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[All points in this article constitute my opinion, based on my investigative findings and may be false. All external content used in this post is protected under fair use law, for the purposes of ‘criticism’ and ‘review’. Company information featured is all publicly available.]

Background

In November 2015, a fresh campaign launched on crowdfunding website Kickstarter. It promised to redefine the idea of Italian luxury watches, by providing a new way to buy a luxury watch at a fraction of the retail price.

Several months and 6000 backers later, it became a record-breaker; raising over €900,000, making it the most funded wristwatch project in crowdfunding history.

In 2016, a second project took things to new heights, this time attracting triple the number of supporters; whom combined to provide over €4.8 million to make this ‘affordable luxury’ venture a reality.

To some, Filippo Loreti could be seen as a modern-day success story; showcasing how thinking outside the box can result in tremendous financial success and thousands of thrilled customers.

You’ve probably seen some of their advertisements online. When you look closer though, something is amiss.

What if I told you that Filippo Loreti is not an Italian watchmaker…that Filippo Loreti himself doesn’t exist and that ordering doesn’t guarantee that you’ll receive the item you paid for.

Investigation

This all began as a simple wristwatch review, Filippo Loreti were bombarding me with video advertisements, just like other brands such as MVMT and Vincero. Within these advertisements were some pretty bold claims with regards to their quality vs their competition.

As a consumer advocate channel, I feel it’s my job to test such claims and see if there’s any truth to them. So, I hopped online and ordered a watch from their site; I chose the flagship model that you see most frequently in their advertising. I even paid $19 extra for faster shipping, so I could get the review out quickly. According to the order, it should have taken around 5-11 business days to reach me.

Several weeks go by and the watch still hadn’t turned up, so I decided to check some of the online coverage to see if this was normal. I then noticed something bizarre. While reading and watching different reviews, there was a huge divide in the reception to these wristwatches. Some outlets and individuals were gushing about Filippo Loreti, strongly pushing it as a revolutionary brand with luxury products; whilst others were calling it a joke or in some cases an outright scam. With brands like MVMT and Vincero I’m used to seeing a wide range of opinions, but never anything quite this extreme.

So, I decided to do a little more digging to see if either side had substantiated claims. Are these great watches or a great waste of your money?

MARKETING

Like me, you likely first heard of Filippo Loreti in some form of digital advertising. You’ll notice that retargeting advertisements like videos and text ads in search results will follow you around the internet for weeks at a time.

How a brand pitches a product in their advertisements can heavily dictate how we judge them. Filippo Loreti advertisements typically contain the following messages:

1. They position their products as luxury Italian watches.

2. They claim that luxury watches from traditional brands are overpriced as a result of middle-men, such as retail stores. Inferring that such brands are knowingly ripping customers off. By removing these obstacles, they can offer comparable goods for a fraction of the price. On their website, they compare their products to those at 8-16x the retail price.

3. Your watch will be ‘rare and unique, because all lines are strictly limited edition’.

4. The watch is so attractive that people will stop you in the street to compliment your watch.

I’m sure you’ll agree, they are some pretty brave claims.

Where Are filippo Loreti watches made?

Filippo Loreti was founded by a pair of Lithuanian brothers in the mid-2010s. By their own words on their website; ‘Filippo Loreti watches are assembled to our exacting standards at state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in the global technology hub of Shenzhen province, Hong Kong’. As far as I know, Shenzhen is actually a part of China, not Hong Kong, but whichever way you look at it, there doesn’t appear to be a shred of Latin in this company’s DNA, despite the Italian sounding name. The company doesn’t even appear on the Italian Business Register. The only place I found them listed was on the Lithuanian company directory.

They repeatedly mention how their designs are inspired by the Romans and Italian architecture; however, claiming that these are ‘Italian luxury watches’ is misleading at best and possibly fraudulent at worst – though I am no legal expert, so take that with a grain of salt. Don’t expect a watch made in Italy, because that’s not what you’ll receive.

MIDDLE-MEN

When it comes to the middle-men argument, there is a grain of truth here. Most products we buy these days go through some sort of retailer, meaning the products have to be marked up to factor in that cost. On a surface level, this appears to make sense; however not only does the final product that you receive not align with a watch at 8-16x this retail price, but Filippo Loreti takes it a step further. They’ve effectively replaced the retail middlemen with other costs and middlemen that aren’t so easy to spot.

Unlike many traditional brands, their influencer spend must be huge. There’s a sea of Instagrammers regularly promoting these watches with #filippoloretipartner; suggesting some sort of compensation must have been arranged.

Credit - Instagram - Miladisme — *Credit - Instagram -* *Miladisme*

This extends across YouTube too. Since 2018, Filipo Loreti has contacted me on 14 occasions, relentlessly trying to get me to promote their watches.

I’m not against social sponsorships, however, there is clearly a large budget assigned towards this area of the business. This is an example of money going to something other than the watches, a principle that this brand was just criticising.

