Why make custom watches?
I’ll be honest. I didn’t set out to make watches like this. As a watchmaker, I primarily service and restore vintage watches, specializing in wristwatches from the 1950s to present simply due to personal interest. I think watches are fascinating little mechanical puzzles jam packed with history, artistry, and craftsmanship that reward my hard work and dedication with an accurate and reliable tool that’s always to hand… or wrist.
When my children were born, I made each of them a watch. My daughter’s is a heavily modified Bulova (remember, I didn’t start out to make watches in the Rocinante vein), and my son’s is a top grade 7750-based chronograph (the first watch I did in the Rocinante fashion). I wear these watches daily, and as we build memories and associations throughout their childhood, the watches are an ever present fixture on my wrist. When they go off to college, the watches enter their custody to help them succeed, with the ever present reminder of dad on their wrist.
While wearing one of these watches, I met a young man who also loved watches. He asked if I could make him one. Of course! During the process, he told me how excited he was, and how excited his friends were. It dawned on me that there might be a viable business here. One evening, almost on a lark, I placed an ad for custom watches on a popular marketplace website. The response was immediate and overwhelmingly positive! All of a sudden, I was getting to talk about watches with other people who are as enthusiastic about them as I am (giving my long suffering wife a break), and I get to make more watches!
Why Workhorse Movements?
In the 1970s, the quartz crisis hit. The watchmaking industry was practically decimated almost overnight. The next 30 years or so saw massive folding and consolidation in the watchmaking industry. In the early 2000s, the big industry players, seeking greater profit and control, began to assimilate specialized firms, and bring all aspects of production under one roof. This yielded the cost savings typical of your run of the mill vertical integration. That wasn’t enough though. They wanted more.
Soon, manufacturers began to restrict movements (the core, and most important part of a watch) and part availability. Muscling out independent watchmakers to the detriment of the watch owning public in order to reap greater after sales profits. If you buy a big name watch today, it likely has an in house or substantially modified movement with restricted service data and part availability forcing you to return to the manufacturer to keep the watch alive. No more convenient local service with market based prices, you are now forced to go to the one and only company that can keep your watch alive, at significantly greater cost and loss of wrist time, of course. Now that heirloom watch, instead of a treasured possession, becomes a liability and an guilt-ridden expense. In other words, it’s sock drawer art.
Screw that (watchmaker pun)! Fortunately, all is not lost. When the largest Swiss movement provider for the watch industry cut off supply, one of their primary contractors who had been making one of the most widely used and celebrated movements in the industry stepped up. They improved on the original design (not that they had to, the IP expired long ago), and made them available again!
These movements and/or their parts are readily available, and produced in massive numbers. This means any watchmaker can keep your watch running quickly, easily, and inexpensively now and far into the future! That’s how watches are SUPPOSED to work! These movements have come to be called “Workhorse” movements. Meanwhile, the Japanese watchmaking industry continued making movements freely and inexpensively available while all this was going on.
This is where Rocinante Watches comes in. Taking advantage of a thriving market for watch parts and the availability of workhorse movements to make fantastic watches that will last as long as their owners wish to keep them alive through any independent watchmaker of their choosing conveniently and at a reasonable cost!
There’s more to a watch than the movement though, right?
Well, yeah, but I’m a watchmaker, and that’s the part I’m most interested in. I feel the same way about cars; I buy a drivetrain and suspension, and it’s usually wrapped in body work of some description. The body work does matter though, I suppose…
Fortunately, that’s pretty well covered. I mentioned in the previous section that the Japanese made movements available pretty much the whole time the Swiss were trying to figure out the most efficient way to self-immolate in the pursuit of short term profits. On top of that, there arose a movement around modifying specifically Seiko watches. “Seikomods” they’re called. As parts to modify Seiko watches became more popular, and thus more available, eventually it got to the point where you could build entire watches from aftermarket parts. Eventually, that spread to Swiss movements. That’s about where I discovered all of this personally.
There’s this huge market of components for making watches that can be mixed and matched to make countless unique watches. My opinions on this aspect tend to revolve around the number of o-rings involved in water proofing, or the materials used. Pretty binary, watchmakery sorts of things. My opinions on these things really don’t matter much at this phase though. That will come later! For now, it’s all about YOUR opinions on these things! Cases, dials, hands, and bands/bracelets/straps are the paints on the palette of a custom watch, and that’s your call!
What’s happening
Things are moving fast here at Rocinante Watches. Amazingly so! I now have an account with Sellita, enabling me to utilize any movement they make in any configuration, any grade, and any level of decoration. I’ve developed relationships with engravers, printers, and I’m working on getting deeper into the hardware; cases, dials, and hands. I’m working on putting together a program to make custom watches in small batches for corporate gifts. I currently have a waitlist about 2 weeks out, and if things hold, that will grow.
For the immediate future, I’m hoping to grow the business. Even if it doesn’t grow, if I can maintain the current pace, I will be the happiest watchmaker on the planet! If I can grow the business even a little bit, I’d like to develop my own line. I’ve started putting the pieces in place for this, and hopefully you’ll start seeing things before the end of the year! Stay tuned!