An interview with Darryl Randall owner of SwissLuxury.Com:
Have you always been entrepreneurial?
I have always had a strong desire to work and as a 12-13 year old started a mail order business in Canada selling collectible records, so it must be in my nature. Also, it was difficult for me to work for others as I am fairly strong willed.
Why the switch from Sports programming to jewelry?
When we did our sports shows it was very physically demanding and time consuming loading and unloading the products. Hockey Sticks, basketballs, paintings, framed jerseys take up a lot of room and we had to use trucks and warehouses. Our show was usually followed by a jewelry guy whose products fit in a briefcase. He was in and out of the studio in minutes and made more money than we did as well.
How did the website start?
My computer knowledge was extremely limited and I really just used it as a typewriter. That all changed when a friend showed me AOL. The amount of information that you could quickly get online just amazed me and the commercial opportunity literally kept me awake nights. The site was born from story boards made on a park bench on Balboa Island with a glue stick and watch catalogs. It was extremely simple and to this day we design the navigation of our sites with the same simplicity in mind.
Did you think a wristwatch website would be successful?
We thought in the early days it would be great if we could just sell one watch per day. Needless to say our expectations were wildly exceeded. Our site was one of the first to sell authentic Swiss watches at a discount and when the net started there was very little competition so everyone could find your site with ease. Now it takes a strong advertising budget with Google to get started.
What were the challenges you faced?
We are in a very tough industry. It was and still is difficult to source enough product to meet the demands of our clients. Manufacturers do not like to see their goods discounted online and we have been shopped, sued, harassed, had our suppliers cut off, and other nonsense, but it is a big world and we have made incredible industry friends around the globe. Our wholesale contacts are authorized for just about every brand of luxury wristwatches. People also try to steal our products and that creates stress for us to sort out who is decent and who isn’t. We work on a very narrow profit margin and if we lose one watch we have to sell 15-20 others just to get back to even.
There are negative comments about you and your firm online. How do you respond?
The internet provides an open forum for everyone and if you are successful you are bound to make an enemy or two along the way. For example, we take market share from brick and mortar stores and they feel threatened by our format. Most of our clients are wonderful people. We pride ourselves on being fair to all our customers, but neither myself or my staff takes rudeness well, and if someone is out of line we have no issue telling them to get lost. There are postings about us that are completely untrue but you can either spend your time refuting the posts or you can focus on your core business and making more money. We choose the latter. Our worst customer problem was with a client named Armand who ordered a $100K plus Chopard watch and then demanded we return it even though we shipped him perfect product exactly the way he ordered it. He caused so much trouble that we did issue a complete refund even though we had a signed contract from him stating that it was “not returnable”. Armand eventually wound up in prison for fraud and we found a very nice home for the diamond Chopard wristwatch so the story had a happy ending.
What do you see for the future of internet watch retailing?
People are a lot more comfortable shopping online than they used to be and our market grows each year. Our international business almost doubled in 2007. That said, the trouble in the US economy in 2008 will hurt our firm, but to a lesser degree than if we had the same high overhead that the retail stores have to contend with. The fact is that the internet is such an amazing place for the transmission of information that even the watch companies are re-thinking their feelings about internet watch sales. When our site puts up a new watch style hundreds and thousands of potential clients worldwide get to see it and this has a much quicker and powerful impact than having it in a store showcase at the mall. This is free advertising for the Swiss Watch Companies and helps to get their message out. I hope in the future we will get more cooperation from manufacturers as there really is room for everyone in this industry.
Closing comments?
We have been truly blessed in our business life and want to say a special thank you to all our loyal clients, to our friends and family, our suppliers, the designers, photographers and all of those who have worked long and hard to help create our success.
