Technology has long been viewed as the enemy of traditional watchmaking. Industrialization has historically been viewed as a threat to handcrafting techniques employed by bespoke artisans. The quartz crisis called into question the future of mechanical timekeeping altogether, and the smartwatch left the watch industry wondering how it would remain relevant with up-and-coming generations of collectors. Yet, time and time again, technology and classic horology have found a way to coexist or, dare I say, strengthen each other.
Over the past five years in particular, it has been vital for the watch industry to embrace new technologies. This peaked during the pandemic with brick-and-mortar retailers shutting down, pushing brands to move to e-commerce platforms and spurring the rise of online platforms in the secondary market as well. With the pre-owned boom, we not only saw an increase in the supply and demand for vintage and neo-vintage timepieces but also a new desire among collectors to educate themselves on the ins and outs of buying and selling.
Sure, a natural part of being a collector is constantly evolving your collection—making space for different models and acquiring new pieces. However, with the rise of online secondary-market platforms and the improvement of longstanding resale platforms like eBay to enable the safe sale of high-value commodities, being a savvy buyer and seller has become an essential part of the collecting journey.
To bolster this educational curve, we have seen a new type of platform enter the market: online databases that compile historical and current figures from auction houses, dealers, and marketplaces. EveryWatch is one such platform, founded in 2021 and officially launched in 2023. Year over year, EveryWatch has expanded, and with plans for major growth heading into 2026, the platform has tapped two tech industry giants to lead the charge: Mike Capps of Epic Games and Ben Horesh of the mobile, online, and social gaming world.
The Secret Sauce: Man and Machine
EveryWatch began with a simple goal: to demystify the rapidly growing secondary market by creating a centralized database of auction results and watches available from dealers and marketplaces worldwide. This allows users to research price trends and track specific watches.
A year later, EveryWatch expanded thanks to AI integration. This allowed the platform to enhance its tools for users including the addition of certified pre-owned listings, deeper dealer archives providing access to more historical data, and improved tracking of trends over time, as well as overall market reporting. Today, according to EveryWatch’s Q3 Market Movements report, the platform aggregates data from over 925 dealers, marketplaces, and retailers, plus 465 auction houses worldwide.
However, the key is not data volume but what you can do with it, and in the watch industry, structure and consistency of data storage and use is a major issue. The way an auction house like Phillips inputs data on its watches and sales is totally different from how a retailer like Watches of Switzerland inputs data on its watches and sales. Even from longstanding, highly reputable companies like these, errors are possible and present, including issues like mis-transcribing reference numbers or mismatching photos and text. To ensure EveryWatch not only has the most data but also the best, most organized, and useful data, a combination of technology and human oversight is key. The company currently has a team dedicated to data synthesis—they analyze the data and build algorithms to improve, enhance, and refine the data presented to the end user, ensuring it is delivered in the purest, cleanest form.
The Power of Fresh Perspective in New Leadership
This year, EveryWatch has leveled up again, bringing on new leadership from none other than the tech world. Mike Capps joins as Chairman of the Board, and Ben Horesh joins as CEO. Capps holds a PhD in computer science and notched a longstanding career at one of the most elite gaming companies, Epic Games, where he launched popular franchises like Gears of War and Fortnite. Alternatively, Horesh hails from the lucrative worlds of mobile, online, and social gaming.
I had a baseline understanding of the crossover when I separated the content of timepieces from the broader tech space and viewed EveryWatch as strictly another tech platform—it all made sense from a business standpoint to tap the best-in-class talent from the tech space. However, on the other side of the coin, I couldn’t help but wonder why Capps and Horesh would leave behind their illustrious careers to join the watch industry—it seemed like an atypical move in the tech world. So, I sat down with them to learn more.
“When making a good game, it starts with two important things,” Capps explains. “You have to have really strong engineering, but the art also has to be super compelling and interesting. Video games have changed a lot over time,” he continues. “When I first started out, it was B2B—you were selling games to retailers. Now, it’s much more direct to consumer. All of these same things are true in the watch industry,” Capps said. “Engineering is very important, but if a watch isn’t aesthetically pleasing, it won’t sell. Today, there are all types of multi-brand retailers and platforms selling watches, and you have to get them excited. Still, you’re also marketing to collectors. Both industries are faced with the same set of problems.”
I was blown away by the parallels. He was right—the watch industry and the gaming industry were more alike than I had realized. They are industries juggling retail and marketing to consumers that are both nerds in their own right. Both collectors and gamers are obsessed with the nuances of engineering and design and are highly educated in the specifications of these disciplines to levels that reach true fandom status. “Managing the challenges facing these two industries and two consumer bases is a really hard thing to get right,” Capps admits. “Even if you’re the best, you’ll miss half the time.”
Capps’ knowledge of the watch industry didn’t just come from the parallels he saw with the gaming industry; it came from his own passion and reverence for watches. “I love watches,” he said, “In the back of my mind, I always wondered how I might cross over into the industry, and with EveryWatch, the stars just kind of aligned. It presented an opportunity for both Ben and me to use our expertise in data, AI, and UX to give back to the watch industry in a meaningful way.”
Horesh is the perfect foil to balance Capps. He comes from a long line of first-to-market gaming platforms. Basically, he’s an expert at scaling small startups. “What my experience working with numerous early-stage gaming startups taught me was witnessing how a small company not only found success but also kept it,” Horesh explains. “Because many companies can find early success, but keeping it is a whole other thing. That long-term sustainability piece is, in my opinion, really more interesting than finding it in the first place. So,, the focus of my career became understanding what makes users continue to come back to a platform.”
This remains Horesh’s guiding principle in his new role as CEO of EveryWatch. By Capps and Horesh’s assessment, the data component of EveryWatch is its strength, but the product itself and the user experience need work. Some of their early goals for improvement include keeping users engaged longer by giving them more reasons to immerse themselves in the platform. “It really comes down to value, right?” says Horesh. “And creating value means being consumer-centric—the fun part of this for both Mike and me is that we were both collectors before joining the company, so we really feel connected to our consumers and are excited to double down in this area. I think we still have a lot of room to grow in terms of features,” he continues. “We really want to make EveryWatch the place you trust, use, and spend time on in the long term to find watches and make informed decisions about buying and selling within your collection.”
What’s Next
In addition to expanding on its original mission for the collector and enthusiast community, EveryWatch is also rapidly expanding into the B2B space. “Because of the amount of data we have, some of the most prominent brands in the industry, including some members of the big three (Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, and Rolex) as well as independents and retailers, want to work with us,” explains Horseh. This goes back to EveryWatch’s secret sauce: man and machine. “We’re both able to amass a large data set and then synthesize and clean it in a way that’s useful for not just individual consumers but large companies to employ in their planning strategies,” Horesh adds. There’s a lot of misinformation in the industry at the moment. This is largely because it’s so disparate and disorganized, but when you have the right information presented in a digestible way, it allows both collectors and brands to make informed decisions.
Before we closed out our conversation, I was curious to ask one lingering question. Beyond their experiences in the tech industry informing their approach to EveryWatch, what other platforms in the watch industry align with EveryWatch in being the future of watch tech? They both chimed in with the same answer. “I’m really excited about what Fred Savage’s company Timepiece Grading Specialists is doing,” starts Horesh. “Yeah, I think what’s key is just like us, he’s a watch guy, but not a watch industry guy,” Capps adds. “I think about other nerdy collector industries, like comic books or Magic the Gathering cards,” he continues, “and it’s standard to have a strictly defined grading system—poor, fair, new—but in watches, it’s always been such a gray area. So, I agree that what Timepiece Grading Specialists is doing is really another example of the future of watch tech.”