Time+Tide founder Andrew McUtchen has been making waves in the UK since moving here from his native Australia in 2023.
The online title was comparatively unknown in the Northern Hemisphere until Mr McUtchen landed with a simple mission to build a community and club house for watch addicts bang in the centre of London’s West End.
His mission was helped by an explosion in his profile in the year he co-hosted About Effing Time, a YouTube series featuring Mr McUtchen with George Bamford of Bamford London and Adrian Barker, a content creator with over 300,000 Youtube subscribers.
Building communities of watch enthusiasts has been central to a plan to create a people-focused business straddling traditional web-based media, social media and, most recently, opening physical spaces — Discovery Studios — first in Melbourne and in London last October.
Both Studios act as clubhouses that can host presentations, launches and exhibitions at the same time as retailing an ever-changing line-up of watch brands, as Rob Corder discovered on a tour of the London Studio with Mr McUtchen.
WATCHPRO: You opened the Time+Tide Discovery Studio in the Westend of London in October last year. It is unlike any other retail space, if you describe it that way, in the UK. What inspired you to take a leap of faith with this concept in such a competitive market?
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: The gap in the market here is that, within watch culture, so many of the brands we have in this Discovery Studio room have risen to some prominence, but they are not easy for customers to find and experience.
I get the same comment from so many customers walking through the door here that it is so great to have somewhere to see these watches in the metal.
Usually, to succeed in a crowded market, you need to displace somebody else. But I feel we are truly slipping into empty space with a lot of what we do here, which is why I think it is good for London.
We are bringing watch enthusiasts into central London who will end up also visiting a lot of the boutiques that are nearby. We will give them something that they cannot see anywhere else.
WATCHPRO: Getting hands-on with watches is so important. Even brands like Christopher Ward, which have been focused entirely on selling direct to consumer via its website for 20 years, are now participating in several events in the UK and USA, and also experimenting with physical retail.
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: Every watch I have tried on, I have formed a connection that is far more meaningful and seductive than those that I have seen on screens. There is no emotion on screen. Even if I was not paying attention while I was trying on a watch, my wrist remembers. For example, I was shown the new gold Rolex Deep Sea at Watches and Wonders and I distinctly remember how dastardly that watch is and how I will never buy it. Another time, I tried on an [F.P. Journe] Élégante and it felt incredible. I desperately want that watch.
This is the gap that independent watchmakers today realise they need to bridge. They will only fulfil their potential of becoming multi-generational brands if they are experienced by a lot of wrists.
With 50 people visiting us here in the Studio every day — half of them putting on one of almost every brand we are displaying — that is a lot of watches being tried sand memories made. They will try a Serica, a Furlan Marri, a Baltic; all these brands that are famous on the Internet will have their watches piled up on trays for people to experience.
We are probably breaking all the rules of retail, where you try and reduce time in store. Our people can be here for three hours and then they buy a [Studio Underd0g] Pizza or Watermelon watch for £500, and I think that’s a great result.
WATCHPRO: Rules for retail are over-rated and constantly shifting. Everybody thought last year that multibrands would die out as monobrand boutiques proliferated. If there is one rule, I would say it is that customers want choice.
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: Yes, and you have to cultivate relationships by sharing their passion. Time+Tide has always been community-based. We cannot be sucked into becoming transactional and focused on closing sales.
We are like a band that doesn’t just do its show on stage then leave. We want to have a beer with fans before and after a gig. This is what has been behind the very organic growth of our business.
When I am writing about watches, it is because I want to connect with people. Many people get into watch collecting because they want to connect with other watch lovers. Time+Tide here in London is a place where that can happen.
WATCHPRO: Take us back to the beginning. How did Time+Tide start and how has it developed?
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: I was a journalist and, like every freelance writer, I was looking at things that I could regularly pitch to get work. At the time I came to realise that the print industry in Australia — magazines and newspapers — was pretty much underwritten by advertising from watch brands. I made the connection that, if I became good at writing about watches, I would get work.
