NY Launch Pod: Welcome to the New York Launch Pod, the New York Press Club, award-winning podcast highlighting the most interesting new startups, businesses and openings in the New York City area. I’m your host and New York attorney Hal Coopersmith, and in this episode, we are speaking all about Watches. Our Guest Craig Karger started an Instagram page and now has a blog dedicated to wrist watches. What started as a side hustle has now become more. Here’s Craig:
Craig Karger: What we do is really write bespoke articles that feel really organic and are very interesting to the audience that fit with what I’ve already been doing for years and just do it for them as well and also find ways to integrate these brands content into our already existing content and our future content that doesn’t feel like it’s just the big advertisement.
NY Launch Pod: Listen to the episode to find out how Craig was able to break into the watch industry by being niche, using new media and a whole lot more.
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NY Launch Pod: So you love watches?
Craig Karger: Yes. I’ve been collecting since I was 12 or 13 years old.
NY Launch Pod: And what is it about watches that you love?
Craig Karger: I think initially, it’s the one piece of jewelry that a guy can really get. I’ve had periods where I wore a bracelet or a necklace, but watches have been kind of the one thing that I feel you can wear with any outfit and really appreciate. And then over time as I got a little bit more sophisticated and a little bit older, I learned to appreciate the different, like functionalities of watches and the different complications that some of them have that, maybe you wouldn’t appreciate when, you are a teenager or a young adult even.
NY Launch Pod: And I feel like you’ve had this appreciation for watches for a period of time, but now it would seem that watch culture itself is really taking on its own sort of movement, unless I’m mistaken about that.
Craig Karger: No, I agree with that and I think there’s kind of two areas. I mean, there’s the area that are seeing that people that are seeing these watch prices spike and kind of trying to get in, in the same way that when people got into the stock market because of game stop and all that stuff, people are jumping into it in that way. And then I think you have the other side of it that are truly appreciating watches and there’s a lot of these like new, like independent watch brands that are doing really interesting things. So I think there’s two aspects of that, and then, with social media and everything, you can kind of see what celebrities are wearing and there’s a lot of watch spotters out there and I do a lot of that. So I think it kind of, allows like another outlet for people to see what celebrities and famous people are doing kind of imitate it as well.
NY Launch Pod: And so there’s this whole watch culture and you’ve had an interest in watches yourself. Why did you decide to start an Instagram page, a blog dedicated just to watches?
Craig Karger: I was probably one of the earlier people to do it and I started in, I think 2015.
NY Launch Pod: Seven years ago?
Craig Karger: Seven years ago. Yeah. So I was initially posting some watches on my personal Instagram and I had a friend or two that came to me and said, ”Hey man, first of all, now my whole entire Instagram explore page is just watching and also it’s a little bit obnoxious” and I was like, ”Okay, point taken”. So I created a second page Wrist Enthusiast, and I was like, I’m smart enough, I like watches, I kind of want to be somewhat involved in the industry, I can teach myself how to hack Instagram growth and get into the watch industry that way and that’s what I did.
NY Launch Pod: And so how did you get into the watch industry? Just off of an Instagram page?
Craig Karger: So basically I spent years and years just building my Instagram page and figuring out as Instagram’s algorithm changed the best ways to grow an account and I grew at large enough that it was hard for a lot of these brands to really ignore me. I might be the largest individual persons, watch Instagram page in New York. I’m not sure, but I’m up there, so it’s hard for them to ignore me at this point. At first it just gave me access to when I walked into a store and, they see like, that time in my like late twenties or so they see just a kid, but when I tell them who I am on Instagram, they’ll let me try on anything. I never ask for favors, but I just like seeing the cool things and getting the content in that way. So I did use that to my advantage.
NY Launch Pod: And was it easy to grow an Instagram page?
Craig Karger: Not really. Instagram has changed a lot over the last, seven years. It started out kind of as a wild west and you can kind of do a lot of different strategies to hack growth, like follow and unfollow and liking and commenting on other accounts that are similar to yours. Then, there were other strategies getting big accounts to engage with you and now it’s a little bit more of an art form where you kind of have to pay attention to what is trending and what’s popular and what type of content and mimic that to the best of your ability. So it hasn’t been easy. I do think, since my account is already pretty large, it’s a lot easier for me to continue to have sustained growth. It’s a lot harder for just a small guy trying to make it at this point because Instagram and Facebook do limit your visibility more so than they did in the past.
NY Launch Pod: And you are also posting a lot?
