After the merger, the Hodinkee website began featuring more pre-owned watches, including ones it sold through Crown & Caliber. This made audiences suspicious that Hodinkee was promoting Crown & Caliber inventory rather than recommending the best products on the market, according to six people familiar with the situation.
“If you own the product, there’s no question that it puts you under a bigger spotlight than someone who just reviews content,” said Michael McNerney, founder of Martech Record. “The audience is going to watch your every move, and this is especially acute in an industry where people are passionate about high-end products.”
In 2022 and 2023, traffic to Hodinkee declined, sources said.
When asked about this decline in traffic, a Hodinkee representative said in an email, “According to Google Analytics, Hodinkee’s site never hit below 50,000 UMVs (unique monthly visitors) in one day and saw sustained traffic with an average of 2.1 million monthly uniques in 2023.”
Comments on Hodinkee’s articles and YouTube videos grew critical of these and other editorial changes, which were spearheaded by then-executive vice president of content Nick Marino and designed to broaden Hodinkee’s appeal. Meanwhile, watch sales continued to slump, according to four people familiar with the situation.
“I feel that Nick and his new direction is really killing Hodinkee,” commented one viewer. “He seems to think he is ‘challenging preconceptions,’ but really he is [turning] Hodinkee into TMZ and Mr Porter.”
Going forward, Hodinkee plans to prioritize its media business, according to four people familiar with the strategy. What that means for Crown & Caliber is uncertain. According to Clymer, Hodinkee was profitable in the first quarter of 2024.
“Hodinkee was founded on the idea that it was honest, and that if we didn’t like something, we would say that,” said a person familiar with its editorial strategy. “But it started doing what its competitors did, which was plugging with editorial what we sold in the shop, and readers reacted negatively to that.”
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