Edouard Caumon’s love of watches began at an early age in his home city of Paris, where he landed his dream job working with Cartier in the French capital.
He then broadened his geographical and horological knowledge with a stint with the Watches and Wonders team, coordinating events in Hong Kong, Geneva, New York and Miami.
Hanging around all those Richemont executives landed him his next role, and his first in the United States, where he helped develop distribution for the group’s Specialist Watchmakers.
He then pivoted into pre-owned to become US country manager for Watchfinder.
The past few years have been all about improving the backend and consumer-facing elements of the Watchfinder business, including opening an operations and logistics center in Forth Worth, Texas, developing a trade-in system at A. Lange & Söhne, Cartier, IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Panerai, Piaget, Roger Dubuis and Vacheron Constantin boutiques, and even establishing retail concessions in Nordstrom.
“We focus on identifying the unmet needs or pain points of customers in the pre-owned watch market and develop solutions that address those issues in a unique and innovative way,” Edouard suggests.
It hasn’t been an easy year for pre-owned watch traders as prices of the hottest watches slumped from unsustainable highs in early 2022.
However, the sector continues to grow faster than new watches, according to analysts, and competition between a group of the largest players is driving up standards.
“Our focus needs to be ensuring we maintain and build integrity, transparency and trust
as the sector continues to grow,” Edouard says.
“I’m excited to see how advances in technology and sustainability will shape the industry.”