If you’ve not heard of Scottish Watches before and claim you’re an avid watch enthusiast, then where have you been?
Launched in early 2019, The Scottish Watches Podcast began as a bit of fun and has rapidly grown in popularity and stature to now be one of the leading voices on podcasting platforms when it comes to delivering watch content in a humorous but informative manner. Releasing two shows weekly, Monday’s episode covering new releases, news and chat of the past week, followed up by an interview episode on Thursday featuring collectors, watchmakers, brands and people of interest to listeners; the show delivers an hour of content that is professionally edited and available free of charge across all popular podcast players and websites including Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify and SoundCloud.
Over 200 episodes and nearly 2 years ago, I was fortunate enough to make an appearance on Episode 98 – Rikki had travelled down to the Midlands to visit the inaugural WatchIt! Watch Fair (which has still yet to have a follow-up, thanks Covid), and he interviewed the exhibitors and yours truly.
Apart from me (of course), some of the stand out guests over the past 300 episodes include everyone from Jean Claude Biver to Archie Luxury; plus Roger W. Smith OBE, Max Busser, Frank Stephenson, Brian Duffy, George Bamford, Tim Mosso, Edouard Meylan and many, many more.
For the 300th edition of the show, Rikki and David decided to celebrate the man who helped shaped the watch world as it stands today, Gerald Genta. After speaking with his daughter Alexia and then his wife Evelyne, a date was arranged for the recording and in the blink of an eye, the hour had passed bringing with it countless stories and anecdotes that have never been heard before, directly from those closest to him.
I asked Rikki, the founder, a few questions about his journey.
Roughly how many hours per week does Scottish Watches take?
Each show takes approximately 20 hours to set up organise research record edit upload and then promote. So over 40 hours a week when all the emailing phone calls social media content website updates and everything else that goes on to creating and releasing each show.
What’s your absolute most favourite highlight (include episode number if possible) from running the podcast?
My favourite highlight would be when we spoke with Brian Duffy from Watches of Switzerland. He was talking away quite the thing and an ice cream van went past my house. He heard this through the microphone and started talking about when he was young in Glasgow and used to drive around in his own ice cream van. That took the conversation from highbrow corporate business speak with the CEO of watches of Switzerland group right back to the streets of Glasgow in the 1980s. This was episode 202.
What’s the best bit of advice you would give yourself 300 episodes ago?
To be honest there is no real advice I would give myself 300 episodes ago because everything has been a nice learning journey from day one. If anything was to change it would’ve changed where we are currently. Perhaps investing in better audio equipment and recording methods would have been a good idea but I am very happy with the way things have progressed over the years in a very natural and fluid way.
Where do you see the podcast in another 300 episodes’ time?
I really have no idea whatsoever, because at the very beginning I had no idea that we would be where we are just now, and all the amazing things that have happened along the way. Things may have been completely different if Covid hadn’t happened too. We may have had many more opportunities to move forward or alternatively we may have not moved forward quite as quickly because people weren’t locked up at home with anything to do. As it stands now we are very fortunate and grateful for the opportunities that are coming our way, not only from brands, dealers and collectors, but also listeners and fellow enthusiasts who are getting in touch and giving us ideas and collaborative ways of working with other creators going forwards.
For me, it’s mightily impressive that they’ve reached the heights of success that they have. Here’s to their continued success and recognition!
