Dropshipping Watches - Suppliers, Products Ideas, & Risks

There are so many products within the watch niche that you could dropship. These include watch straps, repair kits, stands, travel cases, and watches themselves.

The watch niche often has issues with quality and faults. So, checking the quality and agreeing on a warranty policy is essential to avoid losing money. We recommend requesting samples from your suppliers before listing any watches in your store.

During our time dropshipping, we’ve seen the watch market evolve. In 2018 we saw spammy ads offering ‘free watches plus shipping.’ This has changed to a more respected niche with the possibility of profit.

We’ll share with you everything we’ve learned in this article, including the following:

• Are Watches a Good Dropshipping Niche? 
• Risks of Dropshipping Watches
• Best Watch Products to Dropship 
• Watch Products to Avoid
• Finding the Best Dropshipping Suppliers for Watches
• Best Places to Find Suppliers
• Successful Dropshipping Watch Stores
• Dropshipping Watches Throughout the World
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Final Thoughts

Continue reading to work out if watches are the right dropshipping niche for you.

Key Takeaways 

• Choose a high-quality product. Poor-quality watches often end up faulty and returned. This could result in lost profit.
• Find a supplier who will offer a warranty policy for the watches you sell.
• Avoid selling counterfeit goods and low-quality watches with a high mark-up.

Are Watches a Good Dropshipping Niche?

Yes! There are so many products available in the watch niche that could be profitable.

Google Trends also shows that watches are in constant demand and are not seasonal. This is great for year-round sales. [1]

The size and weight of watches also lend themselves to dropshipping.

These are a few of the main reasons watches can be a great dropshipping niche, along with the following:

Profit

Selling the right watch products can be extremely profitable. 

You can also add complimentary watch products, such as cases, stands, alternative straps, etc. These are often impulsively purchased at checkout and can increase revenue.

However, make sure you’re not overcharging for your watches. If your watches aren’t luxury or superior quality, don’t charge as if they are. This will result in refunds, complaints, and lost money.

Variation of Products

There are so many products you could sell within the watch niche.

You could sell watch travel accessories, smartwatch accessories, or the watches themselves. 

The variation means you can create a diverse store. There are plenty of opportunities to upsell and bundle relevant items together.

If you need help finding the right watch accessory, use the Product Database to find a winning product.

Size and Weight

Both watches and watch accessories are small and light. The size and weight are both things we look at when doing product research.

Small and light products are cheaper to ship, meaning your profits are often higher.

What are the Risks of Dropshipping Watches?

The watch niche often ends up on lists of products to avoid dropshipping.

However, when done right, watches can be a profitable dropshipping niche.

To create a profitable store with longevity, avoid selling poor-quality watches.

Below are the main risks of dropshipping watches:

Quality

Don’t sell watches of inferior quality.

Make sure to request samples and test the watches before you sell them. Customers will often return poor-quality watches. 

These return requests can end up costing a lot of money.

Faults

Battery-operated products are more likely to develop faults than other products. 

Before committing to a supplier, ask about a warranty policy. The warranty policy should cover any faults in the products.

This means that your manufacturer or supplier will be responsible for the costs of the refunds. A warranty policy can save you considerable money if there are any issues.

Competition

Brands like Apple, Rolex, TAG, Cartier, and Omega dominate the watch market.

This can make it hard for smaller brands and dropshippers to enter the market.

However, plenty of products within the watch niche could be profitable.

We have a  Competitor Research tool that lets you spy on your competition and figure out how to beat them. Check it out using a free trial here.

Counterfeit Goods

Don’t be tempted to sell fake designer watches, no matter how much demand there might be.

It’s a federal offense in the USA. In the UK, it can result in 10 years imprisonment.

Batteries

To ship batteries, you need to follow strict guidelines. 

Certain platforms, including Amazon, also have their own forms to complete if you want to sell products with batteries. 

Check the rules with your supplier, shipping agent, and e-commerce platform before you list watches with batteries.

Cheap Products with High Mark-Up

We’ve all seen the ‘FREE WATCH plus shipping’ ads. 

They often have a watch ‘listed’ at an excessive price (let’s say $500 for this example). Shipping might cost $50, but this seems like a bargain compared to the original $550.

