On The Fly does not warehouse any inventory of watches; we work through a watch broker with access to 100+ brands of fine watches. Our watch broker essentially has set up a network of retailers that are "authorized retailers" of the brands that we sell (and many that we do not yet have on the site but hope to soon). As you will read, all of our watches are authentic. The item comes with original boxes, tags, stickers and booklets and will look exactly like the same item sitting in an authorized dealers display case.
How the watch business works
Becoming an "authorized retailer" of a high-end watch brand usually
starts with overcoming two steep requirements: (1) a very high monetary
investment in the brand (often $50,000 or more), and (2) purchasing
models from the entire line of watches regardless of whether you think
certain lines or models are appropriate for your target market. This is
why the typical jewelry store that you might shop will be an authorized
retailer of maybe 3-5 brands. Additionally, most high-end watch brands
mention on their own websites that NOBODY is authorized to sell their
watches online. Yet, millions of watches, including very high-end ones,
are sold everyday over the Internet. And while we do not sell millions
of watches a year, we have yet to have one returned.
How watch brokers work
Watch brokers act as a middle-man between retailers that want to have
access to brands beyond what they may be authorized to sell. If you
were to order a Jaeger LeCoultre from us (On The Fly), we place the
order with our broker. The broker puts out the request for the model
number within their network. An authorized Jaeger retailer ships it to
us. The authorized retailer takes a small commission, as does the
broker. The MSRP, however, does not change; the cost is the same to the
consumer if he/she walked into that original store. You would probably
be surprised how many watch retailers utilize brokers to obtain certain
brands of watches.
Warranty
We consider warranty service to be of the highest priority and in the
event a warranty issue comes up we'll work with you to resolve the
problem as quickly as possible. In many cases we will even turn around
warranty services quicker then the original manufacturer! To streamline
the process we include with each watch our own plastic warranty card
that enumerates the terms and identifies both buyer and watch. The
warranty for any watch we sell is for the same time period as the
original manufacturer.
