Exclusive Interview With Teddy Baldassarre at His Watch Store

[Music] didn't have much money in my bank account I put everything I had into the business I wasn't taking a salary and it took 2 years and eventually it just came to this hi I'm Craig from R Enthusiast and I'm here in Cleveland at Teddy baldazar new store which just opened I think two weeks ago weeks ago feels longer but two weeks ago how's it going it is going well it's going well I think the reception's been phenomenal and it's been cool too because you you post things online you have interactions in some way but then when you're able to actually see somebody show them a really cool watch and then watch their reaction when they put it on the wrist for the first time it's weird to say that I've never really experienced that really before so to be able to have a space that we can do that it's been phenomenal and how often have you been in the store I try to come in you know here and there I mean especially now since we're just trying to figure out and learn and how we balance out the experience make sure everybody has a good time when they're in here but probably only a few times I mean I can't be here every day but it's also important for me that people they come here they can have you know a great time I mean it has your name on it does do which is real and I assume a lot of people are asking where you are when they when they come in yes I mean for us we want to keep making sure that we can you know be here every day or people can come in and have this great experience we have a phenomenal team John will AJ people that are watch guys if you have a question they'll be able to answer it from that point of view but also what we want to do is make sure we have like event schedules and things like that and I I want to show face here as much as I can yeah and you know just looking around it's it's really beautiful and I think we're going to do a tour of of the store so we'll get into that but I wanted to go back a little bit and ask you kind of about your journey you know you started off on YouTube I think just you know posting videos from your home and you know a few years later you did an online you opened up an online authorized retailer and and now you're opening up a brick and mortar store how did that Journey go and did you always know that this was the direction you wanted to go into first to answer your question at the end no I mean if you look at the first video it was somebody that had no expectations and that is 100% honesty I remember the only thing I remember when I hit the first the record button for the first time was hitting the record button everything else I almost blacked out but I was so passionate about watches at the time I'm here in Cleveland so Cleveland is not a place that I would call the mecca of watchmaking by any means so I felt a little bit as an outcast liking this stuff yeah so so I wanted to just post something and throw it out there and the first video is just of my watch collection I didn't know if anyone was going to watch it I didn't tell tell my friends I didn't tell my family but it was something I was passionate about I was interested in so I threw it up and didn't look at it for a while but then after you know a month or so it started to get some views and more and more views more and more views and I'm like wait there's something here and now I saw comments I saw people engaging you know people were saying encouraging things maybe some not as encouraging but that's part of the the whole fun of it I remember my first video which was a lot more recent on the YouTube front someone I think told me I was dead between the eyes or something like that I was you know calling my wrists like small and people like oh you should be doing like feminine I just all all craziness but I learned a lot and I had fun with it and what I did was I saw that there was something here and I just kept posting and posting and posting it got to a point though where when you were starting to do this and I took the plunge to go fulltime on YouTube and it's it's hard to produce content in you know on YouTube in a nich space like watches and make a living it's tough especially if you want to scale things which I wanted to do I wanted to post more content I wanted to do cooler Productions and to do that you need money yeah so it was then figuring out how could we monetize appropriately so I could keep doing what I wanted to do so there was questions of hey do we go the avoral route where we take money from Brands and do that I saw what happened when a lot of other outlets do that and I also came from a digital marketing background and I saw what could happen if you just did that with all Industries so to think about doing a making a business that just focused on one industry and selling it and then also trying to keep my voice which was the most important thing I didn't want to be dictated on what I could say what I couldn't say I had to really think about it and then my partner you know Mike we were talking one day this was probably in 2019 and we threw out this concept of authoriz authorized dealership and at the time you know I had some context of what that meant but I I I knew it was a ludicrous idea to think about but we were just crazy enough to ask and we asked a lot of NOS whole lot of NOS follow-ups asking asking asking and in 2020 we eventually had a small subset of Brands and we launched Teddy baller.com this was a point where I didn't have much money in my bank account I put everything I had into the business I wasn't taking a salary I just invested everything in this website I mean you know a sixf figureure investment and that was really terrifying and then Co happens in March of 2020 you know so I am really scared this is right in the middle of the launch of the store I'm posting content and know I'm traveling still I'm trying to do everything I can to make this work and then in June 2020 we launched the site yeah thankfully it was a great success yeah uh everything worked out and you know I've been able to know continue to invest back into the content and in the past you know couple of years what became very clear to me was this is an industry that is very much around brick and mor environment a very important aspect to be able to handle the product especially over a certain price point it's a part of the formula if you look at especially the higher Brands I mean this is how you you are able to sell this product and you know how you're also able to create a community that I wanted I wanted a place where we were talking about this at the beginning I never had that interaction where I could see somebody in the flesh and show them a watch and that was pretty cool to me I didn't know what all that would entail but we started to really move forward on that process of brick and mortar yeah and it took two years and eventually it just came to this so and construction of this was 6 months in you know in the making we had you know drawings permits to get all the all the brands and what brands are in here we're all in here with very specific purpose I mean these are brands that I love I think they also represent me and I think they're brands that a lot of people that also watch their content can also align with so that was important and it was just a long journey but just to answer your question I mean how this all happened