Twenty sections, written to be read from beginning to end. Jump around if you prefer — each section stands alone.
If you only read one page of this proposal, read this one.
The Collectors Club is a private, members-only digital home for serious watch collectors. It is not a marketplace. It is not a dealer. It is a community platform — think of it as the quiet, vetted space that sits between a members’ club and an auction house, with you, Ben, as the face, the founding editor, and the trusted hand on the shoulder.
Members apply, are identity-checked, and are admitted by invitation or approval. Once inside, they build a profile, list the watches they own, list the watches they want, publish articles, read live market data, and — quietly, without ever bidding in public — get introduced to other members whose collections and wishlists match their own. When a deal happens, it happens between them. The club takes a modest commission. No fanfare. No shopfront.
Nobody does this today. Chrono24 is an open marketplace with no vetting. A Collected Man is editorial but dealer-controlled. WatchBox is a retailer. None of them introduce collector to collector by matching collections to wishlists. That is your unique edge, and it is the single feature we are designing the whole product around.
You, honestly, more than anything. Your voice, your taste, your network. A weekly thirty-minute call for the duration of the project. Your thumbs-up at three design sign-offs. Introductions to eight to ten founding members we can test with before launch. Everything else we handle.
The Collectors Club is a community first, a marketplace almost by accident. Every product decision in this document is rooted in that principle. If we ever disagree, that principle wins.
Serious watch collectors, today, have three options. They can scroll Chrono24 and wade through unverified listings from sellers they have never met. They can queue at the glass counter of a dealer who is, by definition, on the other side of the table from them. Or they can place a bid at auction and hope the phone in the room next to theirs belongs to someone reasonable.
None of those are communities. None of them are places a collector goes to belong. There is no digital home where vetted, serious collectors gather, share their collections, tell each other what they are chasing, and deal directly and quietly when interests line up. The Collectors Club is that home.
We have spent a lot of time, in preparing this proposal, thinking about why this business works with you as its founder, and why it would be harder to make work without you. A few things stand out.
You are a collector yourself. That is not marketing. Members will be able to see your collection, read your writing, and tell within a page or two whether you know what you are talking about. You do.
You are independent of the trade. You are not a dealer. You do not hold stock. You do not have incentives pointing in the opposite direction from your members’. The platform reflects that: you sit alongside members, not opposite them.
You have a London base and a global network. The Knightsbridge office isn’t decoration. It is a real place, a trusted neutral ground, and for the kind of watches we are talking about, being able to hand a Nautilus across a table in Mayfair is meaningful in a way that FedEx cannot replicate.
“The brand must never feel like a dealer or seller. It must feel like a community — the home serious collectors have never had.” — Ben Pink, project brief
We are designing, unapologetically, for one kind of person. High net worth. Serious about watches, not just wearing them. Probably between thirty-five and seventy. Owns more than five pieces and has bought at least one at auction or from a private seller in the past eighteen months. Global — London, New York, Hong Kong, Dubai, Geneva, Singapore — but the product has to feel British in the way the best London clubs do. Quiet. Certain. Not showing off.
This audience does not respond to marketing. They respond to recommendation, to taste, and to being treated as adults. Everything in this platform — from the tone of the welcome email to the typeface of the trending-watches card — has to meet that standard.
We will get into the detail on page 26, but the commercial shape of the business is this:
Version 3 of this proposal treated the platform as a marketplace with community features bolted on. Version 4 inverts that entirely. This is a community platform in which a small amount of commerce takes place, quietly, between people who trust each other. Every section of this document reflects that reversal.
The other thing we learned is that the language of v3 was too technical for a non-technical founder to hold in their head. This version fixes that. If there is a technical term you want defined, it is in the glossary at the end — and if there is one missing, tell us and we will add it.