I found it a lucrative niche as a journalist with little competition — there was just one other specialist watch writer in the country at the time, so I became the second.
From there, I decided that, rather than writing for other titles, I would launch my own website. A girl called Erin [Collins], who is now in my team but at the time was brand manager of Omega in Australia, said to me: “I have digital budget but nowhere to spend it”. A week later I had a watch website called Time+Tide.
Omega was first in, and then Tudor, Cartier and Rolex followed. Instead of selling advertising, I sold 12-month content partnerships, which aligned with how brands operate. That gave me consistent revenue for a year, which meant I could hire a team.
All you need to be successful in business is to be great at something small. Across the media landscape when we were starting, you had Hodinkee in America speaking to wealthy watch enthusiasts, you had European titles like Fratello and Monochrome, which tended to be more technical, and Revolution out of Singapore that was even more technical.
There wasn’t really anything on the menu for somebody that was new to the restaurant.
By writing for Australians, we created something that became popular with people that were new to watches in other parts of the world.
Our stock started to rise outside of Australia because of our community-driven, accessible nature where we did not talk down to people if they were wearing a Swatch, Timex or a G-Shock.
That became a USP for us in the same way that Worn & Wound in America has a unique positioning with all the indies. Later, we realised that there was an opportunity for us to push independent watchmakers to our audience through our Micro Mondays series.
The first watches we covered were from this little Kickstarter brand called Studio Underd0g. Its founder Richard Benc will always say we were one of the first titles to write about them.
Even though there was no money in it, Micro Mondays drove traffic because people were really interested in these quirky niche brands that were packing a punchy value proposition.
Richard has been happy to do the Pizza watch with me now because I covered SU before anybody had noticed them. I have that sort of relationship with every brand that we now present here in the Studio. We have been behind them since their very earliest days when nobody else would look at them.
Richard these days gets approached by myriad potential partners for special editions, but our relationship was borne out of being behind Studio Underd0g since day one.
WATCHPRO: You say Time+Tide is community-driven. How did that steer you into becoming a retailer first in Melbourne and now in London?
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: We hit really choppy waters during the pandemic in Australia and we were up for anything to create another revenue stream. A chair needs four legs to stand solidly, a business needs several revenue streams. We had one, and we discovered how wobbly that made us.
We started selling Moser online for a bit, but we failed at that because we had no infrastructure, so we kept looking for other ways to survive.
I went to LVMH Watch Week in January 2020, which was in Dubai. I flew out over the worst bush fires Australia had ever seen, which made me horrified to think that I was leaving my family behind while everything was burning.
When I landed, the footage of koalas burning was really upsetting the world. Suddenly I had Ricardo Guadalupe, Hublot’s CEO, and Jean-Christophe Babin, Bulgari’s CEO, coming up to me and asking me if I was OK.
I took those conversations and developed the idea to have an auction of watches to raise money for Australia’s Country Fire Authority. That auction, which raised $250,000, had unique pieces from Zenith, TAG Heuer, Bulgari, Baltic and many others.
The process of creating those special editions was an education for me and got me closer to the brands. Off the back of that, I started creating other limited editions which gave us another revenue stream.
The retailing part came later and started with Doxa. I saw Doxa at Basel and completely lost my mind. They were not sold in Australia but I was obsessed with the brand and I wanted to distribute it.
My business partner and I had to jump through all the hoops to evolve from a media business into a stock-holding distributor, which was tough, but we managed it and Doxa is now properly established in the country.
The bigger change was when we took on Hamilton. We sold 850 Hamiton watches in our first year in Australia because the brand was known from people seeing it online, and it fitted well with people looking for an inexpensive first proper watch. Swatch Group Australia took the distribution of Hamilton back from us, but we are still one of its biggest retailers.
WATCHPRO: When did you open your Studio in Melbourne?
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: That was in August 2023. Hamilton is a huge seller there, and the backbone of our business in Australia.
WATCHPRO: That is more recent than I was expecting you to say. You must have been planning London even before Melbourne was open.
