TALKING SHOP: David Lee on watches, real estate, and automobiles
Very few, if any, jewelers in America can claim that their very existence depended on a leap of faith into shark-infested waters in the Indian Ocean. But this was the reality for the father of David Lee, CEO of Hing Wa Lee, one of the most prestigious and successful jewelers in the States today. The business has continued to defy the odds in the 35+ years since it began its operation in the US. With an expanded watch, jewelry, and real estate empire, as well as a Ferrari collection that’s the envy of the world, Lee explains to Watch Insider’s Daniel Malins how he’s built such a formidable business from the lowly beginnings of his father’s gemstone carving company.
Watch Insider: What roads led to both you and your business being in the position you’re in now? This level of scale and success doesn’t happen overnight.
David Lee: I’m on social media a lot, and a lot of the younger generation want everything now. I put in 35 years to get to where I’m at today. We came from humble beginnings. My father came from southern China, escaping the Cultural Revolution because it was just so difficult. He escaped that environment to go to Hong Kong in an extreme survival situation, because you couldn’t get a visa and get out. He was a stowaway, on a supply ship from China going to Macau, as that’s one of the ways people escaped. At the closest point in the Indian Ocean to Hong Kong, he and his brother — he was 13, his brother was 15 — jumped off into the ocean to swim to Hong Kong. But it was still miles away, it wasn’t that close.
My father told me that if you stayed in China, you would die of starvation — you might as well risk your life and see if you can make a better future.
They heard there was some work in Hong Kong, but half the people wouldn’t make it because of the big waves, the exhaustion, the hypothermia. Not a lot of people could swim there. They had a volleyball as a flotation device to try to help. Then, on top of that, let’s say you’re swimming, you’re making it close to Hong Kong — it’s a shark-infested ocean. If you make it past that, the coast guard will try to pick you up, beat you up, and bring you back to China. And then you don’t survive because they really want to punish you for trying to escape.
Obviously, my father did make it. And when you went to Hong Kong, you had no formal education. He went to be an apprentice of a gemstone carver. So, a gemstone carver master took him in and trained him — he trained for five years. Whatever money he made he sent back home, so that his mother and his three siblings would have food.
After five years, he came out and started his own factory — that was 1965. So, that’s the beginning of our family business. My father was the founder and started it as a gemstone carving factory and started to do well with that. He met my mom in English school in Hong Kong and started a family. In the mid-70s, he was invited by the [US-based] Smithsonian Institute to come and restore some of the broken antiques, because he was very famous at this point for doing that. He was then given help immigrating into the US.
So, we were here in the US since the mid–late 70s, producing products in Hong Kong and then wholesaling to galleries and, later on, jewelers in the US. At some point, certainly in the 80s, the likes of Van Cleef [& Arpels] and Cartier and Gump’s were my father’s customers. Again, he was still in wholesale. At that time, it was still gemstone carving and then fine jewelry. He did well in the 80s.
I grew up in the business; I helped out when I could when I was away from school. So, I did know the business somewhat well, but I graduated from USC [University of Southern California] and business school and joined the business in 1990. However, I joined the family business when the real estate recession was very big, prior to the subprime one that we experienced, and so nobody was buying; or, if they bought, they wouldn’t pay.
I would be doing my father’s business, traveling to each city to sell to the local jewelers. At that time it wasn’t one big show at JCK in Vegas, so every weekend we travelled to a different state.
But I said that that way of doing things wasn’t working out. We were losing some money. People were not buying. We had to change. So, my dad said: “What do you want to do?” I said: “Let’s change to retail.” Because at least in retail you can manage the smaller market area for the business, instead of the whole US, which you have no control of. So said: “I don’t have the energy to do this; if you’re going to do it, you have to be fully in charge.”
1993 is when I opened our first retail store. We had the jewelry dialed in, and built out the store, hired the people. I was very much hands on with everything at that time. It started bringing in watches, but, being a new jeweler, none of the good brands are going to give it to you. You have to prove yourself. I remember I started with just a few brands — it was like Swiss Army [now Victorinox], the old Van Cleef [& Arpels], and the old Hublot. Breitling was the first good one that I got. So, I just worked it from there.