We spent time with each of these before writing a line of this proposal. Here is what we found.
| Competitor | What they are | What they are not |
|---|---|---|
| Chrono24The dominant open marketplace, roughly 500,000 listings. | A classified-ads site. Any dealer, any listing, minimal vetting, global reach. | Not a community. Not vetted. No relationships. No sense of membership. No introduction. No editorial. |
| A Collected ManEditorial-led independent dealer, London-based, excellent taste. | A curated dealer with a beautiful magazine attached. Honest, thoughtful, very well-made. | Still a dealer. They own the inventory. Collectors buy from them, not from each other. No peer-to-peer. No matching. |
| WatchBox / 1916 Co.Retailer with physical lounges in major cities. | A premium retailer with clubby venues. Buy, sell, trade in their inventory. | Not community. Not peer-to-peer. Still a retailer in a nicer jumper. |
| HodinkeeEditorial brand with a shop attached. | The best watch-writing on the internet, plus a boutique storefront. | Not a platform for collectors to interact. Readers are not members. No profiles, no matching, no wishlist browsing. |
| WatchChartsPrice tracking and market data. | A data service. Index prices, indices, historical charts. | Not community. Not transactional. Purely information. |
Each of these businesses does one thing very well. Chrono24 does scale. A Collected Man does taste. WatchBox does in-person experience. Hodinkee does editorial. WatchCharts does data.
None of them do community. None of them put collectors in a room with each other. None of them say, “we noticed another member has been chasing your Daytona for eight months — would you like to talk?” That is the gap. That is also the hardest thing in this space to build, because it requires trust, and trust requires vetting, and vetting requires a founder with taste and a network.
The Collectors Club is the only thing in this list that sits alongside the collector, rather than on the opposite side of a transaction. That is not a slogan — it is the architecture of the product. Every feature in Section 5 either increases a member’s sense of belonging or gets out of the way.
Chrono24 is scale. WatchBox is retail. A Collected Man is taste.
The Collectors Club is membership.
Because the positioning is membership-first, three decisions follow automatically and we will refer back to them throughout the rest of this document.
The Collectors Club is a private, warmly-run, editorially-led membership for serious watch collectors — the home they have never had.
Mr Pink has introduced three new members this month. Their collections include an unworn 5711, a 1971 Daytona, and — at last — an early Dufour Simplicity.
Notice what isn’t there: no price, no urgency, no “new listings.” Just a sentence a collector would read and smile at.
“£££ DEAL ALERT! Nautilus 5711 just listed — be the first to make an offer! Don’t miss out!”
If anything on the platform ever sounds like this, we have failed.
We will develop the full visual system in weeks 1–3, but to set expectations: the brand should feel closer to The Economist, Christie’s catalogues, and a bound collection of Horological Journal back issues than to a modern tech product.
One serif for voice — a warm, British-feeling cut like Cormorant Garamond or similar. One sans for system type — understated, near-invisible. One monospace for micro-type, dates, numbers.
Warm ivory and paper whites for body. Deep ink for text. A single accent — your RVS pink, used sparingly, as you would use a red pencil on a proof: to point at things that matter.
Generous whitespace. Thin horizontal rules in place of boxes. Cards used sparingly, not everywhere. Photography treated editorially — one great image to a page, not galleries of thumbnails.
Real watches photographed on neutral backgrounds. Members’ own pieces where possible. No stock, no render, no lifestyle ambiguity. Where photography is missing, we use placeholder chips labelled honestly rather than faking it.
Minimal. The brand should have five or six icons in total, drawn with a single hairline, from a single geometric system. No filled icons, no illustrations, no decorative flourishes.
Slow, respectful, almost none. Fades, not slides. No parallax. The platform should feel like flipping through a well-printed book.
The name is finalised — The Collectors Club. Two words and a definite article. We will use the full phrase on first mention and in all formal copy. The shortened “the Club” is acceptable in-platform once a member is signed in. We will avoid acronyms (no “TCC”). The apostrophe is intentionally absent in the primary logotype for visual balance; it returns in running copy as Collectors’ Club where grammar demands.
Eleven core features. Each explained in a paragraph a non-technical person can read at breakfast.
Prospective members apply on the public site — a short form about themselves, their collection, and (optionally) who referred them. They then complete an identity check: a passport or ID photo, a selfie for matching, a proof-of-address. You, or a delegated admin, review applications in a queue and approve, reject, or hold. Nothing goes into the club without you saying so.
Every member has their own page. A short bio, a portrait, their collection (as much or as little as they want to show), their wishlist, the articles they have published on the platform, and a quiet button that says “send a private message.” Members can choose to make their profile shareable outside the platform — useful for auction catalogues or press.
