Sean's horological journey began when he received his first watch as a wedding gift from his parents-in-law — a Rolex Submariner 'Hulk'.
His interest in watches continued to grow, and when Austen Chu (@horoloupe) approached him with the idea of building a low-take rate marketplace business for luxury watches, the vision was immediately apparent to him. As the former Senior Vice President of Hypebeast, Sean spearheaded the company's e-commerce and retail arm HBX.com, turning it from a start-up operation to an internationally influential platform that carried over 200 brands, brought in USD$40m+ in yearly revenue, and continues to amass 1M+ monthly unique visitors - making him singularly qualified to link up a generation of young consumers yearning for the right brands to be connected with.
Excerpts from the interview:
A key part of Wristcheck lore is the origin of your Rolex Submariner 'Hulk', gifted to you by your in-laws at your wedding. How do your parents-in-law feel about the role they played in sending you down the watch rabbit hole that eventually led you to Wristcheck?
I don't think they realized their impact in sending me down the watch rabbit hole. Prior to getting married, when I was still dating my wife, I always found it so fascinating that my mother-in-law would gift her husband a new Rolex every year as a tradition.
It was through talking to him and learning about his collection, that I first realized the importance some people placed on a Rolex timepiece - that it was simultaneously a beautiful and well-made watch, but also a store of wealth and more importantly, an aspirational item while they were growing up, and something that many people would save up for many months and even years, to have the chance of buying. All of this definitely opened up my eyes to the magical world of watches.
You've recently switched capacities from our Chief Marketing Officer to Chief Strategy Officer. Could you walk us through what this role entails, what excites you about it, and what you're hoping to achieve?
Wristcheck is the first startup I've ever had the pleasure of building from day 1. And, so far, aside from the fact that every day brings about a new experience and no two days are alike, the other thing I've learned is that the business needs also change quite rapidly. While Marketing was a clear need right from the start, it wasn't a role that I intended to keep for the long run.
Looking back at my career prior to Wristcheck, my strengths were more in strategy (both planning and execution), and more importantly, identifying the type of partnerships, collaborations, and external opportunities we needed to form, in order for us to keep growing. Hence, as soon as we were able to recruit the right person to manage our Marketing team, it made perfect sense for me to switch to Strategy and Culture.
As Chief Strategy Officer, it's my job to identify growth opportunities and working together with our team, figure out the proper sequencing of when and how we can implement some of these new initiatives into our company. The role excites me a lot because expanding to new regions, launching new initiatives that I hope our customers will find value in and would want to use, as well as prepping our company for our next phase of growth are all things that are exciting to me. Currently, we have a team of 40+ people, and in my role, I feel a huge obligation in repaying the trust they have in us, and continuing to find paths to grow sustainably and in a healthy manner.
At its heart, Wristcheck is a bunch of nerds geeking out about watches. What's something you've gotten into recently that you get super nerdy about?
Many of you might find this answer boring, but the current global economic downturn has really gotten me to wonder how the world will start to recover from what's going on. So, I do spend a lot of my downtime reading as much as I can, because I find what's happening these days quite fascinating (not in a good or bad way).
Secondly, I recently got into sports ownership, and being a lifelong fan and nerd of sports (not just what happens on the field, but also on the business side of things), it's been an incredible experience so far, and I've been learning so much along the way.
