do a watch. And then a year later we did the MBNF watch, which sold out in half a day and that was a fifty two thousand dollar crazy looking watch. Again, not the easiest thing in the world to sell at all. And that that crushed it. Then we the following year we did a zenith and then a gnomos and then a Vachron and then a Resence and then a Tag Hoyer and then a you know et cetera, et cetera. And you know, these things are have just proven to be phenomenally successful. And you know, we we put our own little spin on existing So
Unknown that brings up a good point. You know, we've done these limited editions and those of us in the office who work on them get a little bit of a sense of what that process is like. But I think for people outside, they might not understand exactly how these products come about. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, sure. I mean I
Unknown I think you know we Hoodinky has perpetuated th this very, very specific kind of taste. I'm not saying it's high taste or or low level taste, but it's it's hyper specific. Uh we've got a thing. We've got a thing. Yeah. It's it's kinda old and boring and and whatever, but you know, whatever. People tend to like it. Um and I think you know we have uh taken a world that was all about flash and size, you know, back pre-Hodinky watches were 46 millimeters and really kind of a bigger thing, physically larger thing. And we went the other way and we said vintage watches are cool. Not only vintage watches are cool, but new watches that look like vintage watches are cool. Yeah. Um but it doesn't even have to be that, it just has to be something that that is is is pure. And like it what I mean by that is instead of paying for like say a gold or platinum case, um you paying for you And so when we did our first limit edition excuse me watch for for M B and F, that was their LM one oh one, which was their smallest watch at the time. Yep, forty millimeters. We did it for the first time in steel, previously only available in gold and and uh in gold, white gold and rose gold. And I think platinum slightly later. And we said, you know what, like let's do it in a brown dial, so vintagey tropically dial dial and uh in steel. And we did it with three straps. We did free international shipping and we said this is our spin on a wash that that was wonderful as is uh and sold very quickly. And then we went on to Zenith and we we redesigned um a crown. You know, Xenith was using these larger El Primero crowns. We had that effectively cut in half. Uh myself uh and Louis, uh who's now with Brightling, uh really worked on finding a dial that was really vintage inspired. Even though it was an automatic watch, it was the El Primero, we used a a watch or dial rather off of a manually wound watch that that predated a little bit. But it was really a vintage watch made today and the El Primero's been around for fifty years. Like it's it's a proper vintage watch. And we only did twenty five of those 'cause we had really no expectation of how many watches we could sell. I think to this day we probably have you know 2,000 people on the waiting list for that watch. Something like that. And then of course Zenith made the same watch after we launched it, which was fun. And the same thing with Vasheron, you know, Cornivash, which was one of my favorite watches at Vachron ever made. Um we did it in steel with a great pulsation dial. They do it in rose and and and and platinum with silver dials. That was that was a really big big deal for us, obviously doing working with Vatron. It's the oldest, you know, oldest watchmaker in the world, continuously running. It's one of the top three. It is it's a special brand and to work with them was a dream come true for sure. Um and something that I don't think a lot of people know is that the the cover shot of that introducing post to that Vatron, there's uh there's a soldier with kind of a you know a military style hat that's smoking a a cigarette next to the watch. And that is actually my grandfather. Uh that's my grandfather that gave me the Omega that that led to to Hodinky. And that was a very subtle and and but very meaningful kind of you know homage to to the man that that made this all happen for me. Uh and that Vashron thing was was a big deal for us. It really was. Yeah. Uh and that set us off into doing tag hoyers and and other things We've got some amazing limitations coming, but you know, like really good stuff. Oh my god, this year's bananas. Um and I think uh what's fun about it is that it's I get everybody or we get everybody in the office involved that wants to be. Yeah. And we just throw ideas out there and then see what happens. And a lot of times we've got crazy fucking ideas like we know can't happen. Sure. But like with the skipper for example But if they did. But if they did. Yeah. My God. If they did like the skipper, for example, is a great one, and I I was wearing the skipper earlier today just because I love that watch in the summer. You know, we want we knew we wanted to do the skipper because the colors are amazing. It's a cult watch that collectors really cared about. Um, but tag said, and the there's always some sort of technical roadblock. It's like all right, look, we can do the DuPad Praz um