Each member lists the watches they currently own. For each piece, they can add brand, reference, year, condition, provenance notes, private valuation, and photography. They choose what’s public (to other members), what’s private (only to them), and what’s “matchable” (visible to the matching engine but not publicly listed).
The other side of the same coin. What a member is chasing — by brand, reference, year range, condition, and price tolerance. Wishlists are private by default but members can make them browseable by other members, a bit like a gift list at a wedding.
Your unique edge, covered properly in Section 6. Briefly: the platform watches for overlaps between one member’s collection and another’s wishlist. When it finds one, it introduces them. Quietly. One at a time.
Members can write articles — essays, reviews, auction reports, personal histories. You sit as founding editor: articles come into a queue, you approve or edit, they go live. Members can comment (in a moderated, member-only thread). Articles can be shared outside the platform.
Three small tiles on every member’s home screen. The spot price of gold, pulled live from a precious-metals API and updated through the day. A short “trending this week” list — four or five references with the biggest movement, pulled from a market-data provider. And a “quietly watched” list — what your members, collectively, have on their wishlists in aggregate. We deliberately keep this simple. The club is not Bloomberg.
Private, end-to-end encrypted messaging between members, triggered by a match or initiated freely. One-to-one only at launch — group chats and channels are a v2 consideration. Messages are not visible to RVS Media, to admins, or to anyone except the two members in the conversation. You, as admin, can disable an abusive member’s ability to send new messages, but you cannot read existing ones.
When two members agree a deal, one of them presses a button that says, quietly, “record this transaction.” They agree a price. The platform takes a 10% commission from the seller on completion. Payment is handled through a secure payment provider (Stripe or equivalent); we also support the traditional bank-to-bank transfer route for larger deals, with the platform issuing an invoice for the commission afterwards. Disputes come to you or a designated admin; we build the tools for you to resolve them.
For the highest-value deals, members can choose “in-person handover at the club office.” This is a scheduling flow in the product: both parties book a slot, you receive a calendar invite, the watch changes hands under your supervision. No bank-transfer uncertainty, no courier risk, no lingering doubt. This is a brand moment as much as a feature, and it is designed carefully.
A single codebase (Flutter) that ships to both app stores. Everything the website does, the app does — profile, collection, wishlist, messaging, matching notifications, editorial, live data. Face ID / Touch ID sign-in. Push notifications for matches and messages. Submitted to the App Store and Google Play on your developer accounts.
Mirroring every member feature is an admin tool you use daily: applications queue, member management, editorial approval, transaction oversight, dispute resolution, reporting dashboard. These are not a single “settings” screen — they are a full working environment, designed to be used for an hour a day without friction. Detailed screens appear in Section 10.
This is the single feature that makes The Collectors Club unlike anything else in the market. It deserves its own section.
A collector has wanted a specific Daytona reference for eight months. Somewhere else in the world, another collector owns exactly that watch and is starting, quietly, to wonder whether to let it go. Today, they will never find each other — unless one of them posts publicly, which brings the dealers, the scammers, the noise. The Collectors Club’s matching engine puts them in touch without any of that.
We will fine-tune these in weeks 3–4, but the starting rules are:
We have checked. Every competitor listed in Section 3 was evaluated for this feature. None of them implement a true two-sided, consent-based, collection-to-wishlist matching system. A Collected Man has a “wishlist” feature but it notifies the dealer, not a peer. Chrono24 has saved searches but those notify you of new listings, not of another collector holding the piece quietly. This is your edge, built deliberately, protected by the fact that nobody else has the vetted community to make it meaningful.
This is our internal term. Members never see it. They see phrases like “a quiet introduction,” “a match has been found,” and “would you like us to introduce you?” The technology sits in the background; the experience is of an attentive concierge.
A day-in-the-life, following one member from the moment they hear about the club to the moment they complete their first quiet deal.
Daniel hears about The Collectors Club at dinner. A friend, already a member, mentions it in passing. Later that evening, Daniel visits the public site. Three screens of quiet, editorial writing about watches and collectors. A page about you. A single, calm “apply for membership” button in the top right. No pricing, no feature list, no marketing noise.
Daniel applies. Six questions: name, email, a short paragraph about his collecting, how he heard about the club, a link to any existing collecting profile, and (optional) the name of a referring member. He uploads a passport and takes a selfie. That is it.
