What Happened To Monforti Watches? - Another One Bites The Dust
What has happened to Monforti watches?
That’s the question you’ve been asking me recently, as they seem to have disappeared off the face of the Earth.
So, to set the scene, I took a look at this brand a couple of years back on my Ben Arthur channel. They are, or should I say were, one of these Kickstarter brands. In this case, they were apparently inspired by Leonardo DaVinci and made in Italy.
As cheesy as it sounds, these watches weren’t half bad actually. While the unusual dials might not be for everyone, the build quality and specifications were quite good. The straps were probably the best I’ve seen on a watch under £400 too, which was surprising considering they were only supposed to be genuine leather.
Their most recent Kickstarter in 2018 achieved its goal. It raised £36,000 according to their page; which I guess is okay and for a few years they seemed to be operating as normal.
Nevertheless, something obviously went amiss somewhere as everything to do with this brand has just disappeared.
Their website is now just a dead link. There social media hasn’t been touched in 6 months and there is no announcement anywhere about anything. Clearly, to me, this company has gone bump. Either that or they are doing a terrible job with their business.
So, for the few of you that wanted to buy one of these, tough luck. This project looks like it’s dead in the water. Your only hope is going to be to try and find a used one on eBay; or find an alternative obviously.
I think it’s interesting to speculate why businesses like this have failed. A lot of these Kickstarter watches seem to do this, they spring up quickly and then die just as fast. In many cases, I think people try their hand at it as some form of cash grab. I’m not saying that was the case with Monforti, but it’s just a general observation.
Unfortunately, there’s no information out there as to why this brand has shut down. When it comes to my thoughts on this, there are a couple of things that stand out to me.
Firstly, is the revenue. While I can’t find any financial reports for this brand, that £36,000 raised on Kickstarter may be an issue. It may sound a lot at first, but when you think about it, that really isn’t so much money for a whole range of different watches; especially if you’re starting a brand from the ground up. That figure isn’t that far off two person’s salary for a year, let alone factoring in all of the other expenses involved with a project like this.
Businesses in general cost a lot more to run than people anticipate and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve just ran out of money to operate.
Outside of that, maybe these watches just didn’t offer enough of a unique selling point. These days, there are just so many brands out there, especially in the fashion watch space; there has to be a clear selling point, to make your brand and products stand out against the hundreds of others. The other day, I was looking on H Samuel and out of interest I thought I’d filter the watches by most popular/best sellers. There were just tonnes of fashion watches and barely anything with horological value in the top half of the results.
I don’t think we realise how much the likes of Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein and Armani dominate this space. Maybe this brand just never reached the people it intended to; because their target market already has a Daniel Wellington or would always choose one instead.
Or maybe it was something else? The truth is, we’ll never know for sure.
At least in this case, backers seem to have received their watches before the brand terminated operations. It sucks to see another microbrand disappear, it’s why I make sure to cover ones that interest me, but in this case, I wouldn’t say it’s a massive loss to the industry by any stretch.
I’m not one to be a big fan of Kickstarter product launches in general. I like the idea, but it feels like you never quite know what you are going to get. Usually these projects are launched by obscure brands who have no real reputation. If there was a brand out there making something that really struck my interest and I really wanted to see it come to life, maybe I’d consider supporting them.
However, for the most part, I like to leave crowdfunding to people with the expendable income to just throw at stuff like this. If you’re someone like me, with just a regular amount of income, I’d just go for a more well-known brand with a good reputation, so you know you’re likely to be getting a decent quality product. There are loads of options out there already.