Buyers have bought the watches, thinking they’re receiving a watch worth $500. The watches then break quickly and leave customers disappointed and requesting refunds.

This is because poor-quality watches are cheap to buy, and the seller is making profits on the shipping fee.

These ads have given watches a bad name in the dropshipping world.

Watch Styles and Accessories to Dropship - Our Top Recommendations 

Watches are not just a time-telling device now. We use our phones to tell the time. 

Customers are using watches as a fashion accessory, status symbol, or instead of a phone [2].

Take a look at our product recommendations to find your next winning product.

Leather Watches for Men and Women

A leather watch is classic. They are often purchased by young professionals. 

Consider where you’re selling leather watches, as they are not the most comfortable in hot climates - unless you’re targeting those based in offices with air conditioning [3].

Leather straps often get tired and worn and need replacing. You could consider selling replacement straps for your watches. This is a great way to create recurring revenue.  

Stainless Steel Watch for Men and Women

A stainless steel watch is seen as a status symbol. 

Some of the main watch brands, like Rolex, are known for creating steel watches.

However, these luxury brands are often out of the ordinary person's price range. This leaves people looking for alternatives. 

Consider selling high-quality stainless steel watches at an affordable price.

Nurse Fob Watch

Healthcare professionals use these watches. They are clipped to the chest pocket. They are convenient and easy to check.

Fob watches come in a variety of styles. Including plastic, silicone, stainless steel, digital, as well as decorative options. 

They are small and light, making them perfect for dropshipping as they will be cheap to ship.

Smart Watch Straps and Accessories

There are a variety of smartwatches available. 

Each brand of smartwatch will have a variety of accessories to go alongside.

The country you sell in will determine the smartwatch you target.

• USA - The Apple Watch is the best-selling smartwatch in the USA. Consider selling Apple Watch accessories and straps in the USA.

• Australia - Samsung’s Galaxy Watch, Garmin, and Fitbit are the top sellers in Australia [4]. You can target customers in Australia with compatible accessories.

• India - Fossil, Amazfit, Garmin, and Huawei all sell a considerable amount of watches in India. Choose to sell accessories and alternative straps for these watches in India.

Use this information to start dropshipping compatible straps. You could sell leather, stainless steel, military fabric, or sports straps. You could also sell watch face protectors, screen cases, and nurse’s fob attachments.

Watch Display Stand

A watch stand is a perfect place to store your watch. Someone with a luxury watch would be the demographic for this product. 

You could sell a stand that stores one watch. Or an expanding stand to store several watches.

If your store also sells watches, you could add this item as an order bump on your checkout page. They are a relatively affordable product to source. But adding one to the checkout could increase your revenue and improve your customer's experience.

Watch Repair Kit

There are a variety of tools you can sell for watches. Consider creating a kit with a case for all of the tools.

Like the watch stand, a repair kit is a great add-on product for your watch store. 

Add a repair kit as an upsell product to your store.

Watch Travel Case

Business travel in 2022 was the highest it’s ever been [5]. This increase, even on pre-pandemic levels, shows it could be a great time to look into business travel-related products.

A watch travel case is a small hard case to safely store a watch. 

There are cases for a single watch and others for multiple watches. Ensure the case is well-padded to keep the watch protected.

Which Watch Products Should I Avoid Dropshipping? 

Competition is the main reason we recommend avoiding dropshipping smartwatches.

Products like these often have a high refund rate, resulting in lost profits.

Smartwatches

There is too much competition with established smartwatch companies like Apple, Fitbit, Samsung, Garmin, Huawei, and many others.

Customers also want their smartwatches to integrate with their phones, meaning they will likely choose one that does, rather than your product.

Poor quality and faulty smartwatches can also result in refund requests and lost money.

How to Find the Best Dropshipping Suppliers for Watch Products

Several suppliers will sell the product you want to dropship. Make sure to request samples from the suppliers to compare the quality.

You should choose a supplier based on product quality, communication skills, and their ability to integrate with your dropshipping software.

To find the best suppliers, these are the most common questions we ask and what we recommend you ask too. 

