How Independent Watch Brands Are Making a Comeback I Jason Lu DSH #1282

Speaker 1 There's this term that is probably one of the most contentious terms in watchmaking where people say, did you design everything from the ground up?

Speaker 1 And did you manufacture everything from the ground up? I like to use the word that we have a manufacturer. So I am using a traditional Swiss architecture.
So we're using somebody else's architecture.

Speaker 1 We manufacture those plates and bridges that are our own.

Speaker 1 All right, guys, we got Jason Liu here today, 1776 Atelier. Thanks for coming on, man.
Hey, thank you for having me. Yeah, would you label yourself as a watchmaker? I would.
What a title to have.

Speaker 1 Not many people have that title. It's

Speaker 1 sadly a title that's disappearing in the United States. It's still prevalent in some other parts of the world, but as the world becomes more digital, it's an area that's truly dying.
Right.

Speaker 1 You're the first one I've met in the U.S. Why do you think that is? Why do you guys think you're a dying breed right now? Well, so in the 1950s, one of the last Hamilton watchmaker

Speaker 1 watch company left the United States. There are a couple of us left.

Speaker 1 There's four or five, I'd probably call it less than half a dozen truly independent U.S. watchmakers left.
But

Speaker 1 the Swiss have done a fantastic job of making fine time pieces that people crave. The Japanese have.

Speaker 1 And as we all know, the Chinese have also done a good job of bringing mass production to the watch world.

Speaker 1 And so with the and the U.S. has just shed its capability, which is something I think think we can do a good job to try to overcome.
Yeah. What are the big watch brands in China?

Speaker 1 I haven't heard of those. Well, I think if you look, so the Swiss have a watch award called the GPHG.

Speaker 1 And although I wouldn't say that many, my opinion, and I'm sure there's some Chinese watch companies out there that might be shaking their fists at me saying,

Speaker 1 we're bigger than we are, but they're probably going to be more niche, almost independent watchmaking brands, but have started to gain notoriety because they've won some prestigious awards.

Speaker 1 So I think that it's up and coming. And, you know,

Speaker 1 it's an

Speaker 1 eventuality with the industrialization of China that I think is unfortunate. That I think the U.S.
needs to play some catch up there. Right.
So, a lot of U.S.

Speaker 1 customers like the label made in the USA, but we were just talking earlier how it's almost impossible to have that label as a watchmaker here at an affordable price point, right? Right. Why is that?

Speaker 1 So, the United States Federal Trade Commission has a label, if we go into, that says

Speaker 1 the actual language says all or virtually all content has to be of U.S. content.
Now, if we actually say,

Speaker 1 so for me to say that, that means every component has to have U.S. origins.
Now, let's just compare and contrast with other countries.

Speaker 1 So, when somebody, when we flip open a Rolex or any of the other watches, I'm not going to make an allegation that one company has more or less, but the Swiss arbiter for made it in Switzerland is 60%

Speaker 1 by value. So, and then Germany, Germany, England, other countries have much lower standards than the United States.

Speaker 1 And we can make the argument for the Swiss, for the Federal Trade Commission that they're just protecting companies that really do 100%.

Speaker 1 But at the same time, when we cannot buy jewels, hairsprings, balances, gears, pivots in the United States, they either have to be manufactured completely here.

Speaker 1 But for example, let's take hairspring material. That's the part that turns the balance that we call the heartbeat of a watch.
Every mechanical watch has to have a hairspray.

Speaker 1 Hairspring material, the minimum order quantity, is roughly a little bit over a mile of hairspring material at a cost of well over a million dollars.

Speaker 1 So when I only need less than six inches of hairspring material, you can imagine what that does.

Speaker 1 So as to my knowledge, there's only one watchmaker in the United States that can have a made-in-the-United States stamp.

Speaker 1 The Federal Trade Commission prohibits us from using the words made-in, built-in, crafted

Speaker 1 to use Texas, USA, or any other

Speaker 1 moniker that gives the illusion that it's made in the United States, unless we can pass that almost impossible to meet threshold.

