Wrist Taker Magazine 2017 Issue

52
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ON THAT CIRCULR LIFE
FOUNDER, DANNY BUCK SCHOOLS US ON E-COMMERCE BUSINESS AND HIS OWN
WATCH BRAND, CIRCULR
By Azhar Ahmad
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Around 10 years ago, just as I was set to
graduate, I decided to take a job in the “web
industry”. This decision accelerated me into a
role selling websites to small businesses.
Within a year, I did a management buyout of
the business (I was 22!) and turned it into a
digital agency worth millions. Eight years on,
after I’d turned 30, I decided to step down from
the board and focus on a new project. This
project was CIRCULR. I love ecommerce and
my background has pushed me towards
helping other brands so along CIRCULR, I help
aspiring entrepreneurs create an income
through online selling. Other than my business
life which is 95% of my day, I enjoy restaurants
(a lot), I’m a big football fan, my team is Man
Utd and I’m hooked on social media.
What made you decide to be in the
watchmaking industry?
It was quite the accident actually. I knew that I
wanted to have my own ecom brand and I’d
advised clients how to go from £500k to
£20mill by selling direct to consumer, all I had
to do was pick the right product line. I was
going to do a fashion category (still on the
backburner) when I discovered that nobody
was looking at the watch industry as a fashion
category. Most were looking at it as a one off
item or gift based business. As we developed
the brand, we found that we could be
extremely price effective by removing
unnecessary aspects of the watch. For
example, manufacturers recommended we go
for 5ATM waterproof but then put a genuine
leather strap on that wasn’t waterproof. We
were paying more for a watch that actually
couldn’t go in the water anyway. We started to
call anything unnecessary “bullsh*t” and the
brand philosophy was born. We now have an
active approach to reduce costs for our
customers by being efficient with our
processes. Henry Ford did it with the car,
Ingvar Kamprad did it with flat pack furniture
and we’re going to do it with watches.
How is a watch important? Do you
compromise function over style or the other
way around?
As our approach is very different to other
watch brands in different categories, we have
to look at what our customers want. Just like
there’s no waiters/waitresses in McDonald’s,
we have to be efficient in our processes to give
a great product at the best possible price. I
absolutely love Audemars Piguet watches, I
hope to buy one, one day. But they’re a
different category to us. Like a Ford to a
Ferrari, the only difference is our watches
WRIST TAKER 17