uh module on top of the the Salida or whatever, but that means there's going to be a uh position for the date. So the watch either has a date, which we don't want, or there's going to be a pull-out position and that's going to annoy the purest. And so we're like, well, wait a minute, like what if we and I remember this meeting, Louie and I sitting there being like, well, fuck, like how about we take the skipper, which is our favorite, and the date 045, which is the, you know, a wonderful watch that that I had owned at the time as well, and combine it. So like we, you know, people would kill us if we had a date in the traditional setting or if we had the that pull out position, that second pull-out position of the crown. So we combined it and did did the best we could with what Taghoyer was was available to give us at the time. And I think the the end result is awesome. And that that that watch is I think one of the best we've ever done. I agree. Uh and there are thousands of people that that are still on the waiting list. We still get emails about it.. All the time And you know, I know one sold recently for about three times what it sold for originally on eBay. Uh you know, it it's a wonderful thing. And like to see, you know, the steel Vacheron still trades above retail. It trades for higher than the Platinum or Rose Gold watch. Uh and that says Hodinki on the back. Uh you know, all of our limited editions have have have really proven to be you know wonderful investments, which is meaningful because we want people to to to
Unknown to feel good about what they're buying. Um It's cool in the office too to see because so many different people are involved, it's not just that we have, you know, one or two watch designers who are sitting here sketching things up, but it's really like, you know, it can be an editor, it can be somebody who works on the shop team who was looking through a book, you know, two weeks ago to help out a customer with a vintage watch and they said, Holy shit, I found this really amazing thing. We should use this as inspiration. And then these watches come out and we see customers buy them and we see everybody get excited. And we've got all these folks on the team who get that sense of being a part of these watches and really getting a to o
Unknown wn a sense of this product design. Yeah, and and and that's it. I mean, you know, Steven w was integral in in the development of the the Mark Newsom Hourglass, uh, you know, which was a wonderful product and and one of the coolest things we've done. And for for his wedding, we we gave him one. And Louis, who got married at the at I think actually the same weekend. Same weekend. Not to each other, however. Not to each other. Stupid joke. But um he got married the same weekend, and Louis was really heavily involved with the production of The Skipper. And so, you know, Steven got the hourglass because that was his project, and Louis got got number one of the skipper. Yeah. Uh which you know he deserved. Uh and I think it it's you know, we up until recently did not have a designer at all on staff, a physical designer. And so the Vasheron, the Skipper, a lot of these things came out, you know, without any real design help at all. It was just like, hey, it'd be cool if we did this and cool if we did that. Now we have a wonderfully talented young guy that helps us with physical design. But uh you know, yeah, a lot of this stuff just came from from our minds. And I'm not a designer, certainly. And um I just know what I like. And and that that's always been the at the core of what Hodinky is. It's just like we're gonna cover the shit we like, write about the shit we like, talk about it in a in an earnest way because that's how we feel. Uh and that's it. Yeah. Simple as that.
Unknown So I don't want to spoil things about your personal watch collection too much because uh spoiler alert, we have some things coming later this year that are going to be pretty good. But I can't have you here and not ask you a little bit. So you've referenced this first watch a couple times. I think the diehards will know the story already, but for those who don't, can you tell us about that wat
Unknown ch? Yeah, it's it's an Omega Speedmaster. It's not a moon watch. It's not manually wound. It was made in the mid-90s. It's called a Mark 40. It was kind of a Schumacher-y watch. You know, he had one for a little while. It's based on a Valju 7750. It's a triple date calendar chronograph. And it was a wash that my grandfather, who was my hero, uh, wore all the time. You know, in you know, in his later stage of life. Like, you know, when he was younger, he wore a paddock ellipse, which was awesome in the seventies, he wore a gold day day 'cause you have to as like, you know, a Jewish man in in in that period. You like actually have to. Uh and then, you know, a and later on when he was retired, he was like, Ah I I bought this omega. I liked it one day. Like it wasn't you know, it wasn't that meaningful to him, but it's what I remembered him wearing. Uh and we were very, very close. He was an entrepreneur. Um you know, I in some ways I I felt a closer connection to him than I did my parents in some ways. He was more similar to I am than than my parents are in some ways. And