Yahoo Finance Watch-World Exec Joshua Ganjei on Collecting, His New Book, and the Rise of Superfakes
“If you want to buy it, buy it; if you don’t want to buy it, don’t buy—it doesn’t matter if they sell,” says Joshua Ganjei, CEO of European Watch Company, the Boston-based secondary dealer tucked away on a second floor off the city’s tony Newbury Street. He is speaking about the company philosophy and the fact that none of his sales people work on commission. “It keeps a pressure free environment,” he tells Robb Report. (That is likely true for both employees and clients alike.) What they are competing on, he says, is service, and on a global level. “.” According to Ganjei that means picking up the phone after one ring, handling just about anything that comes up for a client, including handling any problems right away. “Just like you would want if you were spending a lot of money, right?”
It’s that overall approach to good relations that has kept the business going since his father founded the company in 1993. Albert Ganjei, a former native of Tehran with a background in architecture and civil engineering, decided to pursue his passion and follow his horological interests by opening European Watch Company. Interestingly, in the early days of his company mid-market watchmaker, Frederique Constant (a company for young professionals looking for classy but affordable timepieces), was his best-selling brand. He also became the U.S. distributor. After running his company as a side hustle from his day job for three years, Ganjei took to the business full-time in 1996 and by then the watch business was picking up and clients began asking for higher-end models and pre-owned timepieces. He began to pivot the business towards the higher echelons of watchmaking, carrying grande complications, gem-set pieces, and independents, which proved to be a lasting mix. Today, the company owns 100 percent of its inventory, according to Joshua Ganjei, and they currently have around 1,000 watches in stock as well as three full-time watchmakers. Everything from Patek Philippe, Rolex, and Audemars Piguet to De Bethune, Ressence, and Grönefeld, to name a few, can be found in their vaults.
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With over three decades under its belt, the business is still thriving and with his son now running much of the business, there are many positive changes afoot. A new, much cleaner and more modern website just launched last Spring (clients familiar with the old site are no doubt rejoicing in the new update). “We had my dad’s kind of ’90s look for a long time,” says Ganjei. EWC also just launched a sizable book, The Connoisseur’s Guide to Fine Timepieces in partnership with Assouline and written by Robin Swithinbank, yesterday evening in New York City’s Meatpacking neighborhood. “For me, this was like a dream, like a really major dream,” says Ganjei of the new tome. “It was like the planets aligning. When we were redesigning the site I told the agency we were working with and my dad, ‘When Assouline lands on our new website, I want them to say, we’ll do a book with these people.'”
Not long after getting through 80 percent of the book themselves, Assouline came calling to use an archive image from EWC of a Patek Philippe Ref. 5101P and the two companies were soon collaborating on putting the book into print. “It’s pretty much a book of rare and collectible watches that we have sold,” says Ganjei. About one fourth of the book also includes pieces from the Ganjei family’s personal collection including Joshua Ganjei’s incredible gem-set Cartier Crash pictured above.
Aside from their shared good taste in and passion for watches, Joshua Ganjei, 35, and Albert Ganjei, 71, could not be more different. Albert is quiet, but warm. He is a behind-the-scenes guy, who has built his business on years of cultivating trusting relationships. “He’s not a seller,” says Joshua of his father. “He’ll tell you, ‘I’ve never sold anything in my life.'” But he was ahead of his time when he left his corporate job at Computer Vision and, as a tech guy, was among one of the earliest watch companies to have an online business. Joshua, on the other hand is outspoken and charismatic and, a natural-born salesman even though he maintains an opposite approach to client relations. Like any passing of the torch between generations, Ganjei junior has an entirely new 21st-century vision for the company—like his father, he too is tech savvy, albeit for a new generation. He launched the pre-owned sector’s first iPhone app displaying live inventory and scaled up the value of pieces in keeping with industry trends. Both admit it didn’t come without friction between the two. “In the end, you work to negotiate and stop fighting in the office and fight at home,” Joshua Ganjei said with a laugh at last night’s book launch. “Sometimes it’s, ‘I go left and you go right but I trust you’ and that’s hard work.”
Ultimately, the friction and passing of the torch from one seasoned generation to an entirely new one is paying off. Ganjei senior has established the company as a trusted source…so much so that dealers and regular sellers are known to drop off $300,000 and upwards in watches for inspection. Joshua Ganjei, however, recognizes the need for visibility, modern marketing tactics, and new ways of connecting with collectors. The business has changed significantly since the ’90s and because of the digital boom, doing business as a pre-owned dealer is tougher than ever. Not just because of newfound competition, but also because fakes are increasingly rampant. As knowledge is shared at lightening speed with photos detailing the comparison between what makes a fake versus a real timepiece for many of the higher-end models, counterfeiters are perfecting their craft. “We have seen a few fantastic fakes recently,” says Ganjei. “There is a really good [fake] Rolex Daytona going around…scary good. And there’s a really good Audemars Piguet Royal Oak going around. It’s very, very, very good.”
It’s not just about Frankenstein parts, now counterfeiters are almost replicating the watch to a T (think lab grown diamonds versus real diamonds). “It’s getting scary, because these mostly Chinese companies are actually buying the Swiss equipment,” says Ganjei. “It’s not that they are even fake…they’re more like replicas. If you’re spending $2,000 to $4,000, which is sometimes what you have to spend to get a really good [counterfeit] AP, you’re buying virtually an AP. It’s scary.” He adds that in some cases they’ve actually purchased a real Royal Oak and scanned the movements and the parts in order to be able to remake them as close to the real deal as possible. They are, essentially, able to remake these parts using the same machines. “So, if you can remake the parts, it’s not a fake AP, it’s a copy.” Sometimes the pieces are so good, even reputable dealers cannot distinguish them and have unknowingly brought counterfeit pieces to EWC. “The problem is people talk about the fakes and they compare this and that and then the fakers go look at that and fix it,” says Ganjei referring to internet posts comparing fakes.
He goes on. “Oh, my God, there’s a whole RM [Richard Mille] thing. There’s a whole thing happening with RM. Some of the models that come in a carbon case, which is worth more than their other cases, are making replica cases in carbon that are exactly the same.”
So how then, does EWC sort through the chaos of counterfeits? “We actually handle every single piece,” says Ganjei. “I’ve been touching all of the watches every day for 10 years and when you are seeing these all the time, you just know that something doesn’t feel or sound right.” This knowledge, combined with is father’s three decades of expertise, is what helps the Ganjeis weed out the bad timepieces. And, he emphasizes, that trust is the biggest part of their business as pre-owned dealers which is why they are not necessarily trying to go bigger as Joshua Ganjei continues his father’s legacy. “We’re just trying to be better,” he says. “We don’t need another location. We are very much focused on controlling the product better and just operating as an efficient business. That’s more important to us.” That is one thing, at least, father and son can both agree on. “This whole watch collecting thing is very genetic,” said Ganjei at last night’s Assouline book launch. “You’re either in or you’re out, but if you have the bug you’re in.”
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