Is selling custom modded G-Shock watches a good business idea?

If you’ve ever wondered how much you can make selling custom modded G-Shock watches and how hard it might be, entrepreneurial-minded YouTube channel Stevie Sells recently posted a video about the subject titled “I Started A Custom G-Shock Watch Business.” In the video (embedded below), host Stevie recounts his experience of buying G-Shock watches on eBay and custom parts on Alibaba, customizing the watches, and then selling them on eBay.

Stevie used eight GA-2100 watches and a variety of metal bezel and band kits, as well as custom hour marker inserts. Despite having no experience with opening a G-Shock case, he managed to learn from tutorial videos (from YouTube channel Jeraland) and was able to mod the watches without issues. Stevie’s cost for the finished products was about $110 per unit. He initially listed all watches on eBay for $199.95 (which would yield a $60 profit per watch) but ended up lowering the price on most of them and profiting between $30-$60 per watch. After a week and a half, Stevie sold seven watches for a total profit of $290, and he had spent about two hours assembling the watches. He ended up keeping the last watch for himself, so his overall profit could have been a little higher had he sold it.

Based on Stevie being able to sell a watch about every day and a half, it seems like selling custom G-Shock watches on eBay isn’t very difficult and is potentially a worthwhile side hustle. When searching for “tiffany” keywords like “tiffany ga-2100” on eBay, there is just one seller dominating the results and asking for around $300 to over $400 per watch. It looks like it would be easy for someone to sell some watches at a lower price, and we’re surprised that more people aren’t doing it. Whether there is enough demand to scale it and turn it into a full time job or business is another topic to explore. If one is serious about starting such a business, there are other factors to consider (such as taxes), and one would probably want to consider doing custom dials too (which looks a lot more difficult and time-consuming) and possibly painting parts with unique colors and designs to stand out from the competition.