Speaker 1 So then we have to use assembled, which is a travesty when more than 70%, I'd say 80% of our content is U.S. Wow.
So they need to look into that, how to change that, right?

Speaker 1 And again, it's a double-edged sword. When somebody that's making floor mats, for example, can use polymers and resins and say, hey,

Speaker 1 because of the industrialization of that type of chemical or that type of commodity is is easier to do. But

Speaker 1 when the industry has entirely left this country, how do you bring it back?

Speaker 1 How do you bring an industry back to the United States when

Speaker 1 you're forced to use the word assembled

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 the threshold for us measuring us against our peers is much higher?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that makes sense. So Rolex obviously has the biggest market share, right? Percentage-wise.
I don't know the exact number, but is that number going up or down over the next few years, you think?

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Speaker 1 Rolex is now I watch the media, so for all the viewers out there or listeners who may criticize it, Rolex in 2024, I believe, sold roughly 1.25 million watches. That number has gone up.

Speaker 1 They've actually increased their capacity. Jeez.
So they were the largest producer in the Swiss marketplace, I think, globally by far. And

Speaker 1 they've done a great job marketing themselves. Rolex is a fantastic marketing machine.

Speaker 1 They build great timepieces that are craved. Yeah, 1.25 million a year is insane.
It's insane. How are they making that many? That's nuts.

Speaker 1 So they've actually skeered up to increase production because if you go into a Rolex dealer, there's the infamous, if you want your Rolex Daytona or your Rolex watch, you will wait months.

Speaker 1 You could argue for Daytona, it might be one of the most desirable time pieces in the world. And it's arguably impossible to get.
Some people have waited years. That's right.
Yeah, it's nuts.

Speaker 1 I've been able to get some in Vegas, I think, partially because of connections, but it, yeah, you might know a person or two.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but sometimes, like before the podcast, I would walk in there, they wouldn't even look at me. You know what I mean? I'd pull in, they wouldn't even talk to me, and the store would be empty.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and that, so I think

Speaker 1 the talk in the watch world is that that's alienated some people with a difficulty of going to an AD, you don't have any inventory to sell me, and you're going to go on some sort of

Speaker 1 mysterious list. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that's, that's, there's the algorithm behind when you're, who, and when somebody's going to get a timepiece is, I think, one of the greatest mysteries in the watch world.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's such a mystery. Like, you don't know what number you are.
Yeah. You don't even know if there is a list.

Speaker 1 I don't know if there is a list or I have to buy 10 other pieces of jewelry or something else to get to clank to elevate my status within that list. AP is even harder.
Yes. AP is hard.

Speaker 1 I walked into Rashard Milley. Yeah, they didn't even put me on a list.
That one's probably impossible.

Speaker 1 Those are the big, so

Speaker 1 AP is

Speaker 1 one of the Holy Trinity, right, with Patek Philippe, AP, and Vashron Constantin. And

Speaker 1 they occupy

Speaker 1 a big piece of the Swiss watch industry, and they hold a huge portion of the revenue, but that's largely because of demand. Now, I think in 2024,

Speaker 1 we started to see a little bit of downturn in demand. And hopefully things start coming back to earth a little bit.
Yeah. Did that scare you, that downturn? It was a pretty big one, right?

Speaker 1 Not from a watch, from a watch industry perspective. For independents, it really hasn't bothered us, right?

Speaker 1 As an independent watchmaker, we kind of cater towards the view that a lot of our buyers are collectors who said, I want something a little bit different, right?

Speaker 1 We might have a couple of the other brands, Swiss brands, Japanese brands

Speaker 1 in our collections, and we want something that's maybe a little bit more personal, that has a higher, arguably a higher tension to handcraftsmanship. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you think independent brands are going to make a comeback? I think they are making a comeback, right? There's now, here's the question is, are there going to be too many of us?