I think it happened with just a chance it happened with somebody that liked the subject matter and just was taking it one day at a time to just keep trying to do that as long as they possibly could yeah and looking around the store you talked a little bit about this but these brands are kind of a step up at least you know price-wise from what you've been selling on the website is it seems like that is intentional and why did you go about it like I know that when I'm spending money on a really expensive watch I want to try it on before I look at it so is that one of the reasons why you did this because someone could then go into another store try on in Omega and buy it from them there's a variety of reasons when you're trying to make a store successful to and a brick mortar environment versus e-commerce it's it's a different approach you have to have in general we're here in Cleveland that was also a consideration that's where I'm from and I also was looking at okay what is the mix of brands that also could resonate within this Market that's being underserved I mean this Market is very underserved there's a lot of just the midwestern and middle States of America that you see what happens with many of the brands it's just the coast and they forget about all the rest when it comes to like this retail experience so part of it was where could we find a unique brand mix that could work in a market the other aspect is you want brands that represent you know what you have here and you know it can be a cool draw and you know also represent our brand and what we've done so far with e-commerce uh but also you know you do want to just continue to just expand your offering too you you do want to have a brand mix that is representative of what we are because just because we have certain models on our website I like to cover the entire industry I go from Casio to FP I mean that's kind of my Approach because I can find joy in all of those different watches and I genuinely mean that and I also have you know spoken to many enthusiasts where they start one place but we know how this goes right I mean we it's it's a dangerous game where you just keep collecting and collecting and collecting and you just one day you're thinking $500 for a you know a Hamilton I can't I this is crazy and then the next day you're buying a Rolex or an Omega I mean like this is the type of stuff that happen so it was all of those considerations at once where you're thinking about the local you're thinking about uh you know what you want your brand to be you know on a national level and you know what experience you wanted to have in the store environment it was all those things and the thing also that I'll mention is we also wanted this store to be an extension of what we were already doing too so like the space to my left I mean this is you know a space that we call our Teddy space where we have our warehouse down the street if you ever want to see anything beyond these pillar Brands uh that is something we can always just pull in here have an appointment setting and that's also important one other thing I'll also mention is When developing a store there's another thing that Brands care about which is co tency yeah and if you're going to have one brand so say you want an Omega you have to think about what other brands they feel comfortable with they want to create a luxury presentation no matter what so you have to make sure that you are thinking about the customer you're thinking about yourself you're also thinking about the brands and creating great image for everybody yeah and that kind of leads me to my next question is I know that you know when I'm in a new city whether it's internationally or in the US the first thing I really do when I get to that city is look up who the like authorized dealer is and I thought you might and and walk around and you know like just because most of my friends aren't necessarily watch people so I can talk to you know the people that work there who are watch people but also just to kind of get a feel for what they offer and and all that entails and I've seen like your videos with Kevin o where you're doing like shopping and you know another New York City retailer I won't name the name because obviously um but how did your visits these retailers shape what you wanted Teddy baldar the teddy store to look like what did you like and not like one is I think there's a lot of great retail locations in the United States and I'll mention Booker watch the Switzerland I mean it's fine I I have no no issue with any other retailers cuz I think this industry in general it's good if we all succeed the thing I learned the most though is I I want people to feel welcome you know the same approach that I have online is I am just a guy who's talking about something I'm passionate about so I want to make sure our retail environment can also really mirror that same idea so that was the biggest thing for me I don't want to have an environment where somebody comes in I want to buy a watch we don't have that watch you can't that whole scenario I don't want to have that talk track I also don't want someone to feel as much as you know we like to you know dress up have a know luxury presentation I don't want anybody to feel intimidated I mean you're going to come in the store I want them to be greeted with a smile uh whether they're buying or not I mean we understand people might just want a window shop that's okay I mean we're going to try to serve everybody equally and do the best that we can obviously band with sometimes it's a little bit it's difficult but we really do want to create an environment where everybody's welcome and I think that's the number one thing and to think about the brand mix where we're I'm an I'm an Enthusiast first I'm an Enthusiast first and the brands in here I think are Enthusiast Brands so that was where I think we were also thinking uh you know really pondering like how could we be a little bit different is even the brands in here like is it gluto ranal is that a brand that every retailer would pick probably not and there's reasons why and why not you wouldn't do that but for us it made perfect sense because I see this as one of the great gems in watchmaking from a value standpoint from an artisanal watchmaking approach but that's I think what makes us a little bit different too is because we can also resonate with different brands and with people that walk in on a wavelength that probably a lot of other traditional retailers Maybe Can't at least that's what I hope and what about the other brands I see you have brightling and Grand SEO and Omega what was your thought process between those three other brands all of these are brands that I like I collect and they gel well together I love the story of you have Switzerland in the front Japan also in the front Germany and then you have omega I mean these like this was my first luxury brand I ever owned Grand SEO I have so much admiration for just Japanese craftsmanship whether we're talking about watches or beyond that I collect Salvage Denim and so like I like that whole aspect of you know what Japan does they're just the peak of just doing things to a new level brightling the icons that this brand has remarkable and I think they're just an incredible draw for somebody coming in the amount of people we have that come by this store and to see brightling