Australian direct-to-consumer watch brand The 5th is betting that scarcity and a buy-it-while-you-can mentality will motivate a new generation to wear analog wrist watches.
The brainchild of young entrepreneurs Alex McBride and Gretta van Riel, the label only sells products for five-day runs in any given month. Outside of selling days, the brand focuses its resources and energy on developing client relationships, combing consumer feedback and developing new designs.
“Because we have 25 days a month of not selling product, we engage with customers on a different level,” said McBride. “We’ve created a VIP section where people can fill out a survey telling us what they want us to do next. We are able to get solid feedback of what people want to see.”
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The label, which produces its watches in China, sells two ranges comprising a total of 10 styles — which all retail at $150 or less. Backpacks and Italian-made sunglasses are in the pipeline for later this year, also with prices maxing out at $150.
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Launched in December 2014, McBride made back his initial investment within minutes of the company’s debut. The 5th has been known to sell out of watch merchandise within hours, and reports selling thousands of units in a single day.
“I actually invested a few thousand dollars in our first samples, and what I did was give them out to influencers, people I knew, and made people post about them, so I was able to generate a lot of hype. When we launched we had an e-mail database of 5,000. So when we released, within a minute, we made that $3,000 investment back,” said McBride.
The label’s sales tallied $7 million last year. It looks to achieve total sales of $10 million to $15 million in the 2016-17 calendar year — which it believes is feasible through the addition of the two new product categories.
Fifty percent of global sales are attributed to Australian consumers, while 30 percent are in the U.S., and the remaining 20 percent are from Europe, Asia and the Middle East.