AndrewD
[HoMe Moderator]
12829
Your own watch company
Hi All,
If you were designing a new watch from scratch and had to allocate a limited budget, how would you distribute it? Would you focus on the aesthetics of case and dial, would the movement be critical, or would you just go for advertising and celebrity endorsements?
What proportion (%) would you spend on areas like design, prototyping, materials, dials, movements, finishing, quality control, advertising? [Feel free to add your own categories.]
If it makes it easier you can nominate a USD10K, or 100K budget and even what sort of complications you are planning to include.
Andrew
There’s no place like HoMe!
Your own watch company
Hi All, If you were designing a new watch from scratch and had to allocate a limited budget, how would you distribute it? Would you focus on the aesthetics of case and dial, would the movement be critical, or would you just go for advertising and celebrit...
The model I admire . . .
. . . is the one practiced by Dornblüth: gradual, measured, and balanced. Dirk could easily have sold his micro-manufacture out to a conglomerate a long time ago; that he's resisted the urge, and maintained his independence and integrity, speaks volumes f...
This is the model I favour as well ...
Use some workhorse movements, or find some NOS vintage movements and rework them. Case them up with a dial and case that is attractive but has some meaning to your own experience, heritage and ideas. Dirk has done this well, and so has Peter Speake-Marin....
I would create a divers and pilots watch
Sporting a ETA movement and warehoused in a huge case, in titanium, ceramic even bronze. And spend most of the budget getting some Hollywood action movie star to promote it, or even a pseudo flying school. Wait a minute.....that has already been done....d...
half-seriously
I acknowledge that I can't outwit the big companies. They obviously know what they are doing. Nonetheles I sense that the ladies market is relatively underserved. So for the sake of the argument I'd locate "my" watch company in antwerp and design ia diamo...
Thanks for your ideas, Ramon
You are right about having to get the markets attention. We PuristS tend to think that ladies watches should also have mechanical movements. That is what speaks to us, and a few ladies as well, but women who love mechanical movements over the fashionable ...
My watch company would go bankrupt almost immediately.
First, I would spend too much money: my movements would all have Breguet overcoils and free-sprung balances. They would be made entirely of non-space age materials so as to have long potential lives and not to give some fabulously expensive repair facilit...
I would start in a re-development area to get gov't funding
using the DeLorean business model. My formerly-unemployable employees would be chosen from the streets and sidewalks of my inner-city neighborhood. They would be trained to assemble imported, off-the-shelf components into watch cases that were bead-blaste...
