Shaun Neff on hot-selling watches, more

I got an update at Agenda from Shaun Neff about Neff’s new hot-selling watches, how the company is financing its rapid growth and more.

Watches

The watches landed in stores six or seven weeks ago and the sell through has exceeded everyone’s plans, he said.

“And I had high expectations,” Shaun said.

Neff had an allocation of watches for key retailers designed to last through holiday.

But the company has already blown through its stock for the rest of the year, and just ordered about 150,000 more watches to get through Christmas, he said.

The price points for the watches - $20, $25, $30 and $35 – also seem to be resonating with Neff fans, Shaun said.

Currently there are five different Neff models and with different colorways, that equates to about 25 different watches.

Neff will expand to 10 models and 50 different watches all together for fall and winter, he said.

Keeping distribution steady

So far, Neff is keeping its distribution steady, though the company is constantly bombarded with requests from retailers it is not yet selling.

During one-on-ones with sales reps at a recent Neff sales meeting, Shaun got great feedback about the strength of the brand across all different kinds of core retailers, he said.

With its rapid growth, Neff needed some financial resources to fund production. So Wells Fargo Capital Finance now factors Neff.

Shaun said it’s been a great solution because Neff has the financial resources it needs but hasn’t given up any equity to do so.

“We are growing so fast, the timing (of working with Wells) was perfect – especially with the checks I’m signing these days (for production.)”