Meet Austen Chu, Watch Enthusiast and Founder of Wristcheck
LUXURY RECREATION

Meet Austen Chu, Hardcore Watch Enthusiast and Founder of Wristcheck

Austen Chu is one of the world’s youngest rising figures in the horological world. The 25-year-old Hong Kong-born Shanghainese is breaking stereotypes about operating in the watch industry as a young entrepreneur and wants to disrupt it even more.

He is the owner of @horoloupe and founder of Wristcheck, his signature online platform for education and trade of luxury watches elevated to new heights in August 2021 with the creation of a physical space in Hong Kong’s luxury Landmark mall to facilitate discussion and dealing of the world’s most unique watches for the future watch-lovers.

Launching successfully to a wealth of support and interest within the world’s watch scene, Austen sat down with The Beat Asia to discuss his plans for 2022 to dominate Asia’s watch industry and the future of a brand that wants to change what the watch means.

Hong Kong is the commercial capital of the world for watches, Austen pointed out in our interview in early January. “I think whoever disagrees with that is severely misinformed and they haven't been here.”

Austen is correct. Hong Kong, a city of 7 million people, sells more watches per year than the United States combined. Even during the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, Hong Kong ranked third in the watch industry by capital sold, behind the U.S. and China respectively, selling more watches than Europe.

Creating Wristcheck in August 2021 made sense for Austen, who has been passionate about watches from an early age. “I have always liked watches since kindergarten, as crazy as that sounds. I grew up with a single mom. When I was young, I moved to Shanghai and lived with my grandparents who were math professors and we lived in one apartment.”

“They taught me numbers before my ABCs, and I learned to tell time at a very young age.” It was Austen’s first watch at the age of five, a children’s Swatch Flik Flak his mother purchased for him, that propelled him into an obsession and passion for his now-career.

“That Flik Flak was like my safety blanket, I would sleep with it. I couldn't leave the house without it on – and that kind of spiralled into this.”





Austen explained that his love for electronic watches – Swatches, CASIOs, and G Shocks – kickstarted his devotion to studying and following the timepiece culture. At 15, studying at school in Shanghai, Austen saw his passion consume his every moment stuck behind a laptop in class. “I was never listening in class. I was just Googling and learning about watches.”

By middle school, he began researching more about mechanical watches and the engineering behind delicate timepieces of Rolex, Patek, AP, and Omega, pushing Austen “into the rabbit hole.”

Human civilization, Austen explained, would not exist today without the invention and science behind the watch, a way to tell the time and navigate the high seas. To him, the mechanical operations of a wristwatch – small and delicate – drew him further down the hole of exploring the space of time-telling.

“A watch is something permanent and it can stay with you forever. You change your phone every few years, underwear every year, clothes every six months. Everything is temporary and transient besides a watch, and I think that that's something that a lot of my friends care about. People will remember the watch they wore on their wedding day or the birth of their first child.”

“A watch is as personal as art can get. It’s physically attached to you and it's touching your skin.”

Austen still remembers the experience of purchasing his first watch at 18, an AP, in Shanghai. “I got treated extremely well. It was an incredible experience.” Finishing high school and entering NYU Shanghai studying business, Austen only owned two watches in his collection. Purchasing a new piece meant selling an old wristwatch and maxing out debit cards to add a new item into his swathe.

“I was 18 and lonely in the space. I used to DM and comment with my personal account on Instagram watch pages and [no one] would take me seriously and everyone would ignore me.”

It was a quest for community and discussion that inspired Austen to create his Instagram account, @horoloupe, in early 2016 - a portmanteau of horology (the study of time) and loupe (a watch magnification device) - to share his thoughts and photography of watches purchased in China and abroad.

Through his snaps of luxury watches and commentary on the design, mechanics, and beauty behind each timepiece, he gained a local following.

Seeking a community beyond Instagram and a physical space with others to discuss and share appreciation of horology, Austen, along with Daniel Sum and Kelvin Sa, co-founded Shanghai Watch Gang, a collective capturing the spirit of the Chinese watch market.

The group, a pre-cursor to Wristcheck, grew to over 500 members in the span of two years and created a space that then-lonely-18-year-old Austen was seeking to explore his passion.

“In [the watch] space [and Shanghai Watch Gang], when you have a community, when you have friends that you can speak to about watches, it's really weird. It's like you can speak to them about watches for like seven hours in a row and not even know their last name.”





Returning to his birthplace of Hong Kong in 2020, Austen was seeking his next adventure in the watch space. It was August 2021 that Austen saw the creation of his new project in the form of Wristcheck.

Taking shape on the first floor of the Landmark Mall on Hong Kong’s oldest street, Queen’s Road Central, Wristcheck captures the intersection between a thriving marketplace of pre-owned luxury watches and a young community eager to explore horological culture.

"The mission of Wristcheck is to inspire the next generation of watch collectors and to bring in as many people as possible into this space, because we want to make our experience unintimidating and inspiring,” Austen said.

“We want people to come in, learn something, and be able to see things that they normally would only be able to see on Instagram.”

Austen seeks to give the experience that he was routinely denied of, as a young hobbyist, to the next generation.

