– NOT A SPONSORED POST –
If you know luxury watches or Kickstarter, then you’ve probably heard of Filippo Loreti by now. If not, here’s an excerpt from their story:
Two brothers, Danielius and Matas Jakutis, were fed up with the insane prices most watch retailers were charging for luxury watches. They believed that everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy the look and feel of a luxury timepiece, without having to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege. They wanted to figure out a way to make beautiful, luxury timepieces available to ALL people at a fair price. So they founded Filippo Loreti. Filippo Loreti is a high quality luxury brand that has democratized the luxury timepiece industry…
Click here for full story
Like a lot of good projects, it started off with a Kickstarter campaign. In 2015, they shared their story and campaign with the goal of hitting $20K. One month later, they generated a record breaking $926,620. The following year they followed up with another campaign, only this time breaking the previous record by raising $5.6 million, making it the 18th largest crowdfunding project on Kickstarter.
So basically by skipping the wholesalers, distributors, and retailers, they aim to provide limited edition luxury watches at a fraction of the cost.
The following is a SlickFind review of one of their watches, the Venice Moonphase Blue as part of their Venice Series:
SlickFind’s Review
SlickFind aims to provide an unbiased – unsponsored review for all the products they try out. Reviews are categorized in 3 sections, Quality, Price, and Customer Service. After one month use, here’s our review of the Filippo Loreti’s Venice Moonphase Blue:
- Quality ★★★★☆
- Price ★★★★★
- Customer Service ★★★☆☆
Read below for a detailed response as well as some pros and cons.
Quality ★★★★☆
This watch definitely is a quality watch, for its price range. From its embedded branding on the back, crown and Italian leather straps, to the dials (day, date, month, and moon phase), a lot of detail was put in this watch.They’re definitely confident about the quality, with a 10 year warranty. It’s a watch, inspired by Italy, that truly stands out.
The watch didn’t get 5 stars in quality since the leather straps began to crease (see image in section cons). This isn’t unusual with leather straps, but in this case it seemed early considering the watch was just used moderately for less than a month. If proper leather maintenance isn’t your thing, we’d consider their metal mesh strap, which comes with a leather strap as well.
PRICE ★★★★★
As mentioned, this really is a quality watch at a great price. Currently the Venice series are starting at $235 for the Venice Leather strap series, and $315 for the metal mesh strap (which includes a leather strap). In edition to the Venice Series, they have the Automatic series, which begins at $609.
Customer Service ★★★★☆
As always, SlickFind will engage in conversation (when applicable) with the hosting company to evaluate customer service. I asked about the process to return/exchange the watch, and they were quite responsive and make the process easy and convenient, so long as the watch was unused and showed no sign of use.
Their communication, however, lacked on their website and marketing. To start off, when you visit their site they’ll try and get you signed up in their drip campaign (which is good online marketing). As with any successful drip campaign, making it sound personal is the key, which they did by making it appear come from a first person (in this case one of the co-founders) and by asking questions. I chose to respond to the questions, which got me an automatic reply that my inquiry is being reviewed by their Customer Support Team. You shouldn’t mix marketing emails with support. If you’re going to try to engage with a potential lead, it should be handled by a sales representative. As soon as I got the watch, I was off the drip campaign, which is good. However, the re-targeting on social media and the web was still turned on, despite the purchase.
Their website is very clean and easy to navigate through. However, they need to update some links like the Rome Series watch takes you to the Venice/Automatic series page. If it’s no longer in production, the link should be removed. Their careers page also takes you to a closed board, even after I told them about it.
Pros
- Good quality
- Luxury features
- Good price
Cons
- It has no seconds hand
- Leather strap creases early
