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The Australian watch media company Time+Tide is seeking to raise £3mn in private investment to open a retail space in New York, after proving its concept in Melbourne and London.
Founder Andrew McUtchen says it aims to raise the money from between one and four strategic investors by the end of June to fund a new Time+Tide watch discovery studio and collaborations with brands on exclusive editions. This proposed expansion comes at a time of financial growth: the company’s revenue has risen from A$1.2mn ($750,000) in the Covid-hit calendar year 2020 to a projected A$12.1mn for 2025, says McUtchen. He wants to launch in the US while “the iron is hot”. “On the PR and momentum side, the wind is at our back right now and we have a first-move advantage that I want to capitalise on,” he says.
McUtchen was working as a journalist when he founded Time+Tide in 2014 to provide multimedia content for Australian watch lovers in a “friendly and non-snobby tone”, and soon it attracted a global audience. The company, which had already distributed Doxa and Hamilton watches in Australia, tapped into the growth in microbrands on the back of the Covid pandemic and focused on connecting direct-to-consumer brands with customers who want to see a watch in person before buying.
The result was its first watch discovery studio, which opened on Melbourne’s Collins Street in August 2023. McUtchen hired “enthusiasts, not salespeople” and wanted the space to enable people’s love of watches. Time+Tide’s revenue grew from A$4.2mn in 2023 to A$7.1mn last year, with 76 per cent of the rise attributable to increased retail sales, says McUtchen.
Having proved the concept, market size gave him the confidence to bring this “alternative retail environment” to London, where he relocated with his family in 2023. Australia accounted for 1.8 per cent of Swiss watch exports in November compared with the UK’s 7 per cent and 17.5 per cent for the US.
After raising about A$1mn from a private investor, Time+Tide opened a studio near Oxford Circus in October. The success of the inaugural British Watchmakers’ Day last March expedited the launch. “That was a moment that changed my life because I realised not only do I have this product market fit . . . I also have a local environment that is absolutely electric,” says McUtchen, who dressed as a chef at the London fair to promote Time+Tide’s collaboration with start-up Studio Underd0g on pizza-themed watches. He and Studio Underd0g founder Richard Benc sold 161 of these playful pieces on the day.
Time+Tide, which has 21 full time employees, generates “extra gravitational pull” by creating exclusive studio editions, says McUtchen. These include the Furlan Marri x Time+Tide Outback Elegy. The company also supports local watchmaking: it hosted the British Watchmakers’ Weekender in November.
The London store is welcoming 30-50 people a day on average, according to McUtchen. Stocked brands include Christopher Ward — despite Mike France, co-founder and chief executive of the British watchmaker, telling the FT last year that wholesale was “anathema” to its business model.
“We’re in there as a trial but at very preferential rates to us, which are no more than what we’d consider a normal marketing cost,” explains France. “So it doesn’t jeopardise in any way our economic model, which is obviously the critical thing. Now, that would not translate into typical wholesale.”
Time+Tide mitigates the fact smaller brands have smaller margins by, for example, saving on rent: the Melbourne and London stores are on the first floor of their respective premises. It saves on advertising and marketing costs because it reaches millions of people a month through its own content.
France, who is also co-founder of the Alliance of British Watch and Clock Makers trade body, says it is difficult for smaller brands to acquire space in larger, established third-party retailers as they are in the queue behind “famous names”. “What Andrew is doing is exemplary in terms of giving access to brands that typically you wouldn’t necessarily see in such a prime location,” he says.
Now, momentum is pushing Time+Tide to the US, says McUtchen. “While the UK has been the great proof of concept again, it all feels like priming for the big game,” he adds. Forty per cent of the Time+Tide edition of the Tag Heuer Aquaracer Professional 200 Solargraph Sundowner — sold online to mark the London studio launch — went to the US.
McUtchen does not see any direct competitors in New York currently. In 2019, US-based watch media company Hodinkee signed a lease for retail space in Lafayette Street in Manhattan, following experience in ecommerce and pop-ups, but founder Benjamin Clymer says “Covid-19 happened” and there was a change in company focus.
Another US-based watch news provider, Worn & Wound, recently opened a Windup watch showroom in its Brooklyn headquarters, but McUtchen doubts there will be much overlap because of different execution and brands stocked. Instead he thinks the hurdle Time+Tide has to overcome is proving that selling through its studios “doesn’t cannibalise” a watch brand’s own sales.
While there is “no obvious fourth location” for another Time+Tide studio, McUtchen does not rule out further expansion.