he felt that and I and I knew that when he passed away, it was you know it was a really, really you know sad sad time for me. But years before that, he gave me his omega right off of his wrist one time. And every time I would go down to visit him as a as a a young teen and you know, twelve, thirteen, things like that, he would let me wear it for the week. That I would go down to see him in Palm Beach. And uh and he knew that I loved it. And you know, I didn't know anything about it. I knew that it was, you know, worth something. Yeah. Uh and then it was your grandfather. It was my grandfather, yeah. And then one day he just said he took it off his risk and he said, You can we can just keep it. And I was like, holy fuck. Uh and I was sixteen at the time, so very young, uh, for having an omega for sure. And my parents were like, oh, like, you know, you sure you want him to have it at such a young age and all that. And he did. And that was obviously a very meaningful moment for me, and took it back up to Rochester and and I didn't wear it to high school just because I didn't. I wore a fossil and some other things back back then, a seiko, stuff like that. And then in in I didn't bring it to college either. I would wear it when I was home for the summer at college, but I didn't have that in my dorm, things like that. But it was still the most meaningful thing I had and he was alive at the time so it was you know it's much more meaningful now. Um and that was then f the only nice watch I had for a long, long time. Uh and then as I mentioned earlier I had a I bought a Maurice Le Croix. This the the the Omega was a a chunky chronograph sport,s watch, lots of colors. Uh Maurice Le Croix was a hand wound ultra slim alligator strap, but really beautiful watch with a guillotte dial. And then the next watch I bought was another Omega, and that was an anticorum. It was a it was an Omega Ranchero. Oh wow. Uh didn't know that there was such a thing as tax. Didn't know there was such a thing as a buyer's premium. Cool. Um so and you know, you know, the watch was like two thousand dollars hammer. I was like, okay, cool, like I got that, you know. As as like a young guy at UBS. And then there's the other 25% on top, and then there's the eight and a half percent sales tax and whatever. I was like, oh fuck. You know, there's like seven hundred bucks I didn't know about, you know? Uh and that like I I just squeaked it out and and bought that watch. Um and that was my first vintage watch. Okay. Don't have it. Ended up selling it to a friend. And uh and that was it. And then it kind of went yeah I went off to the races from there. I you know I bought some some other stuff. Some other some other stuff. Okay.
Unknown What's the first watch you bought where you were like oh shit like I'm I'm in it now like I'm off the deep end I was obsessed
Unknown with a Rolex Explorer one four two zero black blackout yeah which was like it was it was a kind of like a a production mistake or, maybe it was purposeful, but nobody really talked about it. The early 90s in the ENX serial of the 14270 Explorer, the 369 were black. That's it. Okay. And I was just like, this is fucking cool. Uh and I hunted for them, and like I remember seeing them in Antiorquum they would sell for between like 8,000 and then one one for twenty thousand and it came back down to eleven. And I found one I was still do I was hunting for these things and uh I found one at a dealer in like LA or San Francisco. I don't even remember who it was. It was not a vintage dealer. And he had one and he didn't know what it was. And he was just like, this is a 1420. Uh and uh a blackout back then would be at least six to seven thousand dollars, and I paid three and a half thousand for this. Okay. I was like, I'll take it. Uh bought it, loved it, wore it all the time. Um and then I started to get really into vintage watches, like proper vintage. This watch was from the nineties. And I came across a fifty five twelve mat dial. Um it was right before McQueen's fifty five twelve sold. Okay. Uh and it was five thousand bucks at Terrytown Jewelers in Terrytown, New York. I drove up there for the day and I traded uh my Black Out Explorer for for that watch. Um I think in an even trade or something like that. And I still have the fifty five twelve that that is very much And you still wear it. Like I still see you wearing that watch all the time. Yeah, I mean I yeah, I mean not not all the time, but it's there. Like, you know, it's it will always be in the collection 'cause why not, you know? Right. Um that was my first vintage Rolex. And then I bought a uh um a sixteen fifty five, I bought um a Polaris, which was amazing. Box papers paid I think twelve thousand dollars for that, which is crazy. Um and then the you know the the one that kind of changed things as as I think you were saying earlier, like the one where it's like, oh fuck, like I'm deep, was the 5402 Royal Oak. Which was you know, I I visited the AP manufacturer and I said, Oh shit, like these guys are the real deal and the Royal Oak is such a special thing. I thought the Royal Oak was ugly the first time I saw it. I think most people do. Most people do. And then my friend Paul Boutros, who I met on that trip, was