Speaker 1 But right now there is a resurgence of,

Speaker 1 my personal take is there's been a lot of frustration as you go to,

Speaker 1 we named a bunch of brands where they're difficult to buy. And I think

Speaker 1 the consumer in the world where you can Amazon something and have it show up at your door the same day, it's a frustration saying, I might wait months, if not years, to get something.

Speaker 1 And these are same consumers that are fairly well healed and they're educated and they can say, hey, what else is out there?

Speaker 1 And as you educate yourself about time pieces, it's similar to the car world where

Speaker 1 you start to crave something a little bit more

Speaker 1 that's not pedestrian.

Speaker 1 And so I think the independents who have said, hey, I can offer a higher level of handcraftsmanship. I can offer you exclusivity.

Speaker 1 There are not 10 million of these things that are going to be made.

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Speaker 1 That's great. Except, that was Aries' time.

Speaker 1 And offer you something that's truly artisanal. And built almost semi-sometimes all of our time pieces are semi-bespoke.
Wow.

Speaker 1 That and

Speaker 1 at a price that's sometimes a fraction of what the big brands charge. Yeah, and handmade, right? I'm not sure if Rolexes are fully handmade, to be honest.

Speaker 1 And I'm not going to speak on behalf of the big dangerous Swiss brand, but I do know that the level of hand craftsmanship and hand workmanship that we have is going to be higher.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I know you brought some here. Well, if you could show us, but we'll take B-roll and put it on the camera.
Okay. But could you explain what's going on here? Sure.

Speaker 1 So we

Speaker 1 actually have a time piece for you. Do you want to start with? Oh, yeah, please.
So, this is a time piece that's a gift for the show. We hope that I look forward to having you wear these.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I can't wait. I'll put it on right now if it fits.
And that says, My wrists are skinny, so I might have to adjust it.

Speaker 1 Damn, this box is legit, too. Full wood.

Speaker 1 Wow, look at this thing.

Speaker 1 Beautiful design on the box itself.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Damn.

Speaker 1 So this is a skeleton, right?

Speaker 1 It's a hand-skeletonized time piece, so we didn't use CNC for that for that. We cut it out with jeweler saws and files.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's even moving in the back and everything.

Speaker 1 Yes, you can take it off, and it's as beautiful in the front as it is from the back. It's a push-button.
Wow. This is phenomenal.
Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's insane. I'll take a video and show it on the camera later, but thanks so much.
Oh, thank you. Yeah, this is.
I'm glad you like it.

Speaker 1 So if you take a look at how that's built, we have a timepiece, a sample here. You look at the front, that's a main plate.
Here's one that's hand-finished. That's hand-cut out.

Speaker 1 You can see the jagged edge from a jeweler saw cutting that out. Wow, so someone actually cut this out manually.

Speaker 1 We cut that out manually, and you can see a more finished version as we filed it and hand-beveled each edge of what that looks like.

Speaker 1 Damn, this looks intense. This is not easy to do.

Speaker 1 And so as that catches the light, the little bevels that you see on that, the corners,

Speaker 1 each piece is actually cut out by hand. And why we chose to do that is

Speaker 1 that's what we view true watchmaking is, right? It's not just a CNC machine that's using modern technology and cutting. What's missing is that level of craftsmanship, right?

Speaker 1 What you're buying at a certain point is what we believe is mechanical art. Yeah.

Speaker 1 If we really were to distill this, and half the watch world might get mad at me for saying this, but if you really want the best most accurate timepiece, pull out your phone and look at your iPhone or your Samsung, and it's going to tell you exactly synced up to the atomic time.

Speaker 1 It will be a perpetual calendar that knows leap years.

Speaker 1 It

Speaker 1 will be accurate far more than 100 years. And it's always going to be accurate.
But what you're buying is mechanical artistry, right? You're buying that piece of...

Speaker 1 of what we view that as almost has a soul to it. There's a watchmaker, there's an artist there that spent time to put those bevels in there.
Why?

Speaker 1 It's not because you can. We believe it's because you should.

