YouTubers Are Schooling Rolex How to Talk About Watches
In the white-gloved world of Swiss luxury watchmaking, a floppy-haired Brit armed with a camera, lighting kit and best-mate charm is rewriting the rules of how to peddle Rolex and Omega timepieces.
A former corporate trainer, Adrian Barker has muscled his homegrown YouTube channel into a luxury wristwatch taste-making empire in the space of a few years. A Barker video entitled “I bought a Rolex Submariner off eBay!” has more than 700,000 views. Another, asking “Why is HUBLOT the most hated luxury watch brand?,” has been seen more than a million times in just eight months.
Like fans of other high-end kit favored by men of a certain age — think espresso machines, racing bikes or bespoke tailoring — watch aficionados can come off as fussy and stilted. Barker, by contrast, appears equally at ease discussing his first timepieces — “absolutely foul” — as he does fawning over his current Rolex Explorer II, which retails for about $9,000. It’s all delivered in a rapid-clip narration that’s both disarming and dissecting.
The platform earns the 36 year-old what he calls “a healthy salary” in the six figures, though Barker makes a point about watches being not just for people with silly cash to throw around.
His YouTube videos drive traffic to his website, Bark and Jack, where, combined with separate sponsorship deals, he makes just as much income again selling watch straps, storage cases and coffee mugs emblazoned with his logo.
“I was just having fun,” said Barker, who quit his human-resources job at a technology company in London to go full-time with his channel. “I like making videos and I like talking about watches. It was no more complicated than that.”
While Swiss industry giant Rolex remains aloof, other luxury watchmakers
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