Nico Leonard is a Belfast-based watch dealer and one of the most-watched personalities in the watch world on YouTube. Bloomberg has called him the most popular luxury-watch YouTuber, and his blunt, often profane reviews have made him a household name among collectors and a regular thorn in the side of some of the Swiss brands.
Born Nico Leonard van der Horst in the Netherlands in 1987, he bought his first watch, a Seiko, at the age of 16. He moved to Northern Ireland in 2013 to work for a watch company, and in 2017 he started his own business, Watches NI. In 2019 it was renamed Pride & Pinion and opened its first store at The Merchant Hotel in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter. The shop specialises in pre-owned and hard-to-find luxury watches. It became an official Casio stockist in 2023 and an authenticated dealer for Ulysse Nardin in 2024.
His YouTube channel began in 2019 as an extension of the shop and later took his own name. It passed one million subscribers in early 2023, and by late 2024 his channels had more than two million subscribers between them, along with more than a million followers on TikTok. His best-known videos include annual brand tier lists, and Hublot often lands at the bottom. His 2023 video “Why I Hate Hublot” is one of his most famous, yet the brands have taken note: Audemars Piguet paid him to appear in a 2024 video, and Hublot’s chief executive invited him to visit its factory.
Leonard puts his success down to authenticity. “The reason why I became big,” he told Bloomberg, “is because I’m authentic.”
Business: Pride & Pinion, The Merchant Hotel, 16 Skipper Street, Belfast BT1 2DZ, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom