TikTok sensation hits a million followers after selling house to pursue global watch business

The owner of a watch business has reached one million followers on TikTok, after selling his house to pursue his dreams of building a global company.

Tim Hayden, 52, is the CEO of watch company Hagley West, and grew his business and social media following simultaneously after his first video in March 2020 got half a million views.

Now, just two-and-a-half years after starting his account and five years since setting up the business, Tim’s TikTok following has allowed him to be recognised all over the world and he has continued to create innovative ways to engage his audience.

Tim said: “I knew reaching this milestone was coming but it made me emotional. I can’t believe one million people follow me – a man working on his watch company from his kitchen. I’ve put so much into this and on the line, and it has all been worth it.”

Tim’s most successful TikTok challenge is ‘Love Your Journey’, where his followers are shown his location and the first person to find him and say ‘love your journey’ wins a free watch. This has been a hit in the UK and, to Tim’s surprise, it has expanded to the US.

He has even done the challenge from the Eiffel Tower, the iconic bridge in Amsterdam, and was found in 11 minutes in the Arctic Circle. Tim was also shocked to be recognised outside of a challenge in Boston by around 35 people and when he did the challenge, 250 people came to find him at the shared location.

The brand was first set up in March 2017 and Tim worked on it part time for 18 months while building an audience on Facebook and Instagram. He worked with professional cricketers, including Chris Gayle, and managed to raise more than £350,000 in crowdfunding to relaunch the business and introduce new watch designs.

However, the pandemic was set to cause a lot of delays and at the beginning of the first lockdown, Tim’s son introduced him to TikTok – which he instantly saw as a “powerful tool” to grow Hagley West.

He began to travel across the UK to hand out watches as his account gained traction, which went viral, and at the end of 2020, aged 50, he sold his house to “pursue and fund his dream”.

“I lived a comfortable lifestyle and had to make sacrifices to step things up and make my dreams a reality,” said Tim. “I didn’t want to live with the regret of not selling my house and going for it. It was the ultimate challenge and I questioned if I could do it.”

This journey all began in Greens Norton, and his Northamptonshire distribution centre now deals with sales all over the world. The company’s turnover went from £20,000 in 2019 to £480,000 in 2021, and Tim has big hopes for this year.

He said: “It still makes me laugh when people say TikTok is for children. It’s a naive statement as it may have been before, but now it is a platform filled with so much potential for growth.”

Despite the positive impacts the platform has had for Tim and his venture, he says the downside is that “you have to be on it every day to maintain consistency, as well as patience”.

“As soon as I wake up, I'm thinking about what’s next,” said Tim. “Development and evolution is important to stay relevant on the app.”

Tim says TikTok is great for raising awareness of brands and spreading messages through word of mouth, which has allowed him to grow so quickly. However, it is finding new ways to get people talking about what he does that has proved a challenge.

His account hit half a million followers this time last year (November 2021) and Tim has been able to double that figure because of the capabilities of reaching a global audience – particularly in America.

To continue establishing Hagley West in the US, Tim will be moving there for three months in 2023 to accelerate the business’ growth.

Talking to Chronicle & Echo about how he reacted to reaching a million followers, Tim said: “I was on a live stream on TikTik at the time, so I was able to countdown and celebrate with my followers.

“I was in the US at the time, after having just been found by over 30 people after sharing my location for the love your journey challenge. They all told me how close I was to hitting a million and they were with me when I reached it.”

Looking to the future, Tim hopes to grow Hagley West to a multi-million pound business, which would not be possible without the success and growth of his social media following. “I want the brand to be recognised around the world and become a household name,” he said.

Confused about why many big brands still rely on paid advertising to get messaging out there, Tim says the key to cracking an audience is to “create the entertaining content that people engage with”.

Tim has sold around 11,500 watches over the past five years and has set his next challenge as attempting to sell 1,000 this Sunday (November 13) on a five-hour livestream on TikTok.

Setting his targets high, he hopes to sell 5,000 watches over the next three weeks, with a turnover of up to £500,000 – which Tim says is an “exciting but very daunting time”.

To visit Tim’s TikTok account, click here.