You receive a notification in the admin tool: one new application. You open his application, read his paragraph, check the referring member, approve. He receives a warm email — written in your voice — welcoming him to the club.
Daniel signs in. He is shown, gently, how the club works — a three-screen introduction, not a 12-step onboarding. He adds three watches to his collection, a Lange Datograph, a Speedmaster, and an early Dufour. He adds two to his wishlist: an early Daytona, and a specific Royal Oak reference. He closes the tab.
Twelve minutes later, he gets an email. Another member has the Daytona reference in their collection, and has marked it “matchable.” The email is two sentences long. Would he like an introduction? He says yes. The other member says yes. A private thread opens.
Daniel and the other member exchange a few messages. Photos change hands, conditions are discussed, a price is floated. It is not the match Daniel expected — the price is a little higher than he was willing to pay — but they leave on good terms. He tells the other member he will be in touch if he changes his mind.
A different member joins the club. A Royal Oak is added to their collection, matching Daniel’s wishlist. Daniel receives a second quiet email. This one works. A conversation happens, a handover is booked at the Knightsbridge office, the deal is done.
Daniel arrives at the club office at 3pm. The seller is already there, having a coffee with you. You oversee the handover — the watch is inspected, the box and papers are checked, the payment is confirmed through the platform. The commission has been taken quietly. Daniel walks out wearing the Royal Oak.
That evening, Daniel writes his first article for the club — a short piece about what he was looking for, and how he found it. You approve it and it goes live. The next morning, three members comment.
This journey is our reference design. Everything in the product must serve it. If a screen, a notification, a piece of copy, or a feature does not contribute to this flow, we should question whether it belongs. Specifically:
This section is deliberately non-technical. If you want the technical detail, ask us and we’ll produce a separate document for your CTO-in-waiting.
The Collectors Club is a website and a mobile app that share the same brain. The brain — where all the data lives and where the matching engine runs — sits on a secure cloud server in London. When you, or a member, opens the site or the app, it talks to that brain, asks for the right information, and shows it beautifully. Everything is encrypted in transit and at rest. Sensitive data (identity documents, messages, payment details) is held in specialist vaults, separate from everything else.
Watches are expensive. Members are private. Identity documents, payment details and messages all live in the product. We are treating security as a first-class design concern, not an afterthought.
Because Ben asked for layman language, we will tell you what we are not building, and why.
We are happy to hand over the detailed architecture diagram, ERD, API specification and infrastructure-as-code templates to any technical advisor you engage. It is all documented, version-controlled, and yours on final payment.
Six phases. Three design sign-offs. One standing weekly call. Very little ceremony.
We will ask for your written sign-off at three points. These are the only places where we genuinely need you to say “yes, proceed.” Everything else is a conversation.
You will change your mind. That’s fine, that’s normal, and small changes are absorbed into our weekly rhythm without fuss. For anything that adds a week or more to the timeline, we will write a short change note, agree it with you in writing, and adjust the timeline or the commercials accordingly. No surprises on the invoice.
If it is on this list, we are building it for £38,000. If it is not on this list, it is not in scope.
We are being deliberately explicit here so there are no awkward conversations in week 17. If you want any of the below, they are priced separately.
Starts on contract signature. Rounded to the nearest week. Week numbers below are project weeks, not calendar weeks — we map them to real dates in the kick-off.
| Week | Milestone | Type |
|---|---|---|
| W1 | Kick-off workshop — positioning, audience, first principles | Meeting |
| W3 | Brand identity delivered | Sign-off 1 |
| W5 | Home-screen and member-profile prototypes in review | Review |
| W7 | Full clickable design prototype — every screen | Sign-off 2 |
| W10 | Staging URL live; you can sign in and use the site (skeleton) | Review |
| W12 | Matching Engine ready for internal testing | Review |
| W14 | Core platform feature-complete on staging | Review |
| W17 | Mobile app builds running on your phone | Review |
| W19 | Soft launch begins — founding members invited | Soft launch |
| W20 | Penetration test report, performance test report | Sign-off 3 |
| W21 | App Store & Play Store submission | Review |
| W22 | Public launch. Handover. First invoice for aftercare begins. | Go live |
A small, senior team. No offshore hand-offs. You have direct access to everyone on this page, for all 22 weeks.