Craig Karger: Yeah. So consistency is key. You stop posting for weeks per months and Instagram will stop favoring your content and your account will be killed. So it’s really, posting two to three times a day. I mean, you could post one time a day if your account calls for it. But posting consistently is like really important to continue to show up on your followers feeds.
NY Launch Pod: And so you are doing all of this. You’re posting at least one time a day, every single day?
Craig Karger: Yeah. I’m posting probably three times a day consistently every day. I also launched a blog in August and I’m writing multiple articles a week and I’m Photoshopping photos that go along with the article to post on social media. So I’m doing all of this after I get home from work.
NY Launch Pod: So how are you getting all this watch content?
Craig Karger: One of the big things that I’ve done and I focused on, which I think is different from other accounts is celebrity watch spotting, which I do some of two, but I thought, everyone’s doing it now, I think it’d be more interesting to see larger parts of famous celebrities or just famous people’s collections and go through them. So it’s a lot of like either crowdsourcing, seeing what people have already found and putting it all together, but it’s also kind of looking through images of these people and making my own determination and doing my own research as well. So, if I’m watching, Shark Tank and I’m watching a new episode and Kevin O’Leary, Mr. Wonderful’s a big watch collector and I see he’s wearing something, I’ll pause it, get a screenshot of it and start looking up what he’s wearing and that’s how I’ll start to build this list and I’ll try and build like the most comprehensive list of watches worn by, famous watch collectors.
NY Launch Pod: So for example, when you see a watch that’s worn by a celebrity, how are you able to source where it came from or what type of watch it is?
Craig Karger: I mean, I’ve just over the years become very adept at like looking at someone’s wrist and kind of knowing what they’re wearing, but sometimes it is a little bit more difficult than that, because sometimes there are multiple models that look the same. So I have another guy that works on the blog with me, I’ll sometimes shoot him a text and be like, ”Hey, which model do you think this is?” But otherwise you have to really know the nuances between different, like variations of a watch, like Audemars Piguet makes a Royal Oak $15,500, and then they make it ultra-thin, which is like a little bit different. The ultra-thin is a little more expensive, it’s a little bit smaller doesn’t have a second hand. So you have to look for those cues to kind of figure out what exact model they’re wearing and we do it to the best of our ability.
NY Launch Pod: So you are leveraging your knowledge in your own right? Finding and sorting that through to indicate to the rest of the world, what type of watch someone else is wearing?
Craig Karger: For the most part, I did an interesting article. I wanted to do an article of the watches worn by the Super Bowl quarterbacks this year. So we had Joe Burrow and Matt Stafford. Stafford was easy. He wore like tech Philipps and some Rolexes, Joe Burrow was a little bit more difficult. He wore iced out Hardiers and I knew from an earlier article I had written that he went to this one jeweler to have his watches iced out. He gifted his offensive lineman, a bunch of iced out G shots and he had some cartiers himself that were iced out. So I just DMD this jeweler, his name is Leo Frost and asked him exactly what he was wearing and he responded and sent me more screenshots, and I included that in my article. So sometimes you can actually go right to the source to figure out what they’re wearing, but you don’t always get a response when you do it that way, but it’s nice when you do, because then you can be very, very confident that you’re getting it right.
NY Launch Pod: And where are you pulling the photos from, for these celebrities who are wearing these watches? How do you go back in time and find what watches they are wearing?
Craig Karger: Like Getty images, you can take screenshots. I take screenshots from TV shows. There’s just like an abundance of searches you can do over the internet to just find celebrities wearing different watches. You can basically research whoever it is and just start looking at what they’re wearing on their wrist and see if you can find pictures that fit that, that mold.
NY Launch Pod: So one of the things that you mentioned is that you are also doing this in your free time? What is motivating you to do this in your free time after work, to continue to pursue this passion and build both a blog, an Instagram page, and kind of go forth from there?
Craig Karger: I’ve been making kind of like decent amount of money on the side from, the Instagram, but that never was the reason for doing it. And when we launched the blog in August, we’ve seen just like a lot of really quick growth, especially on the SEO and the Google search side. We started to partner with watch brands and that’s really motivating me. We’ve gotten bigger in six, seven months than it took some watch blogs years to get. So that’s really proving to me that I have this ability to grow, not only in an Instagram account, but in actual watch publication much quicker than anybody else.
NY Launch Pod: Why do you think that is?
Craig Karger: I think, I don’t want to make the watch industry seem snobby or anything, but my focus has always been purely on or not purely, I like to write about interesting things, but I have a much bigger focus on growth and getting growth by all means possible in a way that I feel like, a lot of these publications that have existed for a long time, don’t really understand or have the willingness to, do. I’ll write about things that I know people are going to want to read about and a lot of watch publications write about what they want to write about and not what people actually want to read about. So I spend a lot of time looking at, Google SEO, keywords, and figuring out ways that I can basically snipe articles from the top blogs and I do it consistently.