like, oh, like, you know, if you can find an A series, that'd be amazing. Found one at the time talking with Eric Wynne daily about vintage watches. We found one in Cologne, Germany. And it was, I forget the price. I think it was like ten thousand euros or something like that, but it was like untouched, like properly untouched. It was number one seven one. It had original box uh for ten thousand euros. Yeah, an original box and original papers. And what's cool is that it was sold by Fred in Paris, which is on the Place Vendome. Which is like they don't sell they certainly don't sell AP anymore. Um but to think about a Royal Oak being sold in 1972 at on the Place Vendôme is a pretty neat thing. And this was like an unheard of of amount money for me at the time. And I the guy, the dealer was like, Look, like I'll hold it for you, but like you need to send me half the money right now. So I wired him five thousand euros, which was like seven and a half thousand dollars. And he's like,, o youkay've got three months to pick it up, otherwise, like you lose your deposit. And I was in Geneva on a press trip with Piaget, I believe, and I took a train from Geneva to Cologne, took a taxi to this place, gave them the rest in cash, and and took the watch home. And uh that watch stayed with me for a long, long, long time. I ended up buying another A series. This watch was like Boutros was like, you can't wear the watch, it's too nice. Like it was really, really mint. And I was like, what do you mean? Like I I I need to bought the watch the thing, you know? So I I did end up you know, when I could afford it, I bought another A series for seven thousand euros with without box papers, just like a nice wear. And uh I put the other one in the safe. The good Royal Oak and the Bad Royal Oak. Yeah, you gotta have two Royal Oaks.. Yeah, they have two O Onene to to wear. Yeah. Okay. rock, one to stock. Thank you. Yeah. And uh so I had the the the Daily Royal Oak uh and then I had the the the insane mint one. Um and for a while I had them both and then sold one then the other. And I still have
Unknown So everybody knows you're a big watch collector, obviously. I don't think that's any surprise. But uh you actually are into other things as well. You don't only eat, sleep, and breathe watches. Yeah. So what else uh does Ben Clymer collect and spend his time doing?
Unknown Uh I mean so before I was into watches, I was into cars. So I mean it's a it's a pretty natural progression like into thing, like manly mechanical things. Uh the Volkswagen Beetle was the first car that I was obsessed with. Herbie the Love Bug had a big part in that, obviously. For when I was six years old, I was a Volkswagen Beetle for Halloween. Uh are there pictures of this? There are indeed. Oh my god. We might have to find one of these and put it in the show notes. Two pieces of of cardboard or something, but what she forgot was that I needed to go up and downstairs. So like I couldn't bend my knees in this thing, so I'd have to go like a waddle up and down the stairs. I think we actually still have the costume even. That was like a big memory for sure. So cars. And then you know, I was really, really into cars. Again, didn't know that the watch world really existed or that there was a community around it. Uh and so you know had a uh you know I had my parents' Volvo wagon for a while, and then later on an Audi and and things like that. And then when I could, actually not even when I could, I I bought the my three fifty six before I could afford it. I financed it to to to be able to get it. Um you know, I just I I still love the shape of the beetle and a three fifty six is basically a beetle, you know, like a squash beetle. Uh and that was my first vintage car, and then that set me off down a crazy, crazy path that I'm that I'm still on. Uh cameras. Uh, you know, I my my father was a photographer, used to teach photography. We had a dark room in our basement growing up. Uh so cameras and photography have always been a big part of what I do. I still take pictures all the time, although not even for the site anymore, just for myself. Um he always shot Nikon, so I shot Nikon, and then as I got older, got in you know got into like it because that's what cool guys do. Everybody knows that. And uh and still to this day, you know, I'm not obsessive like some of my some of our colleagues are. Sure. Um but you know I've still got the my first lens that I ever bought with a Leica. It's a 35 Sumulux. I shoot an M basic M10. Although Zagato M10 is kinda tempting for obvious reasons. But it's uh it's it's a fun thing for sure. And then you know, travel, like I've gotten to meet so many or I've I've gotten to go so many wonderful places. I I now have like an an inner kind of like, you know, uh registry of the best hotels in Europe, in Asia, things like that, best restaurants, things like that. So so travel's a big thing. But yeah, kinda kinda all over the place. You know, again, Hodinki has been has really been my life for the last ten years. Um you know, my best friends are often even coworkers, but certainly people in this space. And washes have taken taken over in a good way. And again, I've I've gotten to meet some some wonderful people. I've gotten to meet some wonderful people doing this and it's it's been a wild ride for sure. So I gotta ask, what's next? For for you. More of this? Yeah, more of this. