Magazine Feature: These Watch Dealers Want You To Feel Very Special

As you may already know, Hodinkee Magazine Volume 14 is officially out and alive in the world. It always feels a little surreal when a new issue drops, but it’s also one of the most gratifying parts of what we do. As part of the launch, I wanted to share one of my favorite stories from the issue. The online version is live now, with a few extra photos that we couldn’t squeeze into print.

If you’ve been thinking about picking up Volume 14, or want to be ready when subscriptions for Volume 15 go live, click here. 

And now, over to Very Special…

Very Special’s brand color is purple — a deliberate choice by their creative director Mike Tran (who has also been design director at Supreme since 2008). It’s a shade of purple which he refers to as “the color of kings.” It makes sense in the grand scheme of watch and jewelry branding: Rolex is green, Cartier is red, and Tiffany is blue. Reinforcing brand identity and standing out from the competition can be as simple as boldly and intentionally using color. I first noticed Very Special in early 2023 for their uniquely stylized Instagram page flooded with purple velvet, gold lettering, and familiar New Yorkers buying vintage watches.

I met the full squad last November when we found ourselves sharing a purple-swaddled booth at ComplexCon in Las Vegas. It quickly became clear that these weren’t just industry peers who happened to frequent the same New York neighborhoods and inhabit the same social circles as me. This was a group of people whose approach to watch collecting was so closely aligned with my own that, for the first time in the watch space, I felt a sense of relief and acceptance.

Not only were the VS  [Very Special] guys obsessed with gaudy ’70s Pateks and rare Day-Dates, but their overall aesthetic point of view — along with their interests in music, culture, and fashion — felt like home to me. This distinct feeling was yet another reason for me to confront the reality that there is very little room for diversity of thought in the watch space. Well, there is little diversity in our space, period.

I sat down with all four of the forward-facing co-founders to discuss what they’re up to, how they split their time between Miami and New York, and to unpack their main objective: to exist as a well-rounded dealer with a diverse cast of characters — ensuring there’s a way in for everyone.

Let’s start with everybody’s background. Tell us a little bit about yourselves.

Juan Diego Lavalle: Born and raised in Ecuador, I’ve been in the States since 2011. I started doing watches in 2014 when I interned at Man of the World magazine. I’ve since moved to Miami and work for a prominent Italian dealer.

Mike Tran: I am Design Director at Supreme. I’ve been there since 2008. I handle outerwear and special projects or apparel collaborations, but now I’ve crossed over to do the branding and the creative direction. I’m from California, but I’ve been in New York since 08.

Adrian Douzmanian: I’m from France, but I’ve been in Miami for over 20 years. I started out as a DJ, and over time, I began throwing my own parties. I met a bunch of friends, and we started a skate brand called Andrew. And while that was happening, I became more of a watch collector and a fan of watches. I met some of the guys here and eventually turned that into VS.

Sage Elsesser: I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I’ve been in New York for 15 years. I’m a rapper, producer, and professional skateboarder.

How did you guys get to know each other?

Adrian: I was friends with Mike and became friends with Sage. We were all into watches. And a little before that, I met Juan, who was kind of like the first person in the watch world who really took time to teach me about certain things as opposed to being like, ‘Yeah, you should buy that.’ He would give me the reason why some of these watches were important. So then, I wanted to share the wealth with my friends. We actually were in a group chat together, which is kind of how the company started.

And how did your watch journeys start before VS?

Adrian: Before I even met Juan, I had a collection of maybe six or seven watches, a lot of standard stuff. But what Juan and I linked over was that I used to have a pretty special Oyster Quartz. He was like, ‘Oh, you’re the guy who owns the skate shop around the corner. But what’s up with that watch?’ Mike, too. When I met Mike, he already had a couple nice watches. He had the Supreme Rolex.

Mike: Coming from an immigrant family, you don’t really know about that many luxury items. Maybe you recognize five things, one of them being a gold Rolex. I didn’t really wear a watch until I started on the Supreme [the Supreme Rolex Submariner was released in 2013 as a friends-and-family-only product. It featured a custom black dial emblazoned with “Fuck Em” and its box logo engraved on the back]. I was wearing it but I didn’t take it off for years. Then I started looking, poking around at other watches. A friend of mine gets a Prezi, I’m like, ‘Oh. There it is. That’s the gold Rolex.’ There’s certain brands that transcend and become that object for people. It’s like what Levi’s is to jeans or what Bic is to lighters.

Sage: It was a coming-of-age thing. Like, ‘What do I finally do with this money that I’m making?’ My sister told me to hit up Adrian because he knew so much about watches. Obviously, I wanted to get the Prezi first. But it was the two-tone Oyster Quartz, the black dial. Juan sold it to me on the street, right outside of Katz’s Deli. $7,000 in cash.

Juan: I get asked that question so much, and I cannot explain it because I don’t know how I got into them. I always knew I liked them, but I don’t have a specific event in my life… I look at pictures of me when I was a kid, and I was always wearing a watch.