I think good things come to those who follow the rules and wait. In ‘95, I got the Rolex authorized dealership, for whatever reason, and that obviously changed a lot of things. The other brands started coming and then I opened more locations. I’ve been doing this 36 years, and we’ve had Rolex for a good 30 years out of that. Our company’s 61 years old now, and it looks like I will have the honor and the benefit of my son coming in as the third generation — maybe he’ll bring it to 100 years!
We can’t sit on laurels, we always have to push the envelope of what is at the forefront of luxury retailing.”
WI: Are there practices you have in place that make it less easy for brands to break away and think it’ll be easier to do retail on their own?
DL: When things are flying, like they were back in the Covid days and just after, it’s all easy. Anybody can just open a shop and people will come and buy. When things get tougher, they don’t have what we provide, they don’t have the relationships. When things are tougher, they are finding themselves not being able to compete, and they’re finding that out now.
WI: When curating a lineup of suppliers for your store, how much of it is head and how much of it is heart for you? What are you looking for? Is it all data-driven? Do brands come to you or are you out in the market looking for new brands — in Geneva, for instance?
DL: The due diligence is done on both sides. Various brands certainly reach out to us; they want us to represent them. We also go about trying to find new brands, new products that the customers are asking for. Obviously, data is an important part of it, CRM is a really important part of it, client experience is a really important part of it, building out your store into a super nice retail environment is important. All those things are important. We can’t sit on laurels, we always have to push the envelope of what is at the forefront of luxury retailing.
WI: Just to probe deeper on data — how does this work in reality? Would you give a brand a year to prove themselves, or two years, or six months? Presumably if the numbers aren’t good enough, you have to make a difficult decision.
DL: When it’s a new brand, we definitely look at it that way. Because your space in a store — the shelves, the shelf space — are all valuable selling spaces. If they don’t pull their weight, if they don’t carry their load, we need to change out. Even a brand that is more famous — they can lose their ways or they’re not as desirable anymore. We can’t just carry those brands in the store if they don’t look like they have a future, when there’s another brand that we can bring in to replace the sales that they’re losing out on. So, it’s a constant managing of inventory, of brands, of vendors, in order to keep up our sales revenue. We don’t just give up on them if business is bad all of a sudden. We really try to work with them, especially a brand that we’ve had for a long time. We would give them chances, and we would give them a couple years to make a difference to see if we can turn it around. Many times we’re able to do that or reset the expectation. So long as the turnover is appropriate for the investment that we have with the product, it could still justify itself on a smaller scale.
If they happen to be able to increase themselves, then we have the opportunity for them to expand again back to more stores.
WI: Do you try and draw a distinction between the social media part of your life and Hing Wa Lee, or do you see one as helping the other?
DL: I do see one as helping the other. When I first started social media I was a car guy, that was my passion and hobby. With social media, people just caught on and they liked what I was putting out. I was actually just called today by Ferrari; I am a client ambassador for them. I have the most influence for people that are into Ferraris on what I collect, what I say about it, how I feel about it, and so forth. So, I’m their number one advocate and customer.
I’m very good at hiring and having people to manage all the different divisions of my business.”
When people follow you, they like you, they feel like they know you. They want to give you the business too. They want to meet you. And so, I think it does help the business a lot because instead of trying to get big as a jeweler on social media, it’s interesting that I’ve gotten so big as a Ferrari collector that then brought the people over to what I do. I don’t think a lot of other people are doing that, but that also came up by accident too. It just happened.
WI: You have a few other business interests. What type of businesses are these and what is your primary motivation behind them? And does it then make it difficult to retain focus on the jeweler side of things?
DL: In the Hing Wa Lee Group, which I’m the chairman and CEO of, we have three different lines. Firstly, we have the retail business. Secondly, we have the real estate business, which is quite vast, because even when I was doing the business, my father was doing the real estate and the money I made he would invest. So, he made quite a good size portfolio for our family. The third is the investment side, and cars are an investment — it’s over $200 million in value. I have tech investments, I have other business investments. I have passion projects of education and even a brand, Monza Design, and a special wine glass called Fermata. So, these are some passion projects I’m trying to get off the ground.
