During Quaid Walker’s time at Google as a design lead, he was “obsessed” with watches but was relatively new to being a serious collector. When he got his first bonus early in his career, a Rolex was his first big purchase. But, instead of feeling luxurious, it felt “scary,” he said
He tried, but couldn’t get on a wait list at his local authorized dealer. The nearby secondary market dealers didn’t have what he wanted in stock. And he said he was warned by every watch collector he knew not to buy on one off the large existing marketplaces without “shopping the seller” and getting the watch independently verified.
Ultimately, he and his childhood best friend, Chase Pion, created Bezel, a marketplace for authenticated watches. Walker serves as CEO. Pion, a former investment analyst with J.P. Morgan and other financial institutions, serves as CFO and COO.
The startup recently closed on a $8 million seed round. Lead investors included VC firms like BoxGroup, Courtside Ventures and Abstract Ventures, as well as famous artists like John Legend and Kevin Hart. Michael Ovitz, the co-founder of talent agency CAA, and John Reardon, the former international head of watches at Christie’s, also invested.
Business environment
The secondary market for watches is valued at approximately $22 billion and is expected to grow to more than $35 billion by 2030.
This market is gaining momentum as Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly likely to buy second-hand watches given the more affordable options, according to a Deloitte report.
Luxury sales are not showing signs of slowing, despite inflation, Walker said. Watches, for one, have been used as alternative investment options during times of inflation.
Bezel is profiting from that. It’s seen record sales, Walker said, also attributing that to eager sellers and enticing prices.
“Sellers are interested in turning over their inventory faster than ever and buyers are able to get into watches they’ve always wanted at more attractive prices,” he said.
Foundation
Bezel officially launched in June of last year, with an app first, and then a web platform. Another co-founder is software engineer Darryl Johnson, who serves as CTO.
At its core, Bezel is a technology company, Walker told L.A. Inno.
“We bring together the best engineers from Google, Amazon and ambitious startups with the best of the watch world,” he said.
Authenticating its inventory
Bezel has more than $100 million in inventory available for purchase, along with a growing community of collectors, Walker said.
The inventory includes brands like Rolex, Cartier and Patek Philippe.
But while the demand for luxury watches is growing, the overall industry is “dated and intimidating for new collectors,” Walker said.
“As inauthentic watches continue to get more sophisticated and more first-time buyers enter the market, authentication at scale is more important than it has ever been,” he said.
To that end, Bezel hired Ryan Chong from Sotheby’s as its first employee to lead the authentication effort. Chong is the former director of private sales at Sotheby’s.
Walker said that authentication is the major differentiating factor between Bezel and its competition.
“Every watch sold on our platform is sent to our HQ first for our rigorous authentication process,” he said, adding that Bezel’s team of in-house experts and watchmakers have decades of experience at the top auction houses and run every watch through a multi-point authentication process.
Bezel then runs every watch through time-loss and pressure tests and submits the serial numbers to a loss registry to ensure they were never reported stolen.
Competitors to Bezel include Chrono24, a Germany-based company that’s raised $180 million, and Ebay, the longtime online marketplace.
With sales growing more than 50% month-over-month, Bezel hopes to position itself as “the first stop for anyone who is thinking about buying a watch,” Walker said. Bezel takes a percentage commission of each transaction. It uses a gamified system to determine the commission rate. Sellers start at an 8.5% fee and scale all the way down to 4.5% as they sell more watches.
Building trust
Bezel’s average order value is around $15,000 and often represents one of the largest purchases most of its customers have made online, Walker said.
“This obviously requires a lot of trust so the biggest challenge, in the beginning, was building that trust with our community of early buyers,” he said.
Benefit of being in L.A.
The co-founders chose L.A. for Bezel’s HQ, based on their mission to build a brand at the intersection of watches, technology and culture, Walker said.
Both he and Pion grew up on L.A.’s Westside.