like brightling get very excited surpass my expectations so that I mean that was another reason and then I mentioned with you know go it's just a cool story to tell and like you have the city of gluta which I've been fortunate enough to visit where you see there is like you know 5,000 people that live here it's a resilient place you know this place was you know taken over and all the World War II just all the drama there but they remain this manufacturing Powerhouse where there's only around 12 brands in that region and they're still doing the majority of their work there I mean 95% of the components in those watches are produced in glucha this small little region two restaurants two traffic lights I mean this is there's nothing going on but this is the mecca of watchmaking for Germany so it was just trying to figure out how they could work together and just create an environment where they can kind of feed off of each other but also are they a reflection of you and what you're all about that that was kind of the goal yeah and looking at the store you can I you've taken this store within a store concept which I think is becoming much bigger in the in the watch industry you if you look at bright Ling there's this really cool brick wall and then you know gr SEO has like it's almost like their dials like with the pattern and but it's a lot more kind of like you know minimalist and then obviously Omega behind us has that red and and the wood how do you take this store within store concept because I'm sure the brands are very particular about what they want but also keep kind of your teddy spin on it at the same time so each brand when you get a space like this how it typically goes is you approach the brands with the space that you want and you just kind of pitch them on hey this is our concept and then once they express interest you're then figuring out how much space you know each brand will get you're working back and forth and then from there you develop a design one thing that I wanted to do with this store is I wanted each brand to be their own distinct idea while also not having it clash with anything brightling with the yellow the brick it looks amazing when you walk in I think it makes a great impression but then you have this very muted you know Grand SEO very Sleek like how can that all work together so I think you have to think about it the same way as you're looking at design you have a palette you have the floor just alone you know the walls what are the colors like just simple ideas like this how can they all pop in their own way so that it doesn't Clash that was kind of it I mean that was really the approach very cool and it works I think thank you I hope so so you know I think you said this in one of the videos I watched recently you're not going to be here all the time how often are you going going to be here and how do you then keep the experience here for people that want to come by and they want to Teddy I mean I think that is where you have good people you know the people that work here like for example like a will who is the first employee here he saw he started as a customer service person then if you've watched one of our videos you've seen his his work too because he was a photographer he just shot all the videos before this and now he's working on the floor like this person knows the cycle of our business John who has run two different stores in this region has worked a lot of national players I mean these people know watches but they also know my brand as well as I almost know it so you have to have good people that understand what you're about and I think that is the first thing because you can't be everywhere I mean that's the challenge with my business a double- Ed sword because yes I think people have a personal connection to me but I can't be there for every single person and that pains me so you have to invest in good people that understand what you want your want your approach to be uh so that was like the first thing and then what I want to do is how can you extend access and also just you know be able to be there and Shake somebody's hand I think you have to have this event cycle and your kind of more intimate environment appointment only where we can just get a group of 30 to 40 people and just have these one-on ones and have an ability to have these conversations as much as we can so it's it's figuring out the scale of it but it's also figuring out you know what's feasible too so you will be having events here for collectors absolutely that's what I think would be a great opportunity yes and so you're from Cleveland originally I am uh so is that why you chose Cleveland first and are you thinking about expanding Beyond Cleveland it's two weeks in so I I want to make this one successful first but we we chose Cleveland for a variety of reasons one is we do think that this is an underserved market and I'm a believer that you don't invest in anything that you don't know and there's one thing I do know outside of watches and that is this Market I mean I know what could work here I know the people here I know what's missing at least what I feel is missing so I wanted to start in a place where I had that confidence the other aspect was this this Center in Crocker Park it's a phenomenal shopping center where you know you're seeing you know here on a Sunday just the foot traffic coming by like I I just thought that was a really good draw and then Cleveland in terms of where it's located I think is also great because we are a 2-hour drive from Detroit we're a 2hour drive from Columbus 2-hour drive from Pittsburgh then you have Cincinnati 3 to four hours away then you have Chicago 5 hours away so you have access to you know 30 million people within a 5H hour drive of you and a lot of these people don't have access to a brand like a gr SEO like we're the only retailer outside of Cincinnati which is a 4our drive away to even see this brand there's been people that come in this store and like gr seo's here and like that's something that if you go into Manhattan it's like oh Gro again oh there it is again you so this is cool aspect of it we also have our team here I mean we have over 20 people that you know work in Cleveland so we have this company that's based here that makes it easy as well and being able to take that leap and it allows us to learn a lot you know to just see what goes forward cuz if you can win in a market like Cleveland I think it opens up where you can really think about where you can scale uh from here so are there any brands that people have come in and really ask for that you don't carry that you now are now thinking about carrying well I mean the thing that comes in all the time this is every reach on the country yeah Rolex you know yeah but that's you know that's besides the point yes I mean absolutely but this is also why this space over here is very important where you can extend what you're doing with e-commerce and have this appointment type setting uh but it's been great and you see the appetite for not only these Brands but like hey what's next what's next I'm looking forward what what brand would you want if you could any brand that you don't carry right now I don't I don't know if there'd be one if I do another store it would it' be a similar environment i' think of like a cohort of three to four something like this and then also I'd want to