The word ‘scam’ might be taking it a bit far, but in my eyes, this is the next closest thing. I found this interesting watch brand called ‘no label watch’ on Instagram and I could tell straight away something was wrong.

These watch designs, I had seen all of them before. Literally, every single one.

I thought you know what, let’s delve a little deeper and take a look at their website; to see if I can understand what’s going on.

It turns out this brand has come up with a marketing masterstroke that makes MVMT look like novices. The brands ‘our story’ page is quite interesting because they explain how their approach is ‘different’ to all of the brands who claim to be inspired by the ‘Himalayas’ or the ‘industrial revolution’ or other nonsense. They tell us how they’re fed up with these brands that squeeze brand logos onto their watches and that you don’t need to express yourself with a label.

That’s why they made this brand who make watches with no label on. Or should I say ‘feature’ watches without logos. Indeed, they aren’t ‘making’ anything whatsoever. You know how I know that?

It’s this little website called Aliexpress.

The reason this brand has no logos might be because they don’t like the look of logos, but it’s also because they’re just dropshipping generic Chinese watches. A quick search on Aliexpress reveals every single one of these designs on the first couple of pages. The specifications line up perfectly, even the pictures do.

The reason the product images have an inconsistent look about them is because they’re pulled straight from Aliexpress and are from different sellers. Hence their different size and lighting.

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If you’re not familiar with this dropshipping business model, essentially a brand like this ‘no label watch’ just advertises these watches as their own on their website; for whatever price they deem fit. When someone buys a product from this store, it’s actually the supplier, say Aliexpress, that fulfils the order and posts it directly to the customer. That’s the reason they have no logo on.

This no label watch brand is like a middleman and they make money because they’ll charge £70 for a watch that Aliexpress will give them for say £3 per watch. They make a huge commission on a sale that they have pretty much nothing to do with.

This dropshipping business model is why there are no brand logos. This is why there is no fancy packaging. This is why they always have international shipping, because they’re not targeting the Chinese domestic market. This is why they can offer watches for what they claim to be ‘fair prices’, because they have virtually no costs to speak of.

This brand even has the cheek to claim they ‘strive to eliminate middlemen and other unnecessary costs’; despite the fact that they are quite literally the middleman. You can buy the exact same watches for a fraction of the price from Aliexpress directly. When it comes to the ‘unnecessary costs’, if you’re buying from a brand like this, 90% of their retail price is unnecessary cost in my book.

It is true that most general products that you buy these days are from places like China; it’s normal really. However, most retailers tend to have specific products made for their requirements and their customers. In this situation, with these watches, these are just completely generic watches that are marked up enormously for no good reason.

But maybe this is all just a coincidence and this watch brand really is designing and making all of these watches themselves. By complete chance all of their watches look the exact same as those I’ve been seeing on Alibaba for years. They’re very welcome to prove me wrong.

But personally, I look at the review section and I just *facepalm* at all the people who really think they’ve got a great watch; when they could have got it for 10x less. Nevertheless, on the bright side, there are brands out there doing worse than this. At least you can get some of those designs for less than are sold on other websites.