Meet the Watch Dealer Shaking Up the Diamond District’s Boys Club

I first got here throughout Julia on TikTok, in a video by classic watch knowledgeable and #watchtok energy participant Mike Nouveau: she was the one girl in a gaggle of largely older males who all promote watches on 47 St. within the Diamond District of New York Metropolis. 

That’s a part of what makes Julia’s social media presence so successful: it’s thrilling to observe her take care of males, usually twice her age, with brute however nimble precision. She calls herself the little fish who “navigates among the many sharks.” Movies of her negotiations are excessive stakes however with out pretense. She’ll throw in dinner with a vendor or a cup of espresso that she owes them, and she or he’ll chow down on skinny crust New York fashion pizza plopped on the glass counter she works at. She’ll clarify the distinction between two excessive finish fashions of iconic Rolexes, and movie herself hustling her means via a watch flip from begin to end. And she or he does all her wheeling and dealing in stylish silk blouses, sharp black eyeliner, and with completely manicured nails. 

Watching Julia barter with a consumer or fellow supplier looks like witnessing a tightly choreographed dance the place she units the tempo; she’s in management in a means that’s addictive to observe. It’s obvious that folks underestimate her, for no matter cause—age, gender, expertise, or all three. However Julia has an adept sense of find out how to use her experience, attraction, and savvy. You possibly can really feel her beam via the display when she seals a deal, and proves an clearly skeptical counterpart fallacious. 

However Julia’s TikTok celeb is simply a part of her story. Azer grew up a part of a small Jewish group in Morocco. After finding out in Israel—the place the tutorial alternatives for girls have been higher—she moved residence and saved to maneuver to the US. Whereas in Morocco, she began promoting secondhand luxurious items; after transferring to New York to proceed her research, she stored up the follow in her free time. However she outgrew that world shortly: after touchdown a giant consumer the corporate she labored for had been making an attempt desperately to get, her boss denied her fee.

This was a turning level for Julia and soured her on the style business. Then Covid hit, and she or he acquired laid off. She began to recreation out her subsequent transfer and she or he considered her grandfather, a watch lover. 

“I all the time requested my grandfather,” she says, “What’s forty seventh Avenue? [He would say] ‘That is the Diamond District, the place all the pieces occurs.’ And I mentioned in my head, I will work there.” 

She put in a name to somebody she knew engaged on forty seventh Avenue and supplied to work for him totally free—managing social media, listings, grunt work. She knew subsequent to nothing about watches, so she spent her days googling, watching movies on YouTube, and texting with a watchmaker she knew, studying in regards to the internal workings of timepieces and of negotiations. As of late, Julia manages reselling and negotiations from high to backside; she sources and authenticates watches, manages repairs, and resells to purchasers of Ari’s Luxurious Watch on forty seventh Avenue. 

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