| Role | Responsibility | Your contact through |
|---|---|---|
| Account Director | Day-to-day owner. Weekly calls. Sign-offs. The buck stops here. | Email + phone |
| Brand Lead | Identity, guidelines, tone of voice. Weeks 1–3. | |
| Product Designer (lead) | Every screen. Weeks 4–7, plus revisions through build. | Email + Figma |
| Senior Front-end Engineer | Website + admin. Weeks 8–20. | Via Account Director |
| Senior Back-end Engineer | API, database, matching engine. Weeks 8–20. | Via Account Director |
| Mobile Engineer | Flutter app, iOS/Android. Weeks 12–21. | Via Account Director |
| QA Engineer | End-to-end testing. Weeks 16–22. | Via Account Director |
| DevOps / Security | Hosting, CI/CD, pen-test coordination. Weeks 8–22. | Via Account Director |
| Role | Time commitment | When |
|---|---|---|
| Ben Pink — Founder | ~3 hours / week | Every week |
| — weekly call, sign-offs, content decisions | ||
| Your designated admin (optional) | ~4 hours / week | From W8 |
| — to be trained in the admin tool before launch | ||
| Your legal counsel | One-off | W2 and W20 |
| — to review T&Cs and privacy policy | ||
| 8–10 founding members | ~2 hours total each | W19–W21 |
| — soft-launch testing |
For the entire 22 weeks, you have one phone number and one email address to contact. The Account Director fields everything and routes it internally. You will never be cc’d into a developer thread.
Eight deliverables. One total. Three tranches. No hidden fees.
| Deliverable | What’s included | Investment |
|---|---|---|
| Brand & Strategy | Logo, colour, typography, tone of voice, guidelines, email templates, photography direction. | £3,200 |
| Design — every screen | Public site, members’ portal, admin, app — hi-fi clickable prototypes. Two revision rounds. | £4,600 |
| The Matching Engine | Your unique edge. Algorithm, rules, notifications, member experience. | £5,200 |
| Web platform & Members’ portal | Public site, gated members’ area, profiles, wishlists, editorial, live data, messaging, commerce. | £9,800 |
| Admin & KYC | Applications queue, identity verification, member management, disputes, reporting. | £3,400 |
| iOS & Android app | One Flutter codebase, two stores. Face ID, push, parity with web. Full submission. | £9,200 |
| Testing, Security & Launch | End-to-end QA, pen test, performance test, soft launch, admin training, handover pack. | £2,600 |
| Total investment | Excluding VAT · Paid in three tranches | £38,000 |
On contract signature — commencement.
At design sign-off (end W7) & development midpoint.
On go-live & full handover.
All invoices are due 14 days from date of issue. VAT at the prevailing UK rate is added to each invoice. Payment by bank transfer to RVS Media Ltd. Change requests (per Section 9) are quoted separately at £850 / day equivalent and invoiced with the following tranche.
Our build is a one-off. The platform costs something small to run each month. Here is an honest estimate for year one.
| Service | What it does | Monthly (est.) |
|---|---|---|
| AWS hosting (London) | Servers, database, storage, CDN. | £180–£350 |
| KYC provider (Onfido/Veriff) | Identity checks — charged per verification (~£1.80 each). | Pay-per-use |
| Stripe | Payment processing — 1.5% + 20p per UK card transaction. | Pay-per-use |
| Gold price API | Live spot price for the dashboard. | £25 |
| Watch market data | Trending references, index pricing (licensed). | £180–£400 |
| Postmark (email) | Transactional email — welcomes, matches, receipts. | £12–£45 |
| Monitoring & error tracking | Sentry, uptime alerts. | £35 |
| Domain & SSL | collectorsclub.com and variants. | £8 |
| Year-one operating | ~£5–10k, scaling with member count & transaction volume | £440–£1,050 pm |
After the 30-day aftercare period, you have three options:
Take the code and run it. We hand over cleanly. You engage your own engineer. £0 to us.
We keep the lights on — monitor, patch, answer. 1 day/month.
£1,200 / month.
Care + a steady stream of small improvements, new features, content tools. 4 days/month.
£4,400 / month.
None of the above is decided today. We’ll have a proper conversation in week 20 once you’ve seen how the platform behaves in the real world.
