Are Watchfinder in financial trouble?

[robinmgb]

I have bought and sold around 30 watches with Watchfinder over the last 5 years, mostly part exchanges trading upwards and a few times trades where my watch was of higher value so they paid me back the balance.
It’s never been an issue but last week the trade involved them paying me £1300 back to me, they then pulled out saying the purchasing team can’t make any outgoing payments at the moment!
I’ve never heard of anything like it, surely it means they don’t have available funds and are in financial trouble

[RogerOP]

Not sure but the store they had in Brent Cross is closed. It still has all the shop signs and marketing, but no lights on inside.

Thought it was quite strange.

[Andad]

.

[waxy88]

Hard to find anything in the news about it.
The only financial statements I could find were their last submission to companies house, where they posted a profit of £1.5m for the financial year ending March 2022.

However this was down £1m on the previous year, if this trend continued given the difficult market conditions for the rest of 2022, it is entirely possible they are on the ropes.

[Mr Ben]

Their accounts were only recently signed off and all looks ok - declining profit yes but plenty net assets, no external debt etc. Are they not backed by Richemont Group as well?

Interesting to have a look though - I’m surprised their margins are so small given they’re not the cheapest. If I was hazarding a guess, more like a policy decision not to park more money in stock in a declining market or something similar. (Do your own research though!)

[Lonehiker]

They’re part of Richemont so I’m sure they’ll be around for a long time yet. I suspect their overheads are fairly high, hence the low margins.

[77T]

They may have used a poor “excuse generator” for backing out.

Or exceeded an internal budgetary control limit on their inventory management system.

The market demand for some models is softening and prices may have dropped in their algo for buy/sell.

I think they wanted an excuse that wouldn’t blatantly point to backing out (which, in the end, they did).


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[enjoythemusic]

Agree with Paul above.

We could see a few greys going under as prices get back to norms.

[Moondoggy]

It’s happening.

[-Ally-]

Fingers crossed

[1William]

Give it a week or two and resubmit for a deal. I have not done a deal with Watchfinder but similar companies in the U.S. Most times it is an inventory piece.

[RickRolexed]

I sold them a watch 3 weeks ago and had a run around of getting paid. I still have not been paid yet (mailed a watch to them).

[brandrea]

Seems like a very small amount of money for such a well known dealer …

I guess maybe you can multiply that amount by “X” and see why perhaps they have cold feet.

What watch were you making a deal on?

[BraveBold]

A lot of these dealers likely have major working capital challenges at the moment. Should be no surprise to anyone…

[DoricSpiker]

The business is very much driven by Head Office these days. The sales and purchasing people get edicts from them and there is nothing they can do.
Are they suffering pain, very much so. Will they go under, not with Richemont behind them.

Their main objective at the moment seems to be offloading Daytona's! They have seriously got their fingers burned on those! I get offered one every time I go in.

[996marty]

They like other pre owned dealers are carrying too much stock and are adjusting what they have and paying less should anyone be tempted to offload any watches.I’ve been through the process a couple of times with them first time they offered more than I thought the watch was worth and second time which was more recent a fair bit less and on both occasions I ended up keeping them both. I’m sure they’ll be around for years to come

[RickRolexed]

I mailed in a 116710BLNR, and am still waiting for payment despite them claiming the UK office will "run the transaction" (this was Thursday after multiple call attempts and emails saying they're processing etc) still have not received payment as of this Tuesday morning.