Speaker 1 I love that. Yeah, you're basically buying art in a sense, right? It's not just a watch.
That's right. You're not using it for time.
In fact, all my watches, I don't even use it for time. Right.

Speaker 1 It's something when you put it on, it, as, you know, some people joke around and say, hey, that I don't put feelings first. Sometimes I take a very...

Speaker 1 logical view towards things. But from time pieces,

Speaker 1 it speaks some when you buy a timepiece, it should somewhat speak to your soul.

Speaker 1 yeah, that's the Asian in you. You don't put feelings for you, maybe, yeah, there.
That's yeah, the autistic Asian in me, yeah. That's a tough love, man.
My mother raised me with that logic.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so that's that might be part of the culture. Yeah, no, it is.
Asians are strict, your parents are strict, weren't they? They were strict, yes, yeah. It's good in a sense, I think.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it keeps us from being complete fuck-ups, yeah, complete degeneracy. Uh, and then they move to America, and you see the Asian Americans out here, yeah, wilding out,

Speaker 1 yeah, yeah. I've been to China a few times, and uh,

Speaker 1 they they but they haven't gotten here yet. So oh, China hasn't? Yeah, because I don't know.
I think they make a lot of the, I think they make a lot of components for people.

Speaker 1 We try to minimize the, I think the only Chinese component on that right now is the clasp. Nice.
So I love that. So how exactly is a skeleton made?

Speaker 1 Because that's probably one of the hardest models to make, right? I'd imagine. Yeah, so people will ask, let me answer that in an about way.
So people ask, is our move been in-house?

Speaker 1 So in-house is this

Speaker 1 term that is probably one of the most contentious terms in watchmaking where people say, did you design everything from the ground up? And did you manufacture everything from the ground up?

Speaker 1 I like to use the word that we have a manufacturer movement. So I am using a traditional Swiss architecture.
So we're using somebody else's architecture.

Speaker 1 We remanufactured those plates in plates and bridges that are our own. And so at that point is that I didn't reinvent the wheel by saying, oh, we're coming up with our new own gear train design.

Speaker 1 I'm using somebody else's gear train design, but our components are our own.

Speaker 1 And so, how did we do that? Is we literally took one of our main plates, drilled holes in them, and then took a jeweler's file and a jeweler's saw and cut out the pieces to expose the gear train.

Speaker 1 That's insane. So, and then if you look on that timepiece, you can actually see

Speaker 1 all those cuts that you see out there are hand-cut out. The dial will be made.
Like all the ones on the outside. Everything.

Speaker 1 that's so impressive there doesn't seem like much room for error on something like this no you screw it up you throw it away really yeah yeah i can even when we bevel the edges right so we're there's a term called engage where we're trying to bring in use cut the bevels so that catches the light it's part of fine watch making but a lot of that just uses a graver it's an engraver where we're just cutting away bits but if you slip on that once usually the graver is so sharp it will scratch the entire movement you throw the whole thing away holy crap what keeps this thing spinning in the back so that's the hairspring that we're talking about oh that's the hairspring that's the most expensive thing you mentioned earlier so that's a well we use a swiss hairspring for that reason right is is that i i didn't want to at that timepiece right there is uh 4 900 at that price point i can't put a portion of a million dollar hairspring

Speaker 1 1.25 million for hairspring man that's nuts hopefully a usa manufacturer starts making that for cheap yeah they they do right but it's just not at the right price now i think maybe there's some opportunity for maybe a bunch.

Speaker 1 If U.S. watchmaking becomes more than a handful of us,

Speaker 1 there's maybe opportunities for multiple watchmakers to collaborate.

Speaker 1 I think there's a lot of opportunity. When there's only less than half a dozen of us, I don't view us as competition against one another.
We're just

Speaker 1 the U.S. is the largest watch market in the world.
Wow, I didn't know that. I think we are,

Speaker 1 don't quote me on this, but I think we will represent roughly one-third of the world's watch consumerism. Damn,

Speaker 1 But we only occupy, I think, less than 4% of the watch industry. And that's another term I heard from somebody else.
So somebody can probably chat GPT or Google me and correct me. Critical AI.

