Details about the acquisition of Hodinkee by Watches of Switzerland are not hard to find, however, we uncovered an additional insight into the deal.

Hodinkee selling 100% ownership to a mega-retailer was big news in the relatively small watch world.

At first, details of the deal were scarce, but eventually, it was revealed through Watches of Switzerland’s financial reports, that the company paid north of $14 million in cash for Hodinkee.

It’s unclear if Hodinkee investors such as Google Ventures, LVMH Luxury Ventures, Tom Brady, and John Mayer ever made any of their investments back (it seems unlikely).

Watches of Switzerland paid a massive sum when you consider that after selling off all e-commerce operations, including all Crown & Caliber IP and inventory, Hodinkee had net assets of negative $100,000 at the time of the acquisition.

Remember Hodinkee once received a sky-high valuation of $100 million, which is not unheard of for multi-brand, multi-store, luxury retail operations. However, despite signing a long lease for a retail space in SoHo, and hiring the former top executive of Tudor USA, Hodinkee never launched a brick-and-mortar operation beyond pop-up shops.

Ultimately, that written-off SoHo lease, a presumed overpayment to acquire Crown & Caliber, and then mismanagement of the pre-owned seller once it was acquired, likely led to Hodinkee being acquired by a retailer.

Fast forward to today, and we have it on good authority that Hodinkee was on the market to be sold for approximately a year, and there were at least two bidders who attempted to acquire Hodinkee. One was Watches of Switzerland, and the other, was a large lifestyle publication. Hodinkee appears to have chosen the option that gave them the most cash.

We suspect the publication, which has more traffic than Hodinkee — though the income demographic of a luxury watch audience is far higher — brought little if any cash to the table, and instead offered to absorb the ongoing costs in return for future earnouts.

As has been the case in the past, Hodinkee took the most cash possible, even though a lifestyle publishing group could have potentially provided Hodinkee’s audience with more editorial value. This is not to say that Watches of Switzerland was the wrong acquisition partner (time will tell). However, by taking the large cash payout from a retailer, Hodinkee will be viewed by some as a branded content division of Watches of Switzerland.

Hodinkee being acquired by a publishing group might have brought consumers the best unbiased content, however, Hodinkee is not directly selling the watches they promote editorially anymore — which at least seems like a step forward.