Affiliate Program

It gets far more interesting when we take a look at their affiliate program. Affiliate programs are a great way for bloggers and vloggers to make money without being ‘salesy’. Essentially, you get a small commission every time someone purchases something through one of your ‘affiliate links’.

A good example of this is Amazon associates, which we frequently use here on Ben’s Watch Club; you may have seen the disclosure we feature on every webpage. If we review a watch and link our US viewers to that watch on Amazon.com, we get a commission of approximately 4% of the value of that product. So if a watch is selling for $50, we’d get a cut of approximately $2.

As you can probably guess, this income method normally requires a huge number of clicks to make any notable income. Importantly, with most affiliate programs, the operator has no control over the content produced around such links and you, the customer, pay no extra for the product if you use one of these links. All around, I think it’s a very fair system that doesn’t induce much bias due to the low commission rate on most sites.

What if I told you that Filippo Loreti’s affiliate program pays out not double, not triple…but 5 times the commission than Amazon US for wristwatches. Indeed, the program through their website advertises up to 20% commission on each sale, whilst their international program advertises up to a whopping 25% commission, possibly with additional cash payments to go alongside it. So, for a £200 watch sale, this would equate to approximately a £50 commission.

Credit - Filippo Loreti - Affiliate Program — *Credit -* *Filippo Loreti* *- Affiliate Program*

This is frankly unheard of in the wristwatch affiliate space, so it’s no wonder that so many reviewers are pushing these products like crazy. In my opinion, with a commission gets this high, you’d be right to doubt the trustworthiness of reviewers using these links. There is a huge incentive to blindly sell the products in the hopes of getting these obscene fees.

It’s so backwards that affiliates of this brand aren’t allowed to give honest feedback about the product. In fact, it’s written into their publicly available terms and conditions!

Here are some that were particularly alarming:

1. No promotion of the brand should be created without prior sign off from the brand.

2. All partners are expected to make contact to discuss performance and optimisation at least once per week.

6. Partners must respect brand integrity and display the brand in a positive and favourable way at all times…any images or ad copy should be sent for approval before being published.

12. Partners must without at least 30 days of joining the program begin to promote the brand without exception.

Interestingly none of the terms features anything about disclosing the affiliate relationship with prospective viewers or readers; which is a legal requirement in most countries.

When you combine the marketing budget, the 25% affiliate commission and then the readily available ‘discounts’ of up to 35%, it makes you wonder…how much of the £200 retail price goes towards producing the product? They claim that rival brands mark their products up 8-16 times, because of middle-men; yet they’re able to frequently offer heavy discounts and then give a huge chunk to affiliates, alongside possible additional fees.

EXCLUSIVITY

I can confirm these watches are indeed exclusive; in fact, they take that principle to new heights. I’m yet to mention the quality of the products because we have a slight issue. The watch never turned up. At least it hasn’t at the time of making this post.

I ordered this on the 22nd September 2020, which is over two months ago at the time of writing. The watch still hasn’t even been dispatched yet; despite the 5-11 business day delivery estimate that was advertised during checkout.

Filippo Loreti claims this particular quartz watch is ‘made-to-order’ and some deeper delving into their website reveals a page that states it could take several months for delivery. I feel like I’ve been duped as this wasn’t made clear to me at the point of purchase and the follow-up email gave the 5-11 day estimate. I’m unsure what the extra $19 quick delivery charge was even for.

Unfortunately, my research tells me that even after months of waiting, my watch likely won’t turn up. Do you know how I know that?

I took a quick look at the comments on their Kickstarter and Trustpilot pages.

There is an overwhelming number of complaints that paying customers haven’t received their watches; several years after these projects have concluded. Many who did receive a watch are stating that the quality of the products is far from what was promised in the marketing.

They even started a third Kickstarter scheme before even ensuring all backers of the first two campaigns received their products; which is pretty unethical. From the looks of it, they are ‘redefining Italian luxury watches’ by not even delivering them.

I have never seen Kickstarter pages with so many comments. There’s nine thousand comments and almost all are negative; most of which have never been replied to by the brand. It’s true, even the best businesses are going to have ‘haters’. However, the percentage here is unprecedented.

It’s funny how so many of these regular customers are having trouble with their watches, often never even getting them; yet reviewers and YouTubers seem to receive them quickly with no issues.

Filippo Loreti REVIEWS

What’s even more suspicious is the Trustpilot page. Overall, the 4.1 rating isn’t too bad, but when you look at the reviews themselves, it’s split massively between full 5-star ratings and 1-star ratings. People are either in love with these watches or feel like they have been completely scammed. What’s more, the positive ones are frequently short and generic and almost all of the accounts leaving these 5-star reviews have only ever completed one review on the platform – that for Filippo Loreti.

I’d be interested to see if there is some sort of incentive in place, where buyers possibly get a discount or free item in exchange for a positive review. In the UK and other Western countries, this practice is outright illegal. Unfortunately, as I never received my product and the documentation with it; I can’t confirm what’s true.