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, no, it this is it. You know, we we've had opportunities to to sell the company. I've had opportunities to to go do other things. But you know, I think th this is such a special thing. And every time I think about leaving it and going to do something else, you realize that, you know I I well'll start over. I I think like when you have some success in anything, you you get this complex where it's like, yeah, like of course I could start another company and like you know have fun with it and like make a ton of money and and have this wonderful thing, but like that's not true. And I've learned that by speaking with with several friends that have had big hits. And then they leave too early, or they don't take advantage of or they don't enjoy it in the moment. And they say, fuck, like I wish I could go back to that thing that was working. You know, you you a lot of people get this idea that you if you win once, you're always going to win. That's just not true. And and I think that it it takes a lot for somebody to admit that because when you're successful, you think that success is easy. Uh and I've realized that like, you know what, like I've got a great thing here. I've got, you know, my my some of my best friends in the office every day. I get to be creatively independent whenever I want. Like I can write whenever I want. The magazine has been a lot of fun. Uh I get to flex, you know, creative muscles there. I get to flex the entrepreneurship muscles with all everything else that we're doing. And it's fun. And it it's it's it's a it's a job that most people would die for. And to walk away from it, I'm 35 now, like to walk away from it now, even though I've been doing it 10 years, and that's a long time, you know, would would seem like would seem like a miss in some way. Uh I don't even know what that means. And it could be tomorrow, it could be in thirty years. But if you have something this special, like it it's really hard to walk away. And again, I've thought about it. I think anybody that started a company that that has done well for themselves has thought about it 'cause like, oh like maybe I'll start a fashion brand or maybe I'll get into cars or who the fuck knows. Um but yeah, I think you have to realize that like these things don't happen often. Uh and Lord willing my next thing will be a hit, but I I'm not ready to go on to that next thing just yet. Co
Unknown ol. Well, I think before we wrap up, we're gonna do the usual thing we're gonna be doing to end episodes, uh, which is a little bit of a cultural recommendation. So what's a what's a piece of culture or a place you've traveled or something you would recommend that listeners check out after they're done listening here
Unknown ? So I I think something that that that I really learned a little bit too late is just how wonderful the New York, the upstate New York area is. Yeah. And I'm from way upstate New York, Rochester, which is really closer to Canada. It is closer to Canada than it is New York City. But the the areas, you know, in the Hudson Valley and in Bedford and Westchester, Upper Westchester are really lovely and they're really very special. Uh and you know, I I go up there often to drive cars and play golf and things like that. And like you're talking 30 miles north of New York City, and you could be on a lake that could be in Vermont, you know, and it really is a very special place. And I think a lot of people don't appreciate what's possible. You know, I have a lot of friends uh that have toyed with the idea of moving to New York where they have kids or whatever. And it's like go to these areas and go to the Hudson Valley and see how special they are and how much fun you can have there, and then realize that you're an hour train ride away from New York and you get kind of the best of both worlds. And what about you, Mr. Bulverend
Unknown ? I'm gonna actually recommend something that got passed to me by one of our video producers, Dave. Uh it is this John Coltrane record uh called Both Directions at Once. It's a lost album of John Coltrane recordings. It just came out like a week and a half, two weeks ago. Uh it's incredible. It's all these lost is exactly what it sounds like. It's lost John Coltrane recordings from a bunch of different sessions. Uh some of which are songs you might recognize, some are, you know, little things he was experimenting with. Um it's wild. Like if you are into jazz music, go you can get it on Spotify, go listen to it right now. Or if you're like Dave, go refuse to listen to it on Spotify, go buy the vinyl and listen to it at home with some really nice headphones on. Uh you're definitely gonna enjoy it. Well, Ben, it has been good uh kicking things off with you. It's definitely the right way to start Hodinky Radio. And uh we'll have to have you back on the show sometime soon. It it was completely my pleasure. Thank you again to Ben for joining us. This week's episode was produced by Grayson Korhonen and was recorded in Miritone Studios in New York City. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.