• What is the cost per piece?
• Where will the products be shipped from?
• Is the supplier also the manufacturer?
• How much is the shipping?
• Which shipping courier do you use, and how long does it take?
• How long does it take between receiving the order and the product shipping?
• What are the return, refund, and warranty policies?
• Do you offer custom packaging?
• Can you provide images and videos of the product?
• Do you facilitate dropshipping? (including integrating with automation tools, not adding invoices, promotions, or other logos in the product packaging)

We have a full article on everything you should consider when choosing a supplier. Check it out for more information.

Best Places to Find Dropshipping Suppliers

1. Dropship.io
2. AliExpress
3. SaleHoo
4. CJDropshipping
5. Doba

1. Dropship.io

Our latest tool is a supplier finder. We’re creating a list of verified suppliers that you can contact directly. Contacting them directly can save on additional fees.

You can message via Skype to negotiate your price and find a high-quality product for your store. 

All of the suppliers on Dropship.io are pre-vetted. This should make finding the right supplier effortless.

2. AliExpress

AliExpress has every type of watch and watch accessory available. There are products of all quality types and at a variety of prices. 

However, the suppliers aren’t verified. This means the quality can be hit-or-miss. 

Make sure to communicate your requirements clearly and request various samples.

3. SaleHoo

The selection of suppliers on SaleHoo is smaller than AliExpress. There are currently 800 suppliers to choose from.

But SaleHoo pre-vet all of the suppliers before they joined the platform. This helps ensure you have a smooth experience finding the right supplier with quality products.

4. CJDropshipping

You can find a supplier to source your product from on CJDropshipping. They also provide dropshipping services, such as order fulfillment and warehousing.

CJDropshipping currently has warehouses in China, Thailand, the USA, Germany, and Indonesia and is looking to expand further. If you’re selling to customers in any of these countries, then it should help reduce shipping times.

5. Doba

Doba connects you with suppliers. They can also integrate with a variety of e-commerce platforms for listing and selling products.

To use Doba, you will need to subscribe to a plan. They do offer a free plan, but once your business grows, you will need to pay to upgrade. Plans start at $49.99 per month.

Check out our article if you’re looking for more information on how to find the perfect supplier.

Successful Dropshipping Watch Products Store 

It’s hard to confirm whether a store is really successful as we will never know its exact expenses. 

But with the Sales Tracker tool, you can see the approximate sales of any Shopify watch store.

To find more metrics of a specific store, click the graph icon on the right-hand side. Here you will be able to see estimated revenue, total products sold, as well as the top-performing products in the store. 

To work out whether each product is profitable, you can contact a supplier of the product. 

Once you have the product’s price, you can add the costs to the Numbers Breakdown tool. This will give you all the key metrics.

These three stores below are just a few successful stores we found within the watch niche. There are so many that are performing just as well and better! 

JollyNova

JollyNova is an accessories brand specializing in watches and sunglasses. It offers a variety of watches, from smartwatches to fashion watches.

We added JollyNova to the Sales Tracker. It tells us that they made an estimated $23,654 in the last week and that one of the best-selling watches is a fashion watch for women, with a bracelet included. We can see that they’ve sold 42, making $2519.58 in revenue in the past 30 days.

Using the Sales Tracker is a great way to find product ideas, as well as check on the sales volume and estimated revenue.

Magnus Watches

Magnus Watches sell watches inspired by luxury brands. They claim the watches are high quality but at an affordable price. 

They advertise heavily on TikTok, with over 129.6k followers. This is likely where a considerable portion of their revenue comes from.

The Sales Tracker shows they have sold 48 unique products in the last 30 days. Their best seller during this period made $4046, with 36 sales.

We can click on the product from the Sales Tracker and it takes us to the shop’s product page. Here, we can see the watch has a spinning face and is sold with a stainless steel strap.

On the product page, they also have a Style Your Watch section. There are a variety of straps that fit the watch offered here. You can easily add a section like this to your store to generate additional revenue. 

WatchDives

Watch Dives is a dropshipping store selling mid-range watches for divers. They sell branded watches, as well as their own range.

Choosing a specific target market (such as divers) can be great for dropshipping. It means you can directly target your ads to your desired audience.  

