"At The 1916 Company, we believe that watch collecting is about much more than what's on your wrist; it's about how our passion for watches connects us."
The 1916 Company is one of the most trusted names in luxury watches, jewelry, and handbags, built on the belief that collecting is about far more than ownership. Named after the year the founder's family began a legacy in fine timepieces, the company has grown into a leading destination for pre-owned and certified luxury goods, serving collectors across the United States and beyond. For their most engaged customers, buying a watch is just the beginning of a much deeper relationship with horology.
That relationship has always been at the heart of how The 1916 Company thinks about their business. Serious collectors don't just want to transact; they want to share, discuss, learn, and connect with others who understand the passion. For years, those connections happened through in-person events, expert curation, and white-glove service. But as collector behavior shifted and digital became the primary touchpoint, a new kind of platform was needed.
<sprscript-green>The Challenge<sprscript-green>
A transaction-first app in a community-first world
The 1916 Company's app worked well as a commerce tool. Collectors could browse inventory, track pieces, and make purchases. But the experience ended at the point of sale. There was no space to share what was on your wrist, no way to discuss a major auction result with fellow collectors, and no place to engage with the editorial and expert content that defines the collector conversation.
Community building had historically relied on physical events, moments that created real connection but were inherently limited in reach and frequency. Between those events, there was no continuous digital touchpoint keeping collectors close to the brand or to each other. The conversations that matter most to watch enthusiasts were happening on external platforms the company had no visibility into: fragmented across independent channels, social media feeds, and comment sections, none of which were owned or shaped by The 1916 Company.
The absence of an owned community layer created a structural gap. Without ongoing interaction, the app couldn't surface what collectors were excited about, what they were considering, or what their collections actually looked like. Each transaction was isolated rather than part of a continuous relationship. The team recognized that closing that gap, bringing content, commerce, and community into one coherent digital experience, was the defining product challenge ahead of them.
<sprscript-green>Why social.plus<sprscript-green>
Infrastructure built for the collector experience they wanted to create
The 1916 Company's vision was specific: a platform where collecting, conversation, and commerce could coexist natively, without asking users to leave the app for any part of the experience. That required in-app community infrastructure flexible enough to support multiple distinct engagement mechanics: activity feeds, structured discussion threads, user profiles, content channels, and real-time social interaction, all functioning together cohesively.
Building those capabilities in-house would have meant significant and sustained engineering investment, diverting focus from the core product and creating long-term maintenance obligations. social.plus provided the modular infrastructure to make it possible without that burden. The Social SDK gave the team the building blocks to design a community layer that felt native to the product and matched the aesthetic and culture of luxury retail, not a generic feature dropped into an existing app.
Equally important was the ownership model. With social.plus, all community activity including collector content, discussion threads, Wrist Feed logs, and user profiles would live entirely within The 1916 Company's own environment. That meant the company could develop genuine insight into what their collectors valued, what they were wearing, and what was shaping their interests over time. The community wouldn't just drive engagement; it would generate compounding intelligence that could inform everything from editorial to inventory curation.
<sprscript-green>Implementation<sprscript-green>
A community layer built around how collectors actually behave
The centerpiece of the implementation was a new Community Tab, a dedicated hub within the redesigned app that brought all social interaction together in one place. Rather than treating community as an ancillary feature, it became the organizing principle of the new experience, the first place collectors landed when they opened the app outside of a buying intent.
The Wrist Feed became the most distinctive feature of the implementation: a daily log where collectors share what they're wearing, browse what others have on their wrists, and build a personal record of their wearing habits over time. The mechanic is deceptively simple but highly habit-forming, giving collectors a reason to open the app every day. Over time, the feed surfaces patterns, showing which pieces get the most wear, how community tastes shift with seasons and releases, and which watches in a collection tend to sit unworn.
The Discussion Feed was designed for deeper engagement: a space for conversations around product launches, industry news, collecting strategies, and market movements. The 1916 Company brought recognized voices from the watch world into those discussions directly, including journalists and reviewers with significant followings in the collector community. Their participation raised the quality of conversation and gave the community an authority that generic platforms can't replicate. Content channels organized around specific topics and major industry moments, including live coverage of events like Watches & Wonders, gave users structured entry points into the community beyond their personal networks.
Social features including post creation, likes, comments, and collection showcasing gave collectors the full toolkit to express their identity and connect with others. User profiles support both public and private collection display, letting each collector choose how much of their passion they share with the broader community.
<sprscript-green>The Results<sprscript-green>
A platform collectors return to every day
Since launch, The 1916 Company's app has moved well beyond its transactional origins. The Community Tab has become the defining feature of the product, the reason collectors open the app when they're not shopping, and increasingly the reason they stay. The community is growing, user-generated content flows in steadily, and early feedback is actively shaping the next phase of development.
The Wrist Feed has proven to be the highest-engagement feature, driving daily opens from a user base that previously engaged with the app primarily around purchase intent. The discussion experience has attracted strong participation, with collectors engaging around purchases, trends, and major industry moments, and with the quality of expert-led conversation establishing the platform as a credible knowledge hub, not just a transactional tool.
Perhaps most significantly, the app now functions as a continuous relationship between The 1916 Company and its collectors, not a series of isolated purchase events. The community generates ongoing insight into collector behavior and interests that was simply inaccessible before. As John Shmerler, CEO of The 1916 Company, described it: "At The 1916 Company, we believe that watch collecting is about much more than what's on your wrist; it's about how our passion for watches connects us. The relaunch of our app brings that belief to life, creating a new space where knowledge is shared, habits are tracked and conversations unfold in real time."
The 1916 Company is continuing to build on this foundation. Plans include expanding social and engagement capabilities, deepening the integration between content, commerce, and community, and enhancing personalization across feeds and discussions. The long-term vision is a best-in-class digital ecosystem for collectors globally, one where the app is not just where you buy watches, but where you live your passion for them.