How would you describe each of your roles in Very Special?

Juan: I do the watches. Things like the invoices, making runs to watchmakers, and doing the day-to-day operations.

Adrian: I guess I would be considered the salesperson. I’m almost like the mouthpiece. I also do a lot of the sourcing with Juan or some of the buying. Then, I overlap on some of the creative.

Mike: I take care of the visuals. You could say I’m creative director.

Juan: And we are the most diverse company — we have every culture.

Adrian: I think that’s what makes us relatable to so many different people. Juan is South American, he’s Ecuadorian. And we’re in Miami, so he can relate to and speak to anybody that I bring him. I’m French and Cuban, and my dad’s from Lebanon. Our backgrounds are from all over the place. Our passions also run a huge gamut too, like, do you want to learn about nerdy details, or do you want to learn about style? You can get the full experience.

You have such a unique POV, and I’m curious what you find arresting about watches. Is it a design thing?

Mike: It does start there. I’ve been working with brands that communicate very well with their customers. And in the watch space, nobody’s doing that. At least not in the way that we want to do it. There’s a lot of very cool dealers and shops, and also a lot of knowledge and history, but no one’s presenting it in a way that’s welcoming to a person who wants to get into it casually at first, from a style or aesthetic point of view.

Adrian: For us, it’s also about making it a little less intimidating for people to be able to connect. A lot of what I find interesting about the watch world is how simple most of it is while being packaged as this mysterious, complex thing. But it’s really just, ‘Hey, this is a cool watch. These are cool timepieces.’ The mechanical movements, the way things are made, is very complex. But the actual owning of a watch is not that complicated. It’s not that deep, you know? So, our point of view has a lot to do with making it more relatable to people in our world who felt it wasn’t relatable to them before.

Mike: We just want to talk about it in a fun, casual way. It applies to how we talk about other things that we’re into, whether it’s records or clothes or cars or music.

Adrian: It’s our duty to embrace people’s curiosity and answer their questions as much as possible.

Juan, in terms of what you are buying, what are you going for? What is it that you think your customer demographic is into?

Juan: That’s a complicated one because most of our clients are first-time buyers. So you go through the range of like, Quartz Cartier or mechanical Cartier? Is it a Submariner? Is it a GMT? We gotta find the best of what we can find at the price point where they’re at, which is the most tricky thing for us. It’s your responsibility to find them the best at the price that they wanna be at. On their second watch, that’s where they start making money. But, like, spending money, for example, Sage, the first watch he bought was an Oyster Quartz, then he bought a Serti and an Emerald Day-Date in one go.

Adrian: I was like, ‘God, dude is cooking!’ Like, he bought like three Day-Dates. Then he got the diamond-bezel Day-Date.

Mike: And honestly, that inspired me. I was like, ‘These guys are going hard, man.’ It’s okay to do this. Because I always thought if you’re a multiple-watch guy, you get a bad rep, right?

Sage: Well, I’ll say this: What I’m most proud of with VS is that it’s all stuff that we would wear. It’s not like we’re just stocking up. Ultimately, I don’t think any of us are buying because of value. It’s because we like it, right?

Do you think watches and fashion can be part of the same conversation?

Adrian: They’re the same conversation from different perspectives. A lot of people who collect watches do not care about fashion. Like how many people do we know with very important watches who just wear a white shirt and some jeans? I guess why I like Very Special is that we give the perspective to people who care about their whole style, with the watch being a part of that style, you know? There’s a lot of people who spend a lot of money on fashion… Why not make them feel like they could also add a watch as a part of their overall style?

Mike: I think it’s totally okay to get into something based on aesthetics first. And aesthetics isn’t just about how something looks, but how it makes you feel, right? What that thing means to you. And good is also subjective because if a watch was only for timekeeping, Cartier would’ve never made the Crash.

You sell vintage watch-brand merch but also focus on your own sellable product, with t-shirts, matchbooks, stickers, incense, etc, for sale. Why are the self-designed product and branding so important to you?

Mike: In a healthy market with a lot of players, we want to attract a clientele looking for values matching our own and a good brand can embody that. We chose royal purple because it’s the color of kings and queens! Merch is a chill way to rep without having the thing, right? Which means the aspirational audience can participate while the established heads have something to run off-wrist. It’s really just inspired by seeing all the cool vintage merch from our favourite watch brands we also love to collect.

What are your future plans?

Sage: Buy more watches!

[whole group laughs]

Adrian: We want to keep growing the brand and develop it from a product and creativity standpoint. But ultimately, we want to keep buying and selling the coolest watches we can get our hands on.

Mike: Aside from growing our inventory and clientele, we want to build our brand in a way that serves our community of creatives and other people who may not directly have contact with the watch world. This could be through more product we make or events we throw or just being a platform and place for people to learn and obsess over watches.

This story first appeared in the pages of Hodinkee Magazine, Volume 14. To get your copy, click here.

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