These are out of scope for the £38,000 build. They are here so you can see the shape of year two, and so our technical choices today don’t close any doors.
Every project has risks. We prefer to name them now.
| Risk | Likelihood | Impact | How we mitigate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scope creep. New features are requested mid-build. | High | Medium | Weekly rhythm surfaces it early. Written change notes for anything affecting timeline or commercials. You decide; we adjust. |
| Slow feedback cycles. Sign-offs delayed past 5 working days. | Medium | High | Dates booked in advance. Single written reply per round. Account Director chases politely. |
| KYC provider change of terms. Onfido or Veriff changes pricing. | Low | Medium | Thin adapter pattern — we can swap providers in a week. |
| App Store rejection. Apple rejects first submission. | Medium | Low | Standard first-time experience. Fix and resubmit typically takes 3–5 days. Submission buffer built into week 21. |
| Pen-test findings. Serious issue found in week 20. | Medium | Medium | We run an internal security review in week 18 to catch issues before the external firm does. |
| Market-data licence delays. Partner negotiation slips. | Medium | Low | Launch with gold + our own trending logic; licensed data added post-launch without blocking go-live. |
| Not enough founding members for soft launch. | Low | High | 8 confirmed by week 16. We help you identify candidates from your network. |
| Key-person risk at RVS Media. A team member leaves. | Low | Medium | Every role has a named second. Code and designs in version control and Figma — never on one laptop. |
| Underestimated complexity. Something takes longer than we thought. | Medium | Medium | 10% buffer in our internal schedule. If we burn it, we absorb it — fixed-price means fixed-price. |
The biggest risk in any 22-week project is the founder’s attention. If you disappear for three weeks in week 10, the project suffers. We will flag this early and politely — but we depend on you being available.
These become binding on counter-signature of the acceptance page (Section 19) and will be restated in the formal contract.
All code, designs, brand assets and documentation created under this engagement are your exclusive property, transferred to The Collectors Club on receipt of the final payment. Third-party components (open-source libraries, fonts, stock imagery) carry their own licences; these are declared in the handover pack.
Both parties will treat all non-public information shared during the engagement as confidential. This obligation survives the end of the engagement indefinitely. RVS Media may refer to The Collectors Club as a client in its portfolio and case-study material, with prior approval of the specific materials used.
RVS Media warrants that deliverables are free from material defects for 30 days following go-live. During this aftercare period, any bugs traceable to our work are fixed at no cost. Bugs introduced by third-party services or by post-launch changes outside our scope are fixed on a time-and-materials basis.
RVS Media’s aggregate liability under this engagement is capped at the total fees paid (£38,000). RVS Media is not liable for indirect or consequential losses, for the authenticity of watches traded on the platform, for disputes between members, or for any failure of third-party services (Stripe, Onfido, AWS) outside our reasonable control.
Either party may terminate with 14 days’ written notice. On termination, fees are payable for work completed up to the termination date. All work-in-progress code, designs and documentation are handed over cleanly.
This engagement is governed by the laws of England and Wales. Any dispute not resolved by good-faith negotiation will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.
This proposal is valid for 30 days from the date of issue (April 2026). After that date, we are happy to re-issue with any pricing adjustments, which will be minimal.
Sign this page, email it back, and we begin.
On behalf of The Collectors Club, I accept the scope, the timeline, the investment of £38,000 excluding VAT, the payment schedule of 30% / 40% / 30%, and the commercial terms set out in Section 18 of this proposal dated April 2026.
I understand that on counter-signature, a formal contract will be issued within 24 hours, alongside the 30% commencement invoice of £11,400 plus VAT, due in 14 days. The project will commence on the first working day following receipt of that payment.
Return by email to hello@rvsmedia.co.uk · RVS Media Ltd · Company 09427611 · rvsmedia.co.uk
If it appears anywhere in this document and felt like jargon, it’s here.
Thank you, Ben, for reading all the way to page 32. We have done a lot of work to make sure everything in this document is true, buildable, and worth your time. If anything is unclear, or you want to push back on any of it — the matching rules, the phasing, the pricing, the language — that’s what week zero is for. Call us.
We think you’re about to build something the watch world has been quietly waiting for. We’d very much like to help you do it.