They repeatedly mention how their designs are inspired by the Romans and Italian architecture; however, claiming that these are ‘Italian luxury watches’ is misleading at best and possibly fraudulent at worst – though I am no legal expert, so take that with a grain of salt. Don’t expect a watch made in Italy, because that’s not what you’ll receive.
MIDDLE-MEN
When it comes to the middle-men argument, there is a grain of truth here. Most products we buy these days go through some sort of retailer, meaning the products have to be marked up to factor in that cost. On a surface level, this appears to make sense; however not only does the final product that you receive not align with a cheap replica watches at 8-16x this retail price, but Filippo Loreti takes it a step further. They’ve effectively replaced the retail middlemen with other costs and middlemen that aren’t so easy to spot.
Unlike many traditional brands, their influencer spend must be huge. There’s a sea of Instagrammers regularly promoting these watches with #filippoloretipartner; suggesting some sort of compensation must have been arranged.
This extends across YouTube too. Since 2018, Filipo Loreti has contacted me on 14 occasions, relentlessly trying to get me to promote their watches.

I’m not against social sponsorships, however, there is clearly a large budget assigned towards this area of the business. This is an example of money going to something other than the watches, a principle that this brand was just criticising.
In 2022, a second project took things to new heights, this time attracting triple the number of supporters; whom combined to provide over €4.8 million to make this ‘affordable luxury’ venture a reality.
To some, Filippo Loreti could be seen as a modern-day success story; showcasing how thinking outside the box can result in tremendous financial success and thousands of thrilled customers.
You’ve probably seen some of their advertisements online. When you look closer though, something is amiss.
What if I told you that Filippo Loreti is not an Italian watchmaker…that Filippo Loreti himself doesn’t exist and that ordering doesn’t guarantee that you’ll receive the item you paid for.
INVESTIGATION
This all began as a simple wristwatch review, Filippo Loreti were bombarding me with video advertisements, just like other brands such as MVMT and Vincero. Within these advertisements were some pretty bold claims with regards to their quality vs their competition.
As a consumer advocate channel, I feel it’s my job to test such claims and see if there’s any truth to them. So, I hopped online and ordered a watch from their site; I chose the flagship model that you see most frequently in their advertising. I even paid $19 extra for faster shipping, so I could get the review out quickly. According to the order, it should have taken around 5-11 business days to reach me.
Several weeks go by and the watch still hadn’t turned up, so I decided to check some of the online coverage to see if this was normal. I then noticed something bizarre. While reading and watching different reviews, there was a huge divide in the reception to these fake rolex for sale. Some outlets and individuals were gushing about Filippo Loreti, strongly pushing it as a revolutionary brand with luxury products; whilst others were calling it a joke or in some cases an outright scam. With brands like MVMT and Vincero I’m used to seeing a wide range of opinions, but never anything quite this extreme.
So, I decided to do a little more digging to see if either side had substantiated claims. Are these great watches liqui-glide.com or a great waste of your money?
Like me, you likely first heard of Filippo Loreti in some form of digital advertising. You’ll notice that retargeting advertisements like videos and text ads in search results will follow you around the internet for weeks at a time.
WHERE ARE FILIPPO LORETI WATCHES MADE?
Filippo Loreti was founded by a pair of Lithuanian brothers in the mid-2010s. By their own words on their website; ‘Filippo Loreti watches are assembled to our exacting standards at state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in the global technology hub of Shenzhen province, Hong Kong’. As far as I know, Shenzhen is actually a part of China, not Hong Kong, but whichever way you look at it, there doesn’t appear to be a shred of Latin in this company’s DNA, despite the Italian sounding name. The company doesn’t even appear on the Italian Business Register. The only place I found them listed was on the Lithuanian company directory.