you know figure out how do we extend the e-commerce present so I don't know cuz one wouldn't get it done right like one would not change anything I think we have to you know scale it out a little bit more because I don't think there's not really room to no this place is maxed out this place is maxed out go over the lease next door whatever we need to do yes you know now that you have this space are you going to be doing more like filming and incorporate it more into your you know your platform doing stuff from the store I think so I mean I do want to keep the Personal Touch of what our brand is though I don't want this to become like the place I shoot out of cuz one it's not a easy place to shoot out of or a great place to shoot out of you have a lot of lights different color temperatures the audio is probably not the greatest place in the world but obviously there's going to be opportunities to sh here and you know make it this environment where you know it could just kind of elevate a little bit but I also have to think about the ease of just shooting and being able to just you know keep up with the schedule that we have of posting two three videos a week on the main channel uh so there's that balance but I also want to make sure that I don't get too corporate too I think this has a certain approach this is the sales side and the content to me is it's yes they're connected but they have some Purity to it and it's a little bit of a different Lane well we were talking earlier before we started shooting and I was talking about how I shoot from my apartment and you said you still shoot at home is that all your content shot at home uh sometimes yeah I mean I have a studio set up at home I have a studio set up elsewhere so it just kind of depends on the day so if we're trying to get some things out absolutely I've been re watching your YouTube videos for a long time and I see a lot of questions in the comments and I wanted to clear up some things and see if you could answer them for me sure so the first one is you know I think I've seen your interviews with Kevin o you've gone watch shopping with him you know I see people asking whether he's an investor or who's an investor in Teddy baldasar is he an investor and if not or if so who else is investing in Teddy balesar right now there is no investor I mean this has all been truly Cash Flow by my partner Mike and I and we've known each other for a long time and we both have a very similar philosophy to business like I live pretty chill life you know I live closer to Farms than I do you know luxury watches uh I don't really you know need to take that much out of the business I have a lot of just retained earnings and we just built this up and of course there's you know some line of credit that's involved you know buying some inventory but for us right now I mean it's important for me to just keep autonomy so as much as I love Kevin there's there's actually no outside investor for the for the company so how did you get introduced to Kevin and how did these interviews come about that came from him coming to town for speaking engagement and I saw at the time he was posting about watches and we saw this kind of opportunity I was getting hit with these ads just like hey you know coming for the speaking engagement and we just reached out and just asked Hey Kevin saw you're coming to town we or watch channel talk about watch this so you have some interest in the subject how would you like to just come on our Channel set up a quick interview we'll go to the location where you're doing your speaking engagement and we'll just knock it out yeah he said yes and it went really well and then he saw the views I saw the views it made sense to keep a relationship going I think we have a good stick together I I'm kind of more you know just mellow and just chill about things he's got his old Shark Tank pitch and I think it allows us to poke fun at one another and it's a it's a funny but cool marriage very Ino um so I think one of the questions is you know people see you on YouTube but they know you have this you know online retail and now you know brick and mortar store how big is the business you know how many Watchers are you selling how many employees do you have what can you tell us so as of right now we're just shy around 25 employees fulltime uh in terms of the business and how it operates I mean the majority of how we make money is through selling watches I mean YouTube we get a little bit but that operates at a net loss pretty dramatically I mean it's not going to be funding our business so really selling watches which you know we're fortunate to you sell roughly over a thousand watches a month at this stage uh so that's really how the business is able to operate interesting so what is the goal 5,000 watches a month I don't really think about it I mean the the main thing for me is I want to keep producing this content and how we're able to do that build a team build a company it is through selling watches so obviously of course you'd like to sell more watches because that means you know just more fruits and also you're able to scale things which that excites me as an entrepreneur and uh you know being able to you know be on screen talk about something I like it's almost just creating a mo around being able to do something you love for a long time and that's kind of the main thing that drives me I don't if I was just going after this for without any passion I would burnt out a long time ago honestly and do you see like a direct correlation if you post a video about Tio for example to a spike in you know sales and maybe to so on your website it all comes down to the product right so for us the content itself what drives the content is we have a process where it gets approved through each person at the company it's involved with the content but also even like salespeople with their part of their job every single week they need to pitch five ideas for content and what we'll do every single Monday morning is we'll go through our content calendar but in addition to that we go through all the pitches that people have some will get approved some will not and really what allows it to get approved more than anything is will the video get engagement that's number one or is there a cool little angle and story that we can tell obviously if there is a cool watch we sell it yes you can see it in connection but the views versus what sells that is not directly correlated it comes down to views but also you have to have a product that makes sense and that's why we always are thinking about what's a product that resonates with audience first and foremost and can it get work within YouTube because if you don't do that and you're just trying to sell product people feel it and it's also not going to get engagement so nobody wins so do you pay attention to what people are saying in the comments for what they want you to cover and maybe in the store now what people come in and ask about yes you just sometimes have to keep in mind that what people say versus how they act are two very different things right so the comments you have to make sure that it's not just an isolated incident it's really people are requesting this and when it makes sense it makes sense if it's just some random you know brand that no one's heard of like I mean that's a tougher Hill to climb because that's that's the challenge of you know spending this amount of money on content is you have to really look at it through like okay what's going to get the most engagement and that's just the the formula of YouTube and the formula of social media I mean it's unfortunate because there are a lot of things I'd love to do uh but you have to find the balance of what do people want to see as the first and foremost important thing that you're doing and then try to you know balance that out with the story and an angle so that it can you know connect the right way yeah because I A lot of times what I do is I find a watch that I like and I'm like I'll just review this because I like it how much of that is do you want to do for sure like as an example like it didn't do that well but I love the watch it's a parmiani Tunda retrun GMT like that watch is so sweet and I I you know it didn't do that well for our Channel but I just wanted to cover that watch I had no reason to cover that watch other than the fact that I thought it was a badass piece and that was it yeah I covered that watch it's really cool watch I one of my favorite watches in the past few years for sure so there have been a lot of I guess watch media websites and blogs that have kind of gone into the retail space and some successfully and some less successfully you know one of the questions I have is how do you go about this and not become just like an advertising arm of the brands that you're representing and how does that not become the whole identity of Teddy and Teddy balesar sure I remember when we first started sitting down you're asking about how did it evolve to this point cuz in a space like watches let's be frank it's hard to make money in content especially you have essentially two routes you could either go the avoral route or you could go through the retail route I decided to go the retail route you could also just make this a hobby which is fine but if you're trying to make a living too and you know really scale the production and I had an interest in scaling things you have to make that decision yeah for me I felt that the best way to go about it was retail because for one we don't do the double dipping I mean my interest is through selling watches but also creating great content people know if they are in the market for a watch they know Teddy baller.com it's kind of a meme at this point all I say is Teddy baller.com or an author do over 30 Brands that's just become something people know uh so you just lay out what your interests are you do the best you possibly can you try to do things with Integrity to the highest degree but you also have to look at the industry that you're in and trying to make it you know in the way you can and and to me that was the best route and I think this question of objectivity we all have our own challenge of it right I mean for us you know we have retail for others it might be being gifted a watch it might be having a friend at a company uh it might also just be getting paid for advertorial Content that you are directly getting paid to produce and hit publish on so we're all trying our best that's just the way that I try my best do you think that you know some of these blogs going into retail has caused them to lose that and that's why they haven't been as successful in as you have been in in their retail operation so we've been an authorized dealer since 2020 as we talked about so this is something that we've been finding the balance of for a while uh I I mean I think part of it too is just having too many people in the room where you're trying to do too many things for everybody you're selling aoral you have investors that's difficult it's difficult to make everybody happy but when you can operate just based on as an individual when I hit to the camera every time the only person I'm really answering to is myself and I'm just presenting myself also if I don't do a good job at that who takes the hit it's me my name's on the building so that's the other element of it I think which allow us to be a little more successful there's a personal aspect to it which I feel more of an obligation to make sure that I'm putting my best step forward foot forward and covering things the right way because if people don't like our brand they indirectly or directly are not going to like me and I take a lot of pride in my name I take a lot of pride in what I built and I don't want to throw that away I don't so I I see on the sign it says just Teddy but your website's Teddy baldasar first of all my pronouncing your last name correctly for anyone that wants to know that is what I say now it's an Italian origin so it's actually not the right way to say it we americanize it when my great-grandfather came over from Italy so it's more Vare instead of baldasar but I say baldasar so that's a whole another story for another day but you mentioned yeah Teddy outside but the brand is Teddy baldar I mean everything in terms of our LLC to everything about the company it's Teddy baldasar Teddy in that framing I mean that that was all our logo when we first launched and we thought about you know what's you know welcoming but also we did think about how long baldar is it's hard to say you had to ask me how do you say it so all of these were things that we were thinking about as we were trying to know make the store and I wanted to be welcoming what's more welcoming Teddy or Teddy baldar I mean hopefully Teddy baldar is a welcoming thing I did a good job in presenting a very open environment but it's harder to say and I could see it being intimidating in some way to come into the store with all these luxury Brands and that's the antithesis of what I want I want people to come into the store feel welcome feel like they can whether they have the budget for or not they're looking at a watch or not they're coming in just browsing it's great I want them to feel at home and you have you're like a one name person like Sher radana at this point at least in the watch space that's crazy think about I crazy to think about I'm very flattered that You' say that so let's kind not talk about watches now what would you do if you weren't you know if you didn't have a watch YouTube and you know what else would you do so two things that I'm probably the most passionate about are watches and content I am not all watches though so if you wanted to talk with me about other things there's probably a wide variety of things that I would have potentially gotten into but content was always an element of interest and it was intersecting with watches which I think allowed this to all work but huge sports fan I mean I I watch sports it's it's my my just release from everything and you know I can get out and just kind of dumb my brain down for a moment with a stressful day and just watch it love music um come from a very musical family very interested in that do you play anything I play drums a lot growing up um don't play as much now it's a little loud but you know I'm trying to get a new drum set in you know just no YouTube video of you playing the drums there's no YouTube video there there actually might be a high school talent show video out there but good luck finding that kudos to anybody that put it put it in the um comments and I will pin that comment it might be taken down by now so good luck but I probably would be doing something with content I would I would still think um but watches was just this thing that I was so fascinated with and it just felt like the right thing to post about at the time I'm also very into like men style fashion like Heritage clothing things of that sort some of the early videos were not all watch videos I think the second video on this channel was a boot review right so is it still up it might be I actually don't know I mean some of those early videos I I probably just looked at them one day I was like do I want to keep that out I most of my videos are still up yes but I'm not sure about that one but goes to show I'm kind of all over the map I have a lot of different interests you know watch is just one element of me but that's the case for many enthusiasts right I mean watches is like one element to I think a a whole individual I always say as well you know a great watch does not make a great person you should stay interested in a variety of different things and let these watches be a part of your journey let that journey be whatever you're interested in and wherever it takes you yeah and I think we first met in Atlanta at the Atlanta Braves game and you know you were really into into into it um sorry if I wasn't talk I was just into the game yeah but are there ways you've been thinking about incorporating these other interests that intersect with watches into like your content how I think about it the problem is I I I have interests and as a human you want to talk about all your interests watches is enough to satiate me and you also have to think about the people that are watching if the History Channel starts posting about sports all of the sudden people are like what's going on I talk to my cable provider this isn't what I signed up for and what I'm paying for people come to me to see watch content so that's what I want to give them well if you're so one of the questions I have is you know I started putting my face out there and doing YouTube rather recently and before that I was kind of behind the scenes on R Enthusiast so people didn't really recognize me but one of the things is on YouTube people and Reddit and all the other social media sites people can sometimes be a little bit harsh and you can get some negative feedback how do you deal with that and you know what is your reaction to you know the memes about you and all of you know all that entails well some of them are very funny I mean let just be objective about it I mean I see some and I I laugh to myself but you do have to just see things in an appropriate way and know that you're also fortunate enough to reach a lot of people and when you're reaching a lot of people there are going to be a percentage of those people that are not going to like you which is a weird like reality because I when interacting with people I I do you know try to set you know a nice step forward make sure that I'm presenting myself in a good way but at the end of the day some people are just not going to like what you're doing um so you have to keep that in mind that it's a numbers game and sometimes they might be correct right that mean not all of them some of them are just hating but there's truly honesty and truth behind some of the the criticism so I think you always have to keep all of that in mind I you look to an extent but you just look to an extent um in you know in all your videos you say I'm Teddy Baldur authorized retailer of 30 plus Brands and it's almost become a meme at this point and like why do you say that is it intentional or I just said it one day because I remember I was speaking with uh my business partner and we were just talking abouty like what makes a what makes our store unique you know one of the things was just a number like 30 brands that's actually a pretty cool shop and I just would list off some of the things like quick and fast fulfillment dedicated customer support so it was just one of the points to make but it's now has become a little bit of a talk track and I just go into it at the end of every video uh but yeah it was just trying to figure out why your store was unique and I think that is you know slightly unique if you look at most authorized dealers do you think that's helped kind of turn you from just a YouTube content creator to you know an authorized retailer like repeat it and getting people to really understand that probably and then also knowing what authorize is too because most people that sell watches online are not authorized retailers they are you know pre-owned sellers things of this sort so to go that route I think was also important to to make because authorize means something rather than you know selling elsewhere not to say that it's bad to buy a pre-own watch I think it's great you can do that uh it's just that it is different well that's one of the things most of I feel watch bloggers have kind of either gone the editorial route or sell you know flip watches or sell secondhand you know going to as an authorized retailer seems like a much bigger jump and a lot harder to do it's just a lot of B2B type of interactions you have to have and conversations you need to have which if you're not ready to have that then you're it's it's just very demoralizing because if you're going as the entrepreneurial route and you just want to have autonomy the most like ability to just execute without any other conversation to have PR makes a lot more sense but it also doesn't make as much sense in a variety of areas for us just because of the infrastructure you have to have the photography needs that you have to have while starting to scale your content production like how can you make all this work because I think about you have authentication you have to have line of credit and capital available to do it I would want to personally take photos of almost every single Watch because you want what does a client want they want to see it y thinking about a new watch it's just not the same amount of investment on that front to keep keep the operation going in that manner so it was just the route that we took I think we considered a lot of routes for monetization but it authorized was just the crazy enough thing that we decided to ask about and uh proceed forward with so you've had a lot of obvious Success With You know the size of your channel and also this authorized retail route that you've taken have there been any things that weren't as successful that you tried that you can talk about yeah AB I mean as an entrepreneur failure is part of it uh you you do get a lot of nose in this process so as much as we succeeded in a lot of areas there's been many failures along the way but there's also been some larger failures something as an example we talked about pre-owned you know pre-owned that was something we dabbled in but it just wasn't as scalable and it was difficult for us to really get it to a point where it worked with our business model we had to photograph the watches we had to authenticate you have to have the line of you know capital and transferring of even funds like you know wire transfer having the process to do that like that was a whole another business model while doing authorized that we we got going but we just didn't see the same ability to scale in especially a saturated area I mean authorized is still you know saturated area but you know pre-own for us wasn't just our angle so we we shut that down you know I didn't even know you did that exactly so you know it was very shortlived probably 6 months but you learn you pivot and you just keep going with what works uh also I I started a second Channel I started a second Channel with my wife it was it was a Channel about fragrances uh that was done very similar to watches I had an interest in it I know fragrances quite well but that didn't work either cuz I couldn't scale my time and you have to look at the limitations of where your time is so that was a big learning for me is how can I continue to grow things and extend and also we talked about this whole idea of how do you get into different verticals and talk about different things you're interested in you do also have to keep in mind your time and what you know what's available to you and as you know to you know producing content like it's a invest it takes a long time you know even editing anything I mean I don't I don't edit the video but like even going back and forth on an edit revisions like that's a whole process in itself how much of the process are you actually involved in doing yourself I think or my subscribers would like to know that I it's mostly on the front end nowadays uh so very involved in any writing or pre-production you know for larger shoots still cuz I'm you know going to be on camera I have great group of people that are helping me though in a lot of that so like I'll go back and forth you know with with scripting and then I'll you know fine-tune it to my voice I'll spend time with the watches but some of that is you know helping kind of team me up so I can really hit it hit the ground running maybe doing some preliminary research that I can just kind of cross check and make sure it aligns with my own frame of mind and what I am aware of but then there the pre a post-production process which is very much involved outside of my hand so I usually will just upload footage and it goes to an editor and then our video content manager will go in back and forth with an Editor to get it to the publish date most of the videos I record I actually don't watch myself unless it's a bigger production nowadays interesting and early on were you editing all your own content oh yeah oh yes I me that's you have to do it you have to do it you have to first build the process and I think that's important too every process in this business at one point for the most part I did yeah right and that allows you to be a better employer allows you to be a better boss it allows you to be able to figure out like what are the pain points of your business that there are going to be some snags bottlenecks uh but yes video editing did it all but I just passed that was something I passed off early on because it is just a huge huge amount of time that you spend I don't think a lot of people recognize like for one video on our channel so you do the pre-production you do any scripting if needed sometimes you can go directly to camera because you're just maybe doing listicle or things of that sort but many times talking about 20 to 40 hours just on of just on edit just on the edit that's somebody's almost full week that they're going back and forth on just to get that done and you're doing multiple of these a week yeah that doesn't just happen it's it's hard that's why I only get one out a week it's hard hey I get it I mean it's it's very difficult it's very difficult so there are a lot of people that love watches and are collectors that probably want to get started creating watch content and you've been very successful at it so what advice would you give them for someone either starting a YouTube channel or Instagram or even Tik Tok what advice would you give them just get started if you have not started yet because that was the biggest hold up for me was just taking the first step to get it done and throw as much at you can at the wall until you figure out what works for your voice because early days like as I mentioned it wasn't all just what you see now there was a lot of just stumbling and you have to figure out what your lane is so there are going to be things that will just crash and burn right away and it will not work figure it out figure out what works for you figure out what works in the algorithm figure out what aligns with your voice and what you want to talk about and if you can find your lane within a lane that's the most important thing everybody has their own specialty on what their delivery is what their style is you have to find your style and find content that is repeatable that's the most important thing I actually believe because if you just do it one time that doesn't mean anything in this world of content that's moving at 150 miles per hour every single day you have to make it repeatable so that would be what I would most likely advise yeah I found that I'm still constantly fine-tuning what I'm doing and each time it's just like a little Improvement and you eventually get to like you're like 80 or 90% of what the kind of top production people are doing um but it just takes a lot you know and every single time is a little bit better than the last and understand what diminishing returns are because something that you might notice the audience doesn't notice yeah right because like you may have put all this time into this one little aspect of the shot or one little aspect of the edit nobody cares yeah so test out whether or not people actually miss where you're putting your effort because not everything is created equal when it comes to effort yeah some of my best performing content is my earliest content with which you know was much worse produced if I to say myself so it's always interesting to see that mhm you're like this video is so great Why didn't it do as well as you know this video where I don't know what I'm doing high production doesn't always equal views so I think we've discussed a lot my kind of final question would be what's the future of Teddy baldasar where are you going next what do you what do you have planned as of right now I'm just taking a deep breath because just to get this store open was a long journey and I want to make it successful where it goes from here I think you just have to keep producing great content we have to learn what this store is going to do is there more scale to this and what are people's interactions as they come in the store but right now we're just basically taking a day at a time I do want to just continue to be a leading voice I feel very fortunate to be able to talk about something I love every single day so honestly my main goal just personally is to just set up a great life for myself where I can talk about something I'm passionate about because I recognize every single day now like that is becoming the rare aspect of this business this is all cool but the fact that I can do my work and still have interest in it that's where I have a lot of successful people around me or at least it appears successful but you recognize that there's an element that's missing and what's missing is that they don't have something that still gets them excited watch it still get me excited can you show me around the store um we're in Crocker Park right correct so we're about 25 minutes or so outside of downtown Cleveland this is in the West suburbs of Cleveland we really love this Shopping Center in Crocker I mean it's place that we grew up kind of going to and it was certainly missing a wash store so