Wristcheck displays up to 35 timepiece brands, with a focus on independent watch brands such as MB&F, De Bethune, H. Moser & Cie, Greubel Forsey, and Urwerk. “We want to showcase one-million-dollar watches, but also pieces worth forty thousand. Everything is [from] consignment and we do not buy any stock, so we are not incentivised to sell you a watch if we think that does not suit you. We will show you other brands and designs that may appeal to you.”

Buying consignment allows Wristcheck to curate a rare collection of watches that hold rich historical, cultural, and personal significance to Austen. “We are not pressured to sell one thing over another because of [profit] margins. We really just want to provide the right watch to the right person. We want you to come here and experience at least what watches should be.”

With HK$200 million worth of stock consigned to Wristcheck by collectors, the store is able to expose customers to a wealth of unique watches, a “curated and diverse” collection that Austen estimates as never seen before in Hong Kong.

Wristcheck operates in a unique and transparent fashion, compared to traditional auction houses in Asia. They charge only 8% from the seller, as compared to a marking at 20% or 30%; buyers and sellers are anonymous but securely vetted; buyers know what sellers netted and sellers know what buyers paid; and the watches are authenticated and marked for their condition, scratches, and history.

With an average client age of 27-years-old and an average ticket over USD$100,000, Wristcheck is targeting the below 35-year-old demographic of high-net-worth individuals eager to explore the watch space. Ninety-five percent of their clients are end users, customers who want to buy the watches rather than trading them off for a higher price.

Younger than his clients, Austen is honest about his position as a young entrepreneur in the watch industry and the discrimination he has previously faced. “I was born in Hong Kong. Young people get treated like s*** all the time [here]. I'm used to this s***. People not taking me seriously because of my age.”

“If you walk into a [watch] store and are not introduced by someone who knows a salesperson, you are young, and not wearing a suit, you get discounted immediately. They assume you do not have money, cannot spend, or you do not even want to learn, and they do not even bother fostering you.”

He distinctly remembers entering a Patek store one time in Hong Kong wearing a cap and baggy clothes, and an AP watch on his right hand, being told “deliveries are on that side.”

“The best way to get young people into the space” and inspire the upcoming generation of watch buyers, Austen said, “is by giving them a space.” The inspiration for creating Wristcheck is forming a physical location which is non-intimidatory and supportive of budding watch-lovers.

Austen largely thanks the introduction of the Apple Watch in April 2015 for the popularity of the wristwatch. “It brought back attention to the wrist.”

With a generation focussing on what art can be carried on their person at work, in leisure, and pleasure, Austen and Wristcheck understand education as important to drive support for the burgeoning watch industry among Gen Z and millennials in Asia.

This horological schooling aimed at watch-lovers attempting an entrance into the space will come in the form of Wristcheck Editorial, an online platform for quality information of the history of horology, evolution of the watch, the mechanics behind a timepiece, interviews with industry leaders and CEOs of watch companies, and guides for buying and selling watches.

With a team of writers and industry experts behind him, Austen is aiming to curate information to inspire and educate the next watch entrepreneur. “I think this is the kind of content that the next generation wants to see. Genuine content that educates and informs. I'm trying to create the wave for the next generation – we're trying to crack the Asia market.”

“If you're spending a lot of money, you want to know as much information as you can about what you are buying. You want to have an unintimidating and inspiring conversation where you learn something and want to come back - and that's basically what we're trying to create.”

The future is bright for Austen Chu in 2022.

Whilst admitting that the watch industry is still operating largely pre-internet, he is trying to “modernise it.” With Wristcheck Editorial set to release in the first quarter this year, Austen is planning more.

He is in conversation with developers to launch a dedicated Wristcheck app and planning for the introduction of live trading of watches in Hong Kong and globally. The live-offer platform will allow buyers to put in real-time offers for watches, enable sellers to interact and gain ownership of what they are selling, have Wristcheck authenticate and photograph each piece, and let sellers speak to dedicated sales associates and experts.

Austen is also seeking to expand female representation in the currently male-dominated watch industry by investing and expanding his women's watch collection, both in-store and online.

“I am glad I went through being lonely as s*** and feeling like a loser in this space for a long time, because it was what pushed me to create Horoloupe and it's what pushed me to do everything to try to change the space for the next generation, try to get them to enter the space in a way that was different for me.”

“The end goal is to get as many people as possible into the space for as long as possible. I'm in this for the long term. I think I'm going to be doing this for the rest of my life.”

This is just the beginning, Austen stressed in the interview. He is resolute in his belief that there is room for improvement and more knowledge to be gained in the industry. “This is our s****iest store yet because every store will be better. Our website is the s****iest it will ever be now, because we are going to grow bigger and better. If you look into the future, we're constantly trying to prove everything.”

“Watches [are] such a niche and [it's] so knowledge-dense that like you cannot bull***t your knowledge. I'm learning something new every day. [The space] is so deep and so dense. I still can learn so much more and I am still young, I still can learn for a very long time.”

Successfully opening Wristcheck in late 2021 to much fanfare and his plans to dominate 2022, Austen’s Instagram platform and physical trading place signifies the beginning for a figure in the watch industry predicted to make waves. “I was always that weird kid that like watches. But now it's not so weird anymore.”

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