Bench Time Isn't Showtime

If you're a watchmaker in a boutique with a window, do you talk to walk-in patrons?

If you do, how does it disrupt your workflow? And why even do it?

Unless you get commission on the sale, I'm not seeing it.

If you have a quota of watches to finish, that interaction time is coming straight off your bench.

→ Patrons can enjoy watching you through the glass. → They shouldn't get to take your time with it.

Now, if you're at a shop where it doesn't matter if you make money, where the sales revenue pays for you to just show up and be an accessory to the store, lucky you.

How do you handle this?

—FZ

Read more

The Trust Account

Every warranty claim is a deposit or a withdrawal from the trust account. Most service operations don't know which one they're making until the client stops coming back. The two scripts When a client walks in with a warranty question, there are essentially two opening lines:

What Breaks When You Do

What Breaks When You Do

My dad ran his watch shop for years on memory and paper. Job statuses, promised dates, parts on order, callbacks pending. All of it in his head or in a pile on the bench. Then a client called on a Thursday. His anniversary. The watch was done Wednesday. My dad

FREE battery service?

A colleague once told me how he handles customers who can't afford the store they walked into. Client comes in, looks around. Budget is tight. SA notices his Citizen quartz is running behind. Offers to set the time, and finds out the battery is dead. Client gets embarrassed.

a priceless watch

Some watches aren't for sale.

Not because of what they cost. Because of what they mean. A dealer can price a reference. He can't price a memory. He can't price the feeling of putting on a watch that spent decades on someone else's wrist before it landed on yours.