The encyclopedia · Finance & Accounting · Financial decision · 2022–2024
A watch reseller had strangers buy watches on credit, then stopped paying them back
FORTUNE had buyers purchase watches abroad on personal credit cards for a fee, then stopped reimbursing them. About 60 buyers were left holding ¥1B in debt.
FORTUNE Co., Ltd. (株式会社FORTUNE) · 2024-07-17
What happened
FORTUNE, a Tokyo company founded in May 2021 to buy and resell used watches and jewelry, began recruiting freelance buyers around 2022 with a simple pitch: fly to Thailand or Hong Kong, use your own credit card to purchase luxury watches at retail, and FORTUNE would cover your travel costs and reimburse the purchase price plus a 5% fee once you returned.
The scheme ran smoothly enough to attract buyers across the country, who fronted the cost of the watches on personal credit lines while trusting FORTUNE's promised reimbursement plus commission to arrive after each trip. Payments continued through October 2023.
In November 2023, FORTUNE told its buyers it could not raise the funds to pay them, and payments stopped entirely. Contact with company representatives went dark shortly after. The buyers were left owing their credit card companies for purchases FORTUNE had never reimbursed, with about a third of the roughly 60 affected buyers filing for personal bankruptcy and some facing lawsuits from card companies over the unpaid balances.
FORTUNE itself was declared bankrupt by the Tokyo District Court on July 17, 2024, with total liabilities of approximately ¥1 billion owed to around 60 creditors — the same buyers whose personal credit had funded the company's watch-buying operation in the first place.
Why it happened
- FORTUNE built its buying operation entirely on buyers' personal credit rather than its own working capital, so when its cash ran out, the debt landed on individuals rather than the company.
- The company recruited buyers nationwide and kept paying through October 2023, expanding the scheme's scale and the number of people exposed right up until the moment it collapsed.
- Buyers had no way to verify FORTUNE's actual financial position before committing their own credit lines, trusting a company with no track record to reimburse purchases already made in their name.
The lesson
A business model that runs on other people's credit rather than its own capital shifts the risk of failure onto the people it recruited, not the company that spent the money.
Aftermath
FORTUNE's bankruptcy proceedings left its roughly 60 creditors — the buyers who had fronted the purchases — with claims against a company with about ¥1 billion in liabilities. Roughly a third of the buyers filed personal bankruptcy over the credit card debt they could not repay, and some were sued by card issuers for breaching cardholder terms by using personal cards for a business scheme.
Sources
spotted an error? The club wants to know.
More like this
Daikokuya's second straight loss: forecast cut to ¥677M red
Toke Match held 1,700 Rolexes for their owners, and 1,300 turned up in pawnshops
The importer that brought Dolce & Gabbana to Japan lost both its leaders in two years
Somewhere, someone solved the problem this company failed at. 2nd Opinion →
Comments · 0
Sign in to join the comments.