Jay Carpenter - the owner of Handley Watches and a watchmaker.
At a time when checking the time often means yanking a mobile phone out of your pocket, the Midlothian-based startup Handley Watches is building a business making timepieces designed to appeal to a more traditional sense of time-keeping aesthetics and function.
Handley Watches makes the kind of wristwatches that are meant to look good on your arm and give you the time quickly and efficiently, instead of going in your pocket. And the company is relying on old-fashioned craftsmanship to sell its timepieces.
The home of Jay and Alexis Carpenter on Merrington View in Chesterfield County serves as the workshop for making Handley Watches.
“They are traditional looking, for the most part,” Jay Carpenter said of Handley Watches. “They are not the digital smartwatches that a lot of people wear now.”
Instead, Carpenter makes watches that are meant to be functional and stylish in a variety of settings, whether that might be athletics or professional settings, or casual day-to-day wear.
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“I’ve been an enthusiast [of watches] for a long time,” said Carpenter, 37. “I just like the art of it and the mechanics of it.”
Carpenter works full time for the business advisory firm Fahrenheit Advisors in Richmond, so the watch business is his side gig.
His move into making watches part time was somewhat inspired by his training for triathalons, which involve running, swimming and biking long distances. He noticed that many watches — especially the bands — simply don’t hold up under that kind of strain.
“Leather is great, but wet leather is not great,” he said.
The need for a highly functional watch also became more clear when the Carpenters had their first child, Penelope, who is now 18 months old.
“Now, I am not just running and swimming and biking, but changing diapers and mowing grass,” he said.
So the couple started to work on various watch designs, eventually offering up about 30 different looks to customers who shop for their watches online.
“Jay was saying: ‘There has to be something that is both business professional and useful,” said Alexis Carpenter, who works full time in human resources training in the mortgage industry but also serves as a marketing and design expert for Handley Watches.
They introduced Handley Watches in March 2020.
“That was right when the world took a turn,” said Jay Carpenter, referring to the start of the pandemic. “So I figured we could fly under the radar for a time and take that time to improve our products and packaging and distribution and logistics and web content.”
Jay Carpenter has set up a watchmaking shop in an upstairs room of their home. He sources various components from overseas markets and then makes and assembles the watches himself.
The watches have silicone bands and stainless-steel cases, along with high-end batteries.
“They have high-end parts, but not at a pretentious price tag,” Jay Carpenter said.
“I wanted to combine the classic look of a watch with more of a modern, transitional comfortable band, so that is why I came up with the silicone bands,” he said.
Handley Watches is competing in a marketplace that has been altered significantly by the introduction of smartwatches that offer digital tools such as tracking the wearers’ health-conscious goals such as the number of steps they take, as well as by online selling.
The overall market for watches is almost $50 billion year, according to a June report by McKinsey & Co., which predicts a growth rate of 1% to 3% each year between 2019 and 2025 (compared to branded fine jewelry’s growth at 8% to 12% a year).
The report also predicts a shift toward direct-to-consumer business models over retail models, which will “upend the industry’s current structure, requiring brands to improve client serving capabilities and multibrand retailers to search for new ways to add value.
Sales of Handley Watches in 2021 are up about 220% from the same period last year.
“The watch business is going great,” Carpenter said. “E-commerce is the place to be. Traditional collectors are paying huge premiums for timepieces. Appreciation is out of control now in a good way, and online sales are up around the world.”
“The smartwatch pieces that you see that are more popular are getting more people into wearing traditional timepieces,” he said.
The use of smartwatches took a bite out of traditional watch sales a few years ago, but sales have since been recovering, said Mike Bisceglia, the founder and president of Stauer, a company that sells its brand of upscale watches, jewelry and other collectibles on its website and catalogs. It has offices in Henrico County and in Burnsville, Minn.
“The watch business has been actually very strong this year,” Bisceglia said,
“The smartwatches have become big, because people were counting their steps,” he said. However, “right now, the big Swiss watchmakers are sold out. They are really on back order because the economy has been so strong. High-end watches have had one of their best years ever. The prices on high-end watches have gone absolutely through the roof. Even vintage watches have gone up in price.”
The Carpenters are selling their watches at prices they hope will be attractive to both high-end and mid-market consumers. On the company’s website, the roughly 15 watches sell for between about $175 and $230.
Handley Watches has sought to build its market by cultivating corporate partnerships and professional athlete endorsement deals, such as from professional golfer Harold Varner III, who endorsed its products in August. The company also has developed a number of local partnerships, one example being a custom watch that was created for a recent member guest event at Hermitage Country Club.
Handley names its watches after locations and landmarks around Virginia, such as “The Libbie,” “The Belle” and “The Jefferson.” One of the watches is named “The Nester.” “Nester is the street where I grew up in Winchester,” said Jay Carpenter, whose roots also factor in the company’s name.
“I grew up on Nester Drive, which is right around the corner from the high school and elementary school where my parents taught and my father was a coach. The high school is John Handley High School.”