we're excited to bring it here this is the only watchh store in Crocker Park correct honestly on the whole side of Cleveland so to get to even another watchh store you're driving 45 plus minutes to an hour wow so show me around so starting left gr Seiko we're the only retailer in Ohio outside of one other one but that's 4 hours away pretty big state love this brand collector of this brand this is so important for me to have in this store as an Enthusiast a collector the technology that they have the collectibility the dials just the whole imagery around it I mean I I love it I mean I know that you also a big fan of grand SE as well so that's front of house on this side then flipping over here bright Ling so this to me might be the most visually eye-catching of all of them with the bricks it's also a little bit different than everything else everything else is kind of you know Sleek very is and all the bricks we wereing bricks in our warehouse for probably months uh so that was you know crazy to see this all get put together britling it's just such a good draw for people that are coming through and it's a great brand too when you're talking about just icons you know chronomat Premiere navitimer super ocean Heritage as well as more contemporary options there's just a lot to get lost in cool collectibility and brightling collectors I mean they're very very passionate about this product you know it's one of the most recognizable Brands so it makes sense to kind of be front of house when I think of you know you might be a little bit different but we're we're based in Cleveland some of the brands I think of like brightling is one of the first ones for people that are not into watches it's up there I'd say top five EAS yeah definitely so I like how this worked out it was somewhat with intention you have Japan you have Switzerland and then you have Germany with GL de ranal so this to me is one of the gems in watchmaking in general not even talking about Germany I love talking about this brand just because whenever you come in the store we've seen and we've only been open for a couple of weeks but when somebody comes in this gets a ton of questions and then you get to see watches like this like a panamatic inverse you're getting into this price range for those watches and under 15 grand for all of for many of these watches unless you're talking about either a higher complication like their 70s chronograph or some of the gold pieces just remarkable value I mean they're producing 95% of their components in glass UTA which is a small little town 5,000 people not much going on outside of watchmaking I mean watchmaking is clearly a hub uh but this is really where they start to separate where you're in a market here this High horology type of stuff and artisinal finishing usually something you're not going to get this brand is just so cool so what do we have over here I see a lot of different brands so this is what we're calling our Teddy space now what we want to do is have an extension of what we've been doing online for years Teddy baller.com so if somebody you know they see this space you know you see four key Brands but we sell 30 other brands online and we don't have room for everything because I didn't also want to get a 20,000 foot uh showroom to begin my journey in retail but we do want to have an ability to Showcase a lot of different brands so our warehous is right down the street about you know 5 10 minute drive and if you ever are coming to town you want to look at some watches this is where we can know really dedicate and doing an appointment setting showcase a variety of different brands and make it curated to what you might see online so you can have it in this install our environment where typically you don't see a lot of you know brands that we sell online in a market like here or really even a market like anywhere in the United States so that's kind of the whole premise of this location where it could be dynamic and allow people to see a variety of different brands so you can make an appointment and say hey I want to see this watch this watch and that watch and when you come you'll have that moved over from your Warehouse exactly so me give us about 24 hours 48 hours for hands just so we can get everything over but yes that's the whole premise that's great that seems pretty unique you know MH to to you guys and then back of house Omega so this is a space that we also wanted to make more of a hybridized space where you can make it Lounge but also of course showcase the watches in a very you know upscale way I mean Omega very special brand for me is the first true luxury watch I've ever owned was an Omega my connection though was mostly with the constellation family which is usually not the connection most people have I mean I'm wearing an Omega Globe Master constellation right now that to me is a watch that epitomizes a lot of the things that I love about Omega I mean it more the me the ey tungsten carbide vessel you know Master chronometer certified you know Pursuits of chronometry you get all that in one package and a really clean look I I love the pipe hand dial so and being an understated piece I like that but beautiful back area you know couch chandelier I always say you know keep your head down if you're you know below 6 feet you should be okay but you know still just be alert back there but this is really the back of house here and uh great place to just lounge and of course talk watches too yeah and speed master I that's where I that's where I land with omegas being a big kind of space nerd First Watch On The Moon you along with many others many others yeah and one other thing before we you know talk about the rest of the space I think another important thing to talk about is the people in store so we have John we have will here they've been with the company for a long time they know a thing or two about retail they're Wash Guys for myself because I can't be here all the time I will definitely stop in but it's important for us to be able to have the approach that we have with all of our cont content and just being down to earth we're all from this area we know it well we love watches that's the most important thing and these guys are Pros they know what they're doing and uh they love to talk maybe maybe a little bit too much honestly we spent a lot of time just chatting enough in here and they know every single day it feels like we're been open after close and just being able to talk about this great nice to meet you guys nice to meet you as well yeah well thank you for letting me stop by and see the amazing store it's it's been great um I will post links in you know in caption to how they can visit the store and how they can visit your website and also links to my website R Enthusiast ccom and you know if you want to stay up to date on any wash news and everything so thank you so much thank you for coming Craig I really do appreciate it thanks for stopping in please do stop in next time and next time I'm Cleveland I'm definitely coming back please do

Channel: Wrist Enthusiast

Views: 45,347

Keywords: teddy baldassarre grand seiko, teddy baldassarre reviews, teddy baldassarre kevin oleary, teddy baldassarre interview, interview questions and answers, affordable watches for men

Id: -pioD5Omn9A

Length: 50min 46sec (3046 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 08 2024