Hodinkee has acquired Crown and Caliber, an online wrist watch retailer.
Hodinkee began life in 2008 as a wristwatch blog much like our own. (We started in 2004.) They developed into a retailer, selling neckties, pocket squares, and eventually, wristwatches.
Crown and Caliber has always sold pre-owned luxury wristwatches. But there’s more to this acquisition than meets the eye.
Hodinkee and Crown and Caliber first talked about a partnership in 2015, according to an email from Crown and Caliber’s president, Hamilton Powell.
At that time, Hodinkee was only barely dipping its toes into retail, having sold the necktie and pocket square based on Tudor snowflakes back in 2012 and 2013.
Hodinkee had flirted with vintage watch sales by partnering with Giltman and others, before launching their own vintage watch sales store.
In 2020, Hodinkee became an Apple Watch retailer. The Apple Watch was not Hodinkee’s first new watch, but it was the first time they became an Authorized Dealer for a watch brand. Previous new watches Hodinkee has sold were limited edition sales of cobranded BRAND x Hodinkee (including partnerships with Zenith, Seiko, Swatch, and others.)
In December of 2020, LVMH was part of a group venture (with TCG) that purchased a 40M stake in Hodinkee. LVMH has a family of 75 watch brands, and this likely gives Hodinkee unique access to cover those brands, such as Givenchy, Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Zenith, TAG Heuer, and Hublot.
Purchasing Crown and Caliber gives them the ability to continue selling vintage watches, and may give them an avenue to sell LVMH’s watches along side the Apple Watch.
