The numbers to track in a watch business

Most dealers know roughly how the business is going. Roughly is where expensive surprises live: the reference that never quite sells, the channel whose fees ate the margin, the slow drift from profitable to busy. A handful of numbers, recorded as you go, replaces the guesswork.

None of this needs software. A spreadsheet with a row per watch will answer everything below.

Profit per deal, after everything

The foundation. For each watch: what it sold for, minus what you paid, minus selling fees, payment processing, shipping, insurance, prep, and any carrying cost.

The common error is stopping at the gap between buy and sell, which flatters every deal. The profit article covers counting it properly, and the cost basis article covers what belongs in the cost.

Days to sell

Purchase date to the date the money arrives. It's the number most dealers don't record and the one that explains the most: why cash is tight, why a niche feels slow, why a good margin didn't translate into a good year. The liquidity article covers using it in buying decisions.

Track the average, and also the worst cases, since a few very slow watches distort everything.

Aged stock

How many watches have been in stock longer than your own threshold, and what they cost you. This is the number that quietly grows while you're busy buying, and the aged inventory article covers acting on it before it becomes most of your capital.

Check it monthly. A list of watches older than your threshold, with their cost, takes a minute to produce and is impossible to ignore.

What your capital earned

Profit over a period, compared with the money you had committed to stock during it. This is the number that lets you compare a strategy of few expensive watches against many cheap ones, or a fast-turning niche against a high-margin slow one.

It's also the honest test of whether the business is worth the effort, and it's what the carrying cost article is ultimately about.

Things going wrong

Count returns, disputes, chargebacks, warranty claims, and watches that needed unplanned work. Each one has a cost, and together they show whether your descriptions, your checks, or your channel choices need attention. The problems article covers learning from them.

A rising rate here is an early warning that shows up in your profit months later.

Where the deals come from

Record the source of every watch you buy and the channel of every sale. Over a year this tells you which relationships and which platforms actually produce, which is the basis for deciding where to spend your time. The sourcing network article and the channel choice article cover acting on it.

Keep the habit small

The reason dealers stop tracking is that they made it elaborate. Keep one row per watch with: reference, source, purchase date, cost, all added costs, channel, sale date, sale price, fees, and a note of any problem. Everything above can be derived from that.

Then set two routines: a few minutes monthly on aged stock and days to sell, and a longer quarterly review of profit, capital, and pricing inputs, as the pricing review article sets out.

Use them to decide, not to admire

Numbers are only worth recording if they change something: a reference you stop buying, a channel you drop, a target margin you raise, a watch you finally move on. Write the decision down next to the number that prompted it, and check at the next review whether it worked.

How long before the business pays you covers reading those numbers as progress rather than a snapshot.