The Sales Tracker shows that its best-selling watch was launched in January 2023 and has made $12,187 in the last 30 days. 

It also shows us that this watch has 15 variations and is selling for $259, saving 56% off the original retail price of $340.

As we know, this watch was only launched this month (at the time of writing). This suggests that the discount is a marketing strategy - and it’s working!

Dropshipping Watch Products Throughout the World 

The country or location your buyers are in might alter the type of products you want to sell.

You can use location data to find a profitable product.

For example, we can look at spending habits, lifestyle choices, and other data from specific countries. This can give you watch product ideas.

USA

Online sales are expected to grow from 28.6% of the market share in 2022 to 41.9% in 2025 [6]. 

The luxury watch market is also decreasing, with consumers choosing non-luxury watches. In 2022, around 60% of sales were non-luxury, and this is estimated to rise to 66% by 2025.

This shows more people are looking at online stores for non-luxury watches, giving you a great opportunity to launch an affordable dropshipping watch store.

It can be challenging to find a reliable supplier, so we’ve created a list of the 18 Best Dropshipping Suppliers in the US for you to check out.

UK

Watch revenue is estimated to amount to $2.48 billion, with 33% of sales being luxury watch sales [7]. But, only around 25% of those luxury watch sales in 2022 were made online [8]. 

This is thought to be as a high proportion of sales are made by tourists visiting the UK due to the weak currency [9].

From this, we would avoid dropshipping luxury watches in the UK.

Overall, around 50% of watch sales in 2022 were online. This indicates that a considerable amount of non-luxury watches are purchased online. 

You can use this information to find a product in the non-luxury market to sell in your store.

If you’re targeting the UK market, we have an article on the top 20 Best Dropshipping Suppliers in the UK for you.

Europe

Europe is known for producing luxury watches. Consumers are purchasing and wearing luxury watches as status symbols [10]. This is increasing sales in the luxury market.

Consider dropshipping higher-quality watches if you’re targeting the European market.

Australia

Online sales have consistently increased since 2017 and are set to continue increasing. More consumers shop online as opposed to in-store [11]. 

This shows it could be a great time to open an online store.

Amazon Australia shows affordable watches are some of the best sellers, along with watch cases and watch winders.

You can use this information, along with the Product Database, to find your winning product. 

Once you’ve found a product to sell, check out our list of dropshipping suppliers in Australia to find a quality product from a trusted supplier.

Malaysia

88% of watch and jewelry sales are expected to be non-luxury in 2023 [12]. This luxury share is forecast to remain similar into 2025.

Research also shows that casual and fashion watches are increasing in popularity. Consumers are more interested in on-trend watches and wearing them as fashion accessories [13].

You could consider selling affordable and on-trend watches in Malaysia from this information.

South Africa

The watch market in South Africa is expected to grow annually by 8.77% compound annual growth rate between 2023 and 2026 [14]. The non-luxury market is also rising; by 2025, it is estimated that 91% of sales will be non-luxury [15].

This is a huge growth rate, giving you a great opportunity to start dropshipping non-luxury watches and watch accessories.

India 

There is an increase in health awareness in India. This has resulted in the population spending more on health monitoring gadgets [16].

Several prominent sports figures, including Rohit Sharma, have been involved in smartwatch advertising. This has further increased the popularity of sports watches.

From this, we would consider selling sport watch accessories.

Frequently Asked Questions 

Is Watches a Good Niche for Dropshipping?

Yes, it can be. There are so many products within the watch niche. You could choose to sell smartwatch accessories, watch storage cases, or affordable fashion watches.

Can You Dropship Luxury Watches?

Yes, but make sure the watches you’re selling are of luxury quality if you’re selling for luxury prices.

Are Watches a Good Item to Dropship?

Yes, they can be. We recommend avoiding smartwatches due to the competition. But there are plenty of other options, including stainless steel watches, leather watches, nurse fob watches, etc.

Final Thoughts

Use our recommended watches and accessories to kick-start your research and find your next winning product.

After you’ve found your winning product, use our list of questions to find the right supplier.

Then, run your numbers through the free Numbers Breakdown tool to confirm your products are profitable before adding them to your store.