WatchCrunch is an online community that’s sole aim is to move away from the “flex culture” seen on Instagram and give watch lovers the freedom to love and chat about the watches they wish.
This week, WatchPro caught up with Max who founded the platform to find out more:
WP: It seems like WatchCrunch is everywhere these days. For the readers that have not heard of it yet, how would you describe WatchCrunch?
First and foremost WatchCrunch is a community, an online community of watch enthusiasts that love geeking out about watches. It doesn’t matter what type of watch it is or how much it costs, if it tells the time, we’re into it.
The WatchCrunch community consists of people from all different backgrounds, economic situations, age and geographic locations. Some have been collecting watches for 40 years and some just recently got into the hobby.
What we feel makes our community unique is that we don’t judge or berate anyone for their taste in watches or their watch knowledge. We believe watch collecting should be fun, interesting and exciting and we don’t let the snobbery, snarkiness and hostility that is often prevalent in this hobby infiltrate our community.
WP: So tell me a bit about how this community was born?
About a year and a half ago a group of watch friends and I started talking about how tired we were of seeing nothing but Richard Mills, Royal Oaks and Daytonas on Instagram. We just felt like this wasn’t an accurate reflection of what the watch hobby was all about. For every person that owns a Royal Oak there are about 10,000 people (I made that number up) that own Hamilton, Seiko, Vostok, Sinn, Orient and so on, but those brands never get any love on Instagram.
A picture of someone with 3 Daytonas on their wrist may get a lot of clicks (which is why Instagram is jam packed with them) but to me, that’s not what this hobby is all about. It was this “flex culture” as it’s called today that really made me think, wait a minute, what else is out there? Then we started talking about all the watch forums we knew and here too we felt like something was lacking.
We felt like these forum platforms were super outdated and simply not fun to use and on top of that we all had numerous experiences with hostile forum members and overzealous mods. It just wasn’t fun. So we decided to create WatchCrunch.com a discussion platform dedicated to watch enthusiasts that was inviting, friendly and easy to use.
WP: So it seems like you really had a “there has to be a better way!” moment there?
Exactly right. We wanted to build a better mouse trap you can say.
WP: How would you say WatchCrunch is differentiated from some of these other forums and social media platforms?
First, it’s a platform dedicated solely for watch discussions, it’s not a general platform like Instagram or Facebook, and it’s built from the ground up to cater to watch enthusiasts. No baby pictures, politics, food, ads, bots or spam. Just discussions about watches. We also made sure everything was super intuitive and easy to use. The idea was come on in and join the discussion.
There are people we spoke to that literally felt stressed before posting to some of these other forums. They didn’t know who’s going to come out and yell at them for posting in the wrong place, saying the wrong thing, having the wrong opinion, etc. We felt like that was absolutely ridiculous and wanted to provide a complete opposite experience in our community.
WP: How would you describe the watch enthusiasts the make up the WatchCrunch community?
I would say our community is made up of true watch lovers. Microbrands are very big on WatchCrunch, there’s more discussion on micro brands than on Patek Philippe or Audemars Piguet because let’s face it, how many people actually own those brands.
As I mentioned before we really cover the whole spectrum in terms of age and watch collecting experience, and the beauty is that everyone gets along and enjoys the discussion.
Watch YouTubers, watch bloggers, watch media personalities, collectors, vintage lovers and people with specific expertise are part of the WatchCrunch community as well. For example, one of our members is one of the most respected experts on Chinese watches in the world and it’s just amazing to be able to discuss watches with someone like that on a fun and engaging platform.
WP: I recently stumbled onto your appearance on the Worn & Wound podcast and was intrigued by something you said. It was something to the effect of that on WatchCrunch the cream rises to the top, what did you mean by that?
We’re all about rewarding quality content and discussion on WatchCrunch and it doesn’t matter whether you have been a part of our community since its inception or since 10 minutes ago, if you create quality content and contribute to the community more people will see and engage with your content. It doesn’t matter if you have 0 followers or if you signed up to WatchCrunch 5 seconds ago, if you create interesting posts that people are interested in and engage with your posts will float to the top and get seen by as many people as possible.
This was something that was important for us. On other platforms you have to build your presence for quite some time, attract followers, etc, before any sort of meaningful engagement with your content. On WatchCrunch, that’s not the case at all. You can immediately start engaging with the community when you contribute meaningful content.
WP: What are some of your plans for WatchCrunch and where do you see the platform going in the near future?
We are fully focused and dedicated to creating a fun and inviting online home for watch nerds everywhere. We are constantly adding new features and improving the platform based on ongoing dialogue with our community. We are currently working on a bunch of exciting new features and can’t wait to roll them all out.
In short, the plan is to keep on improving the platform and raise awareness about it so more and more people can have a fun place to come hang out, discuss, learn and geek out about watches as well as create long lasting relationships and friendships with the amazing people they meet on WatchCrunch. There really is something special about the WatchCrunch community and I personally invite all watch lovers to come check us out and say hi.
WP: For people who want to connect with you on social media, where is the best place to do so?
Definitely checkout our YouTube channel, I put out a video once a week, the name of the channel is “WatchCrunch” and if you’re on IG then you can get in touch with me there as well, at @watch_crunch. Most importantly, come say hi on WatchCrunch.com, my username there is @max.
Keep up the great work Max, I’m loving WatchCrunch! :-D