The customer reviews on their own website don’t align whatsoever with the sentiment found on the others. Only 20 one-star reviews here, compared to thousands of negative comments on the Kickstarter…sounds perfectly legitimate to me.

Interestingly, Filippo Loreti continues to use their Business Insider appearances in their marketing, I’m assuming to try and add some credibility. Indeed the popular website has released a string of articles on this brand, all utilising the lucrative affiliate program of course! Therefore, it’s no surprise that these ‘articles’ are entirely positive. Embarrassingly, Business Insider has been forced to alter these, due to the overwhelming number of complaints from customers about this brand. Once more, it’s the same theme cropping up again. No delivery, no responses.

PRODUCTS

At this point, it isn’t looking good for our pal Filippo. So what’s the deal with the watches then? What if you get lucky and actually receive what you paid for?

Well in the case of the model I ordered, you’re fundamentally getting a basic Chinese-made battery-powered watch, that has just cost you £179 plus delivery.

It does feature Sapphire crystal and a stainless steel case, which is typical at this price point; but let’s see how it stacks up to this Orient watch (check it out on Amazon here) I picked up last week.

The quartz movement powering the Filippo Loreti costs around £10 to buy individually, likely far less when bought in bulk, and costs a couple of pounds to produce. These aren’t made by Filippo Loreti, they’re instead purchased from a company called Miyota. You can find these movements in loads of watches that retail for £50 and under.

On the other hand, this Orient watch features an automatic F6S22 movement, manufactured in-house by Orient. While this movement is nothing spectacular, it certainly costs more to produce and features a much higher level of craftsmanship than that in the Filippo. You can see it for yourself through the exhibition case rear.

The cheapest mechanical option from Filippo Loreti is going to cost you around £550, while this Orient typically comes in at about £160; that’s a £400 difference.

This Orient features the same sapphire crystal for scratch resistance, the same water resistance rating, the same stainless steel construction and from the videos I’ve seen of the Loreti, a better level of finishing too. In my eyes, this is much closer to the ‘affordable luxury’ narrative pushed so strongly by Filippo Loreti.

They claim their competition are marking up prices to extreme levels, yet when you look at the actual products and the price points; there’s no question that it’s Filippo Loreti that is guilty of adding unnecessary markups. In no way are these equivalent to luxury watches worth multiple times the retail price. They aren’t even equivalent to brands like Orient and Seiko at the same retail price.

check out the orient RA-AR on Amazon

This is somewhat proven by the terrible resale value. Here are some completed eBay listings, most of these quartz ‘luxury’ watches have sold for under £50. When would a true luxury watch ever re-sell for such a low amount of money?

To be clear, from my experience wearing tonnes of different watches, nobody else gives a damn what watch you are wearing. No stranger will ever stop you in the street because of your watch, even if you’re wearing a 30K Rolex.

Most people don’t wear a watch and aren’t into watches. Those who are into them certainly won’t be complimenting a fashion brand like Filippo Loreti; who have zero horological significance.

Crucially, Filippo Loreti does advertise a generous 10-year warranty on their products; which would be amazing…if it weren’t for the fact that customers are reportedly unable to claim this warranty, without jumping through an insane number of hoops. My main concern is what’s the point in a warranty for a product that never arrives?

Just when you thought it couldn’t get much shadier, it does.

Let’s say you’ve seen one of their adverts and are attempting to do some due diligence by researching reviews on YouTube. Not only do you have multiple reviewers fawning over the brand because of the lucrative and controlling affiliate program, but you also have videos like this (Filippo Loreti review video).

Indeed Filippo Loreti, the brand selling these watches, have created their own ‘review’ video in an attempt to rank first in the search results when someone searches for a review of their products.

I’m not sure it needs to be said, but a review done by the seller should never be classed as a review in the first place. ‘Advert’ would be the appropriate term. There’s even a second ‘impressions’ video, in case prospective customers searched that instead.

While not illegal, as far as I know, it’s just another shady strategy.

I recently learned that not only are they fooling you on YouTube, but at one point they were doing so on their online store too. They outright stole images from watchmaker Zenith and placed them in their site header; implying that these shots depicted the movements inside Filippo Loreti watches.

Now maybe this one might actually be illegal.

Are Filipppo Loreti Legit?

From what I’ve discovered, this company does not make Italian luxury watches. They replace the traditional middlemen with different middlemen. They don’t consistently deliver products and if you do get one, people will not stop you in the street because of it.

I purchased a watch from them, months later it’s still not here so I can’t even review it; despite not being informed of additional delays at checkout. I received the same generic email from them that people have reportedly been receiving for years. Will this watch ever turn up, who knows? Maybe then I can complete this review.

Before looking into this brand I thought MVMT and Daniel Wellington were bad, but the intentional levels of deception and unethical practices force me to encourage you to stay away from Filippo Loreti.

If you must have a Filippo Loreti watch, I’d recommend buying a used one on eBay. If you want to see some much better ways of spending your money, I’ve got tonnes of reviews on this blog so feel free to have a look around.