Speaker 1 I mean, it sounds accurate to me. I don't hear of any U.S.
watchmakers that a lot of my friends own watches.

Speaker 1 There's a couple, and I really respect them, right? So before anybody else,

Speaker 1 there's time pieces from competitors of mine that I own as part of my own collection. I respect them all wildly.

Speaker 1 And most of us are just watch nerds, right? We love mechanical time pieces. And so if somebody makes something beautiful, I'll be the first to give them credit and give them props for it.

Speaker 1 But what we're trying to do is make it a little bit more accessible. What was your favorite era of watches? Because there's a new trend now of people restoring old watches.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you've seen it. Yes.
On TikTok? So it's interesting you bring that up. So this is how I got into watch making.
So although I'm an avid watch collector, this is a Hamilton 902.

Speaker 1 And so if you look at it, it's beautiful inside. And I'll let you look at that.
So this is 100 years old? That was built in 1925. Holy crap.
So it's either 99 or 100 years old. Yeah, this is historic.

Speaker 1 It's historic, and it's in a modern case with our strap on it. But if you look at the work on that, that was built that beautifully 100 years ago.
That's impressive.

Speaker 1 But if you drop it, it's not shock resistant. They're a lot less,

Speaker 1 a lot more prone to being magnetized, but they're beautiful. Super beautiful.
This is a clean design. Yes.
I love it. So that, you know, this is from the golden era of American watchmaking, right?

Speaker 1 If you look at back when that was made in the mid-20s, the U.S. was at its peak.
We were the best in the world. At watchmaking? At watchmaking.
There was nobody better. Wow.
So

Speaker 1 you think about the history there is actually the U.S. has a pretty storied and positive history in watchmaking.

Speaker 1 You figure from the 1880s during the Industrial Revolution when railroads were a big part of the expansion of the U.S.

Speaker 1 industrial complex.

Speaker 1 We needed watches that were accurate to keep trains from crashing into each other, to keep things on time.

Speaker 1 And so the idea of a railroad standard

Speaker 1 and pocket watches that were the most accurate became a big pervasive need as part of the industrialization of this country.

Speaker 1 And the U.S. was able to, where the Swiss were always good at building bespoke, highly crafted time pieces, the U.S.

Speaker 1 was really good, became really good at building highly crafted, beautiful time pieces, but also mass production.

Speaker 1 So you have the Waltham Watch Company, you had Hamilton, you had Elgin, and all these companies that took their turns at becoming some of the biggest watch manufacturers on the earth, but also building some of the most beautiful, accurate time pieces ever.

Speaker 1 Some of the Hamilton time pieces that went all the way through World War II were known to be the most accurate time pieces in the world. Wow.
But that all disappeared when

Speaker 1 we gave up that capability. The Swiss were really good at marketing their capabilities and we gave it up as a country.

Speaker 1 How much would that Hamilton watch cost if you found one on the market these days? Oh,

Speaker 1 actually, they're not that expensive. You look at an old Hamilton pocket watch that's fully restored, it's going to be less than $1,000.
Really? Because that's historic.

Speaker 1 I would buy something like that just to have, you know.

Speaker 1 But those watches are good, fully restored pieces, often less than $2,000. And it's a neat piece of history to have.
That's not bad at all. It could probably be a decent investment, honestly, too.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And if you look at some of these great pocket watches, there's some military-grade ones

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 they had in World War II that were used to navigate B-17 bombers during the war. Damn.
And so it's pretty neat. Some of them have really neat,

Speaker 1 really neat histories. Yeah.
There's some that were used. What was the one in space? Forget.
Someone astronaut word in space.

Speaker 1 So Omega makes

Speaker 1 Omega makes the moon watch.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that really was a big part of Omega's history, right? So most watch clicks, I have one, a Omega Moon Watch.

