Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in Volume III of B.H. Magazine. For access to future issues, subscribe here.
Following the Covid watch craze, many regular and notable watch buyers were appalled at the state of customer service in the luxury watch industry – clients who had been loyal for years, sometimes generations, were unceremoniously offloaded by their brand reps and authorised dealers in favour of bundle deals and backdoor flips.
I don’t mean the random passersby who never got a call for their Rolex ‘Batman’ allocation – I’m talking about big collectors who have been buying the same brands, from the same retailers, for generations.
With the Covid boom now cooling off, brands and ADs have resumed courting those same clients again – offering them allocations and invites to high-profile product launches and watch factory visits. How is it that so many of these “very important clients” (or VICs, as marketers like to call them) were pushed away in the first place? And what can we learn from the fallout?
The term “VIC” is used by brands in the watch industry (and in luxury more broadly) to categorise a particular set of clients – the contributing factor usually being spending and/or influence. The VIC treatment encapsulates the entire buying experience – for some, that means being flown First Class halfway around the world to spend a few days in brands’ private salons and apartments with a personal shopper (doubly the case in the world of high jewellery). For others, it’s a simple heartfelt birthday message.
The problem that brands and clients face today is that, thanks to social media, every experience can be shared and compared with our own. Top clients who get to experience a full day at the factory are disappointed when a TikTok creator is helicoptered out to that same location – rather than enduring the comparative indignity of the two-hour drive they did, days before.
One could argue, however, that if all clients were treated exactly the same, then the result would feel similarly mundane. No matter how objectively perfect the experience, somebody will always find something to complain about.
I know of collectors who were flown by private jet to the Patek Philippe factory after purchasing a Twenty~4 for their wife. Meanwhile, collectors of minute repeaters and Rare Handcraft pieces don’t get so much as an invite to a new global launch. The whole experience may boil down to your relationship with the brand and your designated sales associate, and the spending potential the brand believes you have.
These days, there are two brands that are notoriously good at the whole VIC experience. The first is Audemars Piguet, known for abandoning lower-tier clients in favour of extravagant parties and a heavily curated guestlist for its VIC events. The other is Louis Vuitton: the globally dominant leather goods house organises immersive experiences, renting out chalets in Courchevel or villas in Saint-Tropez; kitting them in LV merch so clients can play in a space that is fully shoppable. For these sorts of VIC experiences, it’s normal for brands to fly their clients in from abroad, putting them up in the best hotels for as long as a week – all expenses paid, of course.
This behaviour reflects a broader truth about the luxury watch industry. Many collectors love to say that brands are spoiled, but we as collectors (especially the VIC set) are the most spoiled of all – try to remember the first watch event you attended and remember how exciting it was. Today, most clients don’t even bother RSVP’ing to these events unless an allocation is at hand.
In 2025, the luxury goods industry’s biggest challenge is just how widespread the concept of “luxury” has become. People are numb to it; they always want bigger, better, more extravagant. The way smaller brands, like ourselves at Unekual, fight to keep the excitement is through exclusivity, discretion, and a commitment to genuine interactions. We aim to build a relationship that goes beyond the transactional– something that is impossible with large corporate entities due to the sheer volume of clients and products they’re dealing with.
The consequence of all this has resulted in some buyers switching brands – favouring those who treat them fairly, or consolidating the majority of spending with those who remain loyal to them. As a worst-case scenario, I’ve seen collectors sever ties with the brands that treated them poorly, liquidating their entire stock of watches, or shifting to buying vintage. That’s where we come in.
To attract a new crowd of VICs, businesses like Unekual specialise in the rarest and most unique watches – whether that be through condition, or configuration (for example, unique dial layouts). The cycle we see with most collectors is that once they understand the rarity of modern pieces is incomparable with that of vintage, the transition to the latter is usually quite rapid and sudden.
A brand that has showcased this recently is Cartier. Greatly hyped to the general public, many die-hard Cartier collectors were put off by the sheer volume and accessibility of its Special Order program. In the last year, I’ve personally seen six different permutations of the white gold Crash watch with salmon dial. When you consider that only around 20 Crashes were produced by Cartier’s London office from 1967-1980, these modern special orders don’t seem all that special.
Vintage watches allow collectors to indulge in some truly collectible rarities. With the loss of certain historical production methods, some watches of the past century can’t even be replicated today – these have the workings of a true masterpiece. For collectors looking to leave the world of modern mass luxury behind, understanding these attributes is key – and the key to understanding is education. At Unekual, we aim to bring as much information that isn’t already readily available to bear, so that collectors may educate themselves on particular references, or a very specific period of watchmaking.
The VIP experience can be many things – oftentimes enjoyable – but at the end of the day, in the realm of ultra-luxury, the key to success is connection – the ability to know the client on a personal level, and go beyond an experience that ends when both parties reach the point of transaction.
To read more about the author of this article, Mateo Rossi, check out our interview with him here.
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