I thought I’d treat myself for Christmas and get one of these fine watches from Christopher Ward.

Tragedy! It arrived but was just too big for my, ahem, delicate wrist.

I promptly repacked the box and sent it back. They are promptly refunding both the cost of the watch and the cost of the special posting needed to return it safely.

If you are ordering a watch online, do think about just how big you want your watch to be. Wide and a tad heavy appears to be in fashion at the moment, and it’s not easy to tell as you blink in awe at this site what it will look and feel like in practice. Christopher Ward are most helpful in talking this through too. 

So if you are looking for that always winning combination of fine service and elegant products for a special gift for someone, go no further than this site.

Retailers! Even when you end up not selling something you generate great good will and a strong reputation by being organised, helpful and courteous about it.

* * * * *

Update   One of the founder partners of Christopher Ward writes:

I just wanted to thank you for taking the trouble to pen such a positive note – even though we didn’t sort out a watch you wanted. Rest assured, the whole team will be circulated with your comments as this is the kind of reward that really motivates them to continue giving what we hope is the finest assistance possible to our customers.

Let’s give his troops a boost by looking at what they are doing well.

The core Christopher Ward business is selling good Swiss watches much cheaper than others by cutting out marketing and other glossy flim-flam. Hence the watches are sold through their website.

To sell a classy product they need a classy website, duly delivered.

Very few(!) grammatical and other infelicities of the sort likely to annoy someone like pernickety me. Easy to navigate. Lots of quick-access photos of the different watches to make a potential customer get very interested. Nice testimonials and media reviews (although of course we see only the good testimonials – maybe some people out there thought the products rubbish?). Also interesting background material on what makes watches special. There’s even a section on Ethics, although this seems a bit ‘random’ and inward-looking.

This is all backed up by people who answer telephones and reply quickly to emails in a positive, professional way. 

So, in short, an impressive enterprise which does a good job in trying to create a feeling of partnership and engagement with customers. Dialogue/questions/comments are positively welcomed. This is hard to deliver on a larger scale for obvious reasons (see the very different emphasis of eg Amazon, although their vast operation also turns on strong service and reliability), but for a smaller, more targeted customer-base it is a strong feature as long as it is done well. Which in this case it is, to judge by my own experience.

All in all, Christopher Ward come across as people who enjoy what they are doing and are really striving to give their customers something ‘extra’.

In other words, a superb example of the benefits of capitalism. People taking a personal risk to build a new business using a new model, whose success in turn creates new jobs and new products: incredibly sophisticated, beautiful devices available to a much wider group of people than ever before in human history.

Take that, you silly #OccupyLSX losers.