We are a so-called independent business, but we run it in a bit more of a corporate style so that I can manage more things. If I was to be just fully in the jewelry business, like how I first started out, I wouldn’t be able to focus on other things that would bring my net worth and assets to a bigger place. But I think I’m very good at managing my time. I’m very good at hiring and having people to manage all the different divisions of my business. I empower them, and they could run the business for me where I don’t have to be there, day in and day out. My employees have been with me 30 years, 25 years, 20 years — a long time. They know what they’re doing, and they made a career of being in our business.
But the other thing is, as you have more stores, if I was the only one that everybody knew and they were all looking for me, that limits how much business I can do. The people that work there are consistent, and they know in the back it’s David Lee that’s behind all this and still in charge. It’s not some board or publicly held company. I can do more. I can multiply and have more stores and people know it’s mine. They’re happy when I come along and they see me at the store when I take meetings, but I’m not held down to be the one that they have to deal with.
When it’s a new brand, if they don’t pull their weight, if they don’t carry their load, we need to change out.”
I feel a lot of jewelers are in that space, which is okay, but a lot of clients have to have you or else they don’t buy. For me, that limits what our business can be. And so, I decided a long time ago to build my business with this kind of direction. You have to empower your employees. You have to stay in touch with your business without necessarily being there all the time. I think I do a good job with that.
WI: Was that a natural transition years ago or did you have to really work at trusting other people to do the bulk of the work?
DL: It’s trusting, empowering, and knowing. I think this is what some people have a tough time with. Because yes, if you do everything, you can have 100%. You can do everything because you’re micromanaging, you do everything yourself, everything perfect, 100% the way you want to do it. When you hire somebody to do it, it’s going to be less than 100%. You hope it’s maybe 80%, but sometimes it’s worse, which drives you crazy. You have to accept that, yes, you’re putting out 80% of the quality that you could do yourself, but yet you’re able to multiply and do more. Because I trust people and I have longevity with people that have been on board and have made a career with us, I can do more because I have a lot of different companies and I have a division manager for each one. They have to do a good job. I have to be in touch with them, understand what’s going on, and be able to instruct the vision and the strategy to them.
WI: You must be in a very strong position to withstand market shocks. But are there one or two issues that you would identify that do trouble you?
DL: I would never put myself in a position to say that I’m bigger than all of this and nothing can touch us. If you have that mentality, you might be shocked — you always have to be prepared. Everything could hurt you. You need to prepare for the worst. You need to be solid. Don’t over-risk what you cannot do. Always do the smart play. For us, for example, all our locations are in my own real estate. I’m not renting from anybody, because when you rent somebody can say that they want a better retailer in there, even if you’ve been paying well for the last 10 years. So, I’m always the landlord of my places. There are places you can open where they’ll give me the dealership, but it’s a rental place. I’ve taken a position to want to build equity in my business in the properties that I’m at. Because after 10 years, my property now is double or triple the value. A lot of people say: “David, the jewelry business is not that good, how do you buy that many Ferraris?” There’s a lot of planning and investing and discipline in that — it’s in every profit division, every division of investment, so that I’m able to make those moves and be successful. It’s got to be managed very carefully. All those decisions are very important.
WI: If you found yourself abandoned on a desert island and you could take just one car and one watch with you, what would you take?
DL: I think things that are more sentimental to you are really important. I have a lot of watches, but my favorite watch is the one that my father gave me when I was 16. He gave me a Rolex on a strap, I think it was a 14ct capped Oyster [Perpetual] Date. My father gave me that, and so that watch would probably be the one that I would have.
As far as the cars, it would probably be the 1962 250 GTO that I just bought at the auction in January — such a special car. I have like 50 Ferraris, but that is the most special one with the history and being the only white one — that still gets me excited about things. I didn’t think I was able to buy that car in auction; I thought the price would keep going up and I would be out of budget. But the fact that I was able to buy that car gave me a feeling almost like when Rolex said: “Do you want to be a dealer?” I got back that feeling of surprise and monumental achievement. So, that was very special — it hardly happens anymore, but it did happen for this car.
This article was first published in the May 2026 edition of Watch Insider.
