John Pietrasz

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John Pietrasz is an American entrepreneur. John started Delray Watch Supply in 2017 and is based in Miami .^[1]

Career

Early Career

No early career info added yet...

Delray Watch Supply

John started Delray Watch Supply in 2017. They detail the beginnings of their company in their Starter Story interview: ^[1]

Q: How did you get started on Delray Watch Supply?

While currently, I am deeply ingrained in the luxury watch space, this was not always the case in my career journey.

The real foundation for my career progression I would likely attribute to my earliest of memories- playing with Legos as a child. I had developed a fascination and building and fixing things at a young age, and it has followed me up to this day.

If you have an idea try it. Yes, you may fail, but you will learn things in the process. You may fail the next 10 tries thereafter, but you will learn even more. That 11th try may be your Delray Watch. It was mine.

When I was a teenager, my fascination with building and fixing and developed into a strong passion for technology. During these times, technology was very new. Cellphones were not commonplace, apps did not exist, and certainly Shopify was not even a twinkle in a startup entrepreneur’s eye. During this time, the IT department for a large school district had recruited me to be a network administrator. Instantly, as an eager-to-learn young man, I was catapulted into the tech world.

Moving along in my career in tech business, I had worked for companies large, such as Disney, managing their financial systems for all of the theme parks, as well as companies considerably smaller. I eventually landed myself a project manager position for a 12 employee medical software company located in Cleveland, Ohio.

In just 2 years after accepting that position, I had ranked myself up to General Manager and VP. Soon thereafter, the primary shareholder and acting president stepped down for retirement and handed me the keys to the kingdom. I had just been given a sandbox to play in, a sandbox of business. The coming years from this is where I had learned the true building blocks of business, management skills, and how sales drive a business- at age 24.

At this software company, after taking control, I learned business very quickly thanks to a mentor who had built this company himself. In 16 months, I had managed to effectively double the sales and acquire our leading competitor. I also had built a sister company that managed the life cycle of revenue for physician offices, though I won’t bore you with those details.

During this time, I also began to take interest in watches more heavily, which interestingly enough, is the business I am currently in. During this time, I had also thought to myself, “wouldn’t it be great to transfer these tech business principles into the luxury watch industry?”.

Soon thereafter, I packed my bags, moved to Miami, and became CTO of a popular real estate tech company. During my position here, the supposed pinnacle of the working-man world, C level, I decided entrepreneurship was really my only choice. I missed the excitement of taking calculated risks for myself as well as building something I could be proud of. I resigned and started a tech consulting firm focused on the watch industry.

Here is where I met my business partner, Federico Iossa. He was in the watch industry prior as Director of Richement, Wempe, and also director of media for a large watch company. I had been developing tech strategy and other products in the watch industry. We quickly made friends. At dinner one night we just said, “Hey let’s trade watches!”. So, we did.

Source ^[1]

References

Contributors

Contributors to this article:

• Pat Walls, Founder @ Starter Story
• Wiki Updater