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: Yes. We hired this game-changing general manager called Scott Jungwirth. He was the general manager of Tissot in Australia and was impressed with what we were doing. Early in our planning for the Melbourne store he was saying we needed to think bigger. Our idea was to create a media/retail hybrid, but Scott said we should aim to become a premium retailer with a clubhouse feel.
“I do not want to just specialise in microbrands or mid-tier brands. I want to be prepared so that it could work just as well for Vacheron Constantin or Audemars Piguet”
Andrew McUtchen
We maintained media and content creation in the space for an X-factor. I had a vision for how I wanted it all to look, but my budget was about half of what Scott proposed. He was pushing to go absolute flagship, which meant going back to the drawing board to work out how we were going to fund it.
WATCHPRO: How did you find the money? Do you have outside investors?
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: No, it was self-funded. We all just put more of our own money in, including our CFO Luke Martin, and that allowed us to open the Melbourne Studio. As soon as it was open, the brands we represented were just really, really happy with this new platform. They joined us for our tenth birthday in January 2024, and we launched studio editions with Studio Underd0g, Baltic and Furlan Marri.
That experience, and the sustained sales that that have followed, gave us confidence they would follow us on our journey wherever we went next. With Melbourne doing well in an Australian market that is around 1% of the global total, we looked to the UK, which can account for up to 14% of the market, as a huge opportunity. We spoke to all of our brands about London and they were all up for it.
We did secure a private investor who helped us fund the development of the London Studio and we are on track to make that square thanks to selling out inside 24 hours a TAG Heuer Aquaracer Solargraph x Time+Tide “Sundowner” limited edition of 250 units at £2,750 / $3,050.
WATCHPRO: You are arguably best-known outside Australia for co-hosting of the Youtube series About Effing Time with George Bamford and Adrian Barker. How did that come about, and how important has it been to the Time+Tide business?
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: This might sound like serendipity, but it was not really that. It was more about knowing what I was looking for and seizing the opportunity when it presented itself — just as we had done with Doxa and Hamilton.
Me, George and Adrian already knew each other. I had been on George’s podcast GB Talks a few times, and it always turned into a riot. Adrian and I go back even further. Just six months after he started YouTube series Bark & Jack, I contacted him and said we should do something together. He declined at the time, and cryptically said he would tell me why at a future date.
He later told me, while filming the first episode of About Effing Time, that he had quit his job shortly after I proposed that he partner with me, because the offer from me had given him the confidence to strike out on his own.
Years later, in 2022, I bumped into Adrian and George at Watches and Wonders and we were excited to finally meet in person. I turned to our videographer, and said “just start filming”. We filmed an impromptu chat about what we were seeing at the show. It got noticed and a few comments said we should do more.
In the days after the video launched, George contacted me and said: “we should do more!”
None of us thought we could persuade all three of us to do it, but it turned out we all could and we all wanted to.
The most important thing the podcast did for me was bring fun and joy back to my work. I realised I could relax and speak freely. I found my voice. I could be less cautious than I had to be as a business owner with many mouths to feed.
The energy was so intense with us sparking off each other that all caution was thrown to the wind. We were unfiltered in an industry that wants everything filtered. The amazing branding by George, incredible production by creative director Marcus Flack and the heat was from the YouTube audience that Adrian was bringing, which helped to make me a familiar face in the UK.
I was suddenly getting stopped on the streets in London in a way that never happened with just Time+Tide.
WATCHPRO: Even though the show was, in your words, unfiltered, I can’t imagine you got too much heat from the normally thin-skinned brand executives because it was so well put-together.
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: It was amazing, we got no heat at all. Nobody complained. I had brands that were regularly targeted on the show, but I think we were spared any trouble because the passion we all have for watches is palpable in everything we did.
WATCHPRO: About Effing Time wrapped towards the end of 2023, barring Christmas specials that year and 2024. How did that decision come about? Were you determined to quit while on top, or were there just too many other work pressures, particularly for George with his family ties and commitments to the JCB empire?