NY Launch Pod: And what do people want to read about? What are items that they want to consume?
Craig Karger: They want kind of like a lot of pop culture stuff, which I think some other blogs have stayed away from. So watch spotting also like watch spotting in television shows and movies, and they want in depth reviews of certain watches, but not every watch. So certain Rolexes, certain smart watches, things like that and we really pick and choose what we’re going to write about in a way that we think will reach the maximum number of people.
NY Launch Pod: And one of the things that’s interesting about what you’re doing, I think it’s probably indicative of this newer media environment is that you’ve chosen a niche and you’re really exploring it and digging down deep. What’s been that experience in terms of maybe the people that you’ve met, ways that you’ve explored the space, gotten into an industry, which is something that, you had mentioned before. What’s been the benefit of going just super niche and, and chasing that as a passion?
Craig Karger: I think it’s provided me access to people in the industry and to be able to, if I do want a piece, hopefully find a way to get it. Not that I can like cut the line or anything, but that’s one thing I think I benefited from. The other thing I think is that I get access to a lot of really cool watches, not to keep, but to review and spend time with in a way that I never would have. I had this really cool mb&f horological machine, it’s called number nine, which is this crazy complicated, like piece of art, that’s a $200,000 watch that I got to enjoy for a month as if it were my own, so I could review it. You get to talk to the people that create these watches as well, so that’s something that I never would have been able to do or get access to without, just having been so deeply ingrained in this industry for so long.
NY Launch Pod: You mentioned that you’ve gained some revenue from what you’re doing, but still working. You’re also emblematic of a culture where you have a full-time job, and this is kind of a side hustle side gig. What do you see as the path to monetization and taking this from pure passion to a full-time business which a lot of entrepreneurs have certainly done before?
Craig Karger: Yeah, so I think, I’ve been providing like advertisements for brands and watch related companies for a while through my Instagram. We have brought on a couple of advertisers, watch brands to our website, and I think that’s the path, but I think it’s not just advertisers or telling a watch brand to come on as an advertiser, it’s providing a lot of value to them. What we do is really write bespoke articles that feel really organic and are very interesting to the audience that fit with what I’ve already been doing for years and just do it for them as well and also find ways to integrate these brands content into our already existing content and our future content that doesn’t feel like it’s just the big advertisement. So for example, we do a lot of watch spotting if we have a brand come to us and one of the celebrities that we focus on, where is that brand? We can feature that in that article. We can go back and add it, or in a new article about some other celebrity, we can feature that watches brand and these are things that I feel like the current players in the market just don’t really spend that time, really focusing on the best way for these brands to get to consumers in a way that isn’t so in your face and just, here’s an advertisement, here’s an article, that’s a pure advertisement. I think we have a lot more creative ways to get these brands in front of the readers that’s a lot more genuine and organic than other blogs and publications have been able to do in the past and I think really selling that to them is the way to really monetize it.
NY Launch Pod: And what do you see as the future for Wrist Enthusiasts?
Craig Karger: So we’re continuing to grow and right now I’m focused on growth and bringing in some revenue. I think we’re at the point where we just crossed about a hundred thousand visits a month. So I think we’re at the point where we should be bringing in and we have a really compelling argument to bring in revenue and just continuing to really grow and start to compete with the really big guys and maybe it eventually will offer watch related products for sale, but I’m not really at that point, I just want to continue providing good content. We’ve on boarded a couple new writers, so it’s not just me and, and my editor in chief, there’s a couple other writers that are starting to contribute. So with more writers, we can start to really amplify our message and amplify our reach.
NY Launch Pod: That is a wonderful note to end things on. Craig Karger, thank you for stepping onto the New York Launch Pod and sharing your time with us. How do people find out more about you and Wrist Enthusiasts?
Craig Karger: You can find out about me and read wrist enthusiast at www.wristenthusiast.com. That’s the blog and, the Instagram, which is the original, the OG is @wrist enthusiast on Instagram, and then we’re @wrist enthusiast on Facebook as well. So that’s the best way to read everything, wrist enthusiast.
NY Launch Pod: And if you want to learn more about the New York Launch Pod, you can follow us on social media at NY Launch Pod and for transcripts of every episode, visit nylaunchpod.com. And if you’re a super fan of the podcast, Craig, are you a super fan of the New York Launch Pod?
Craig Karger: I am.
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