1. What’s the quick origin story of your brand, and what makes your product or positioning genuinely different from other options in your niche?

Luke Stafford: Charles Fish launched in 2006 as the dedicated retail brand for the watch and jewellery side of Fish Brothers Group, a family business that’s been trading since 1830. The idea was to give pre-owned luxury pieces, particularly Rolex and Cartier, their own identity separate from the group’s pawnbroking shops, since customers looking for a serious watch purchase wanted an experience built specifically around that. What makes our positioning genuinely different is that we’re not just retailers reselling stock we’ve sourced elsewhere, we have in-house specialists doing the actual authentication ourselves, which means the expertise behind every piece on the shelf is something we can stand behind directly rather than relying on a third party certificate.

The other thing that sets us apart is the closed loop we’ve built through our sell-my-watch service. Most competitors are either buying or selling, we do both under one roof, so a watch’s entire journey from a seller trusting us with a valuation through to a buyer trusting that same valuation happens within the same specialist team. That consistency is hard to replicate if you’re only operating on one side of the transaction.

2. Since launch, what have been the 1-2 real turning points for your brand-specific decisions, pivots, or experiments that noticeably changed your growth or profitability-and what did you learn from them?

Luke Stafford: What has been our turning point was expanding from Walthamstow into Harlow and Chelmsford, which changed us from a well regarded single shop into a genuine regional presence. That expansion meant we could hold more stock across locations and reach customers who wouldn’t have made the trip into London, and it’s what pushed revenue past what a single shop could generate no matter how strong the reputation was there. The lesson from that was that reputation alone doesn’t scale, you need physical accessibility alongside it, since even loyal customers have a limit to how far they’ll travel for a purchase.

3. Which 2-3 channels drive most of your revenue right now (for example SEO, paid social, email, marketplaces, influencers), and what have you learned about making those channels work in your category?

Luke Stafford: Word of mouth and repeat customers are genuinely our biggest channel, which isn’t a flashy answer but it’s the honest one for a trust-based category like ours. Someone who sells a watch to us and gets a fair, transparent valuation tells other people about that experience far more effectively than any advert could, especially in luxury watches where buyers are naturally skeptical of anyone they haven’t dealt with before. What we’ve learned is that this channel only works if every single transaction holds the same standard, since one bad experience travels through word of mouth just as fast as a good one does.

The second channel is our physical footprint itself, meaning walk-in traffic across Walthamstow, Harlow, and Chelmsford combined with the online presence that supports it, particularly the sell-my-watch service driving people into the shops. In this category, people generally want to see and handle a watch before committing to a purchase of that size, so the online side works best as a way to get them through the door or to start the selling conversation, rather than as a fully self-contained sales channel on its own.

4. How are you thinking about search in 2026 – Google, AI assistants like ChatGPT, and other discovery platforms? What, if anything, have you changed in your content or site to stay visible as AI search grows?

Luke Stafford: The shift we’ve noticed is that customers researching a Rolex or Cartier purchase are increasingly starting that research through an AI assistant rather than typing a query straight into Google, especially when they’re trying to understand things like reference numbers or what affects resale value. That changes what we prioritise on our site, because an AI assistant pulling together an answer needs clear, factual content to draw from, not just persuasive sales copy. We’ve leaned into writing more detailed, straightforward explanations of things like authentication processes and what genuinely affects a watch’s value, since that kind of content is exactly what gets surfaced when someone asks an assistant a specific question about pre-owned luxury watches.

We haven’t abandoned traditional search by any means, since plenty of customers still search directly for specific models or for a shop near them in Walthamstow, Harlow, or Chelmsford. What’s changed is that we’re writing with the assumption that a piece of content might be read by a person or summarised by a machine, so clarity and accuracy matter more than ever, because vague or exaggerated claims simply won’t hold up when they’re being distilled down into a direct answer for someone.

5. What do you do to turn first‑time buyers into repeat customers and advocates? Are there specific experiences, content, or community touches that work especially well for you?

Luke Stafford: The single biggest driver is being straightforward about value, even when that honesty doesn’t work in our immediate favour. If someone brings in a piece to sell and it’s worth less than they expected, we explain exactly why rather than softening it or inflating the number to make the transaction happen, and customers remember that honesty even when the news wasn’t what they wanted to hear. That’s what actually turns a first-time seller or buyer into someone who comes back the next time they’re thinking about a piece, and who tells other people to come to us specifically.

Beyond that, having the same specialists available across repeat visits matters more than people expect. A customer who dealt with me directly on their first sale often wants that same continuity the next time, since watches and jewellery carry a personal element that’s different from a typical retail purchase. We don’t have a formal loyalty programme built around points or discounts, the loyalty comes from customers trusting the specific people behind the counter, which is a slower thing to build but a much harder thing for a competitor to poach.

6. If you had to write a short playbook for an ecommerce founder one stage behind you, what would you double down on over the next 12 months – and what would you stop doing entirely?

Luke Stafford: I’d tell them to double down on making their expertise visible and provable, not just claimed. In a trust-based category like ours, the founders who win are the ones who show their work, whether that’s explaining exactly how authentication happens or being transparent about how a valuation is reached, rather than just asserting that customers can trust them. That kind of content compounds over time because it builds genuine credibility rather than relying purely on price or convenience to win a sale.

What I’d tell them to stop entirely is treating online presence and physical presence as separate strategies that need separate teams and separate goals. For us, the website and the sell-my-watch service exist to drive people toward a real conversation with a specialist, not to replace that conversation, and founders one stage behind us often waste energy trying to make the online experience a complete substitute for that in-person trust building. It rarely works in a category where people want to physically see and handle what they’re buying before committing serious money.