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: I miss it to the extent that I wonder whether we made the right decision, but I had this Studio under development and George has his responsibilities to JCB as well as Bamford Watch Department. Adrian had pretty much stopped making videos for Bark & Jack. It was a time-hungry show with incredible production levels.
The reason there has not been anything like it before or since is that level of production is super expensive, and it’s time consuming to keep putting out shows, and supporting them with livestreams and podcasts.
We were getting 4 million views per month at the end, and that was earning us about £600, so there was no viability through Google or YouTube ads. We tried hiring a producer and commercial manager to make it a business, but in the end we had no option but to end it.
WATCHPRO: Let’s return to the main part of this story, which is the opening of the Time+Tide Studio in London in November. We are speaking a week after the opening. Have you slept yet?
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: We are just 24 hours after the biggest limited edition launch we have ever done with TAG Heuer, so I did not sleep too well last night. I hope my cortisol levels will return to normal because as we sit it looks like the Aquaracer will be sold out inside a day.
That is a huge relief. Footfall through the doors here has been really encouraging as well, with around 50 people per day visiting since we opened. I meet as many of them as I can just to find out why they have come, what they are looking for, how they found us. I don’t know if Brian Duffy [CEO of Watches of Switzerland] still does this, but I can’t stop myself wanting to speak to everybody.
I am naturally very curious. My vision has always been that Time+Tide will change the way the world views and experiences watches. Personally, I have not enjoyed the traditional retail experience, nor the traditional media experience that much. I want to offer something different and better.
WATCHPRO: Time+Tide Studio is very different to normal showrooms in shopping malls or high streets, and not just because it is up on the first floor of an office block. What is the model here? How do you use the space to generate multiple revenue streams?
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: The model is to generate as many revenue streams as possible because I want to be recession-proof. We have designed the space so that it can accommodate many different brands for long or short residencies or events.
I can turn the whole place over to a single brand in just five minutes. We have header plates on all our light boxes that can simply be switched from one brand to another. We can change the colours and put different visuals on all our screens to suit what any brand wants for an event.
I can host an event and speak passionately on any brand, or they can do it themselves. We have festivals like the British Watchmaker Weekend, which started on a weekend but ran all the way through December. It is more of a spaceship than a space, and it can go to any planet you want.
WATCHPRO: Have you allowed yourself a moment yet to reflect on how far and fast you have come?
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: Some people in the audience the other day when we were launching the TAG Heuer collab watch said I looked a bit distracted. Well, that was because the watch was scrolling on screens and my eye kept being caught by the dial that has both TAG Heuer’s and Time+Tide’s shield logos on it. I have to pinch myself when I see a co-signed dial with such a historic and important brand.
My wife, Fiona, and I should take time to appreciate what we have achieved together. She gave up a career to be part of this while raising our three girls. She runs HR, organisational structure and holds the whole thing together between Australia and the UK. She has bought the structure and systems of a $100 million business to our company, which means processes that are at arms-length from me as an entrepreneur founder and owner.
WATCHPRO: I have learned is that, if small businesses do not start to behave like larger companies, they will never become one.
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: One hundred percent. The investment we had to make to open here in London was significant, and we could not do that on our own. We needed outside investment.
WATCHPRO: Will you say how much you have invested here so far? Seven figures?
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: Seven figures in Aussie dollars (there are two dollars to the pound). We did not want to compromise on the design and finish. We set out to build a space for any brand we might work with in the future.
I do not want to just specialise in microbrands or mid-tier brands. I want to be prepared so that it could work just as well for Vacheron Constantin or Audemars Piguet. This is not a step down from any retailer.
WATCHPRO: What’s next? Rumour has it you are looking at the United States.
ANDREW MCUTCHEN: I have barely touched the ground following the London opening. There is a part of me that wants to say this is more than enough, but I believe we now have partnerships with some of the greatest brands in the world, and in that group there are big ambitions and they recognise that we are growing up fast together. That is unlocking some interesting potential moves in the future that we could not achieve individually.