Speaker 1 That's like a staple, right? It's a staple. You just have to have one, right? And

Speaker 1 Omega did a really good job in selecting materials and in making accurate watches and really things that could stand up to the test of NASA when the others couldn't.

Speaker 1 So a lot of the watchmakers, other brands that we talked about,

Speaker 1 put in their offerings. But Omega won that one.
That's cool. Which mainstream watch brand are you the most impressed with quality-wise?

Speaker 1 So let's call them what is mainstream. I love Patech.
Okay.

Speaker 1 A lot of people argue, how is that mainstream? I think they're a staple of the Holy Trinity and it's well-deserved.

Speaker 1 You know, I... Like any watch collector, I do have Rolex and they are what I call tool watches, but not in a negative sense, is that

Speaker 1 out there? I will take anywhere, jump off a mountain with it, and I know it's just going to keep on going. They call it a daily, right? It's a daily, yeah.

Speaker 1 And I don't, there's no reason you can't daily one of our watches, but you know, would I want to take it to the shooting range and do machine gun fire with it? No, not with this.

Speaker 1 I prefer you didn't, but it's, you know, I don't know that it will break, but I haven't tested that yet. We haven't done machine gun fire tests for it.
Would this survive underwater?

Speaker 1 50 meters, so it will probably a light swim. 50 meters, okay.
But I wouldn't, but the idea is 50 meters, people say, well, I'm not going to dive to 50 meters.

Speaker 1 The ideas behind water resistance ratings is

Speaker 1 the case is actually we rate at, we advertise 30 meters. The case is rated at 50.
Got it. And the reason is it's 50 meters of pressure

Speaker 1 in motion. So all the seals under there, when you're actually moving your arms underwater, you actually can generate more force than 50 meters.
Oh, interesting. And so that's how it's rated.

Speaker 1 So you really to see truly water resistance swimmable is 60 meters.

Speaker 1 You know, I've, have I taken mine swimming with a rubber strap? Yes.

Speaker 1 That's bulky.

Speaker 1 But we do it because I know a guy who can replace it. But

Speaker 1 for warranty purposes, we say 30. That makes sense.

Speaker 1 You got guys that could fix these everywhere yet or no?

Speaker 1 So because it's a proven known architecture, some of our components are proprietary. So for example, if you were to throw generic Swiss parts in it, it's not going to look the same.

Speaker 1 So even our gears, if you look at the gears, all our gears are beveled. All our gears are grained.
All our gears are galvanic treated by hand in Texas. Wow.

Speaker 1 And so even if we procure the parts, by and large, most of them are then transformed in the United States.

Speaker 1 That's really why we have that claim is that about 80, 70 to 80% of our content, and people say, is it 70 or 80?

Speaker 1 How do you do the math on it? So we think it's some arbitrary, subjectively somewhere there.

Speaker 1 Hopefully you'll be able to keep up with demand. These look pretty intense to make.
It's been fantastic. It's been a fantastic ride since launch.
Nice. When did you launch? We launched in December.

Speaker 1 We did a... Oh, is it three months ago? It's about three months ago.
Wow. Brand new.
We've been doing this for about, we've been building them for about two years, right?

Speaker 1 It takes time to come up with a design.

Speaker 1 We launched and we're close to sold out on some of our collections. Dang.
Well done, man, because this is not an easy industry.

Speaker 1 It's a tough industry. But, you know,

Speaker 1 what we feel blessed is that I think we've gotten in a right time where made or the high amount American content is something that the market generally craves.

Speaker 1 We sought a lot of feedback, both positive and negative, on our designs. And so we put it out.
Not everything was a hit, but what we've put out so far has been really, really, really well received.

Speaker 1 That's smart that you were getting feedback on the designs before you made them into real products. Yeah.
Well,

Speaker 1 this was not a road without failure. I have a,

Speaker 1 we call it the R ⁇ D box. Yeah.
And it is a graveyard of parts that we tried that

Speaker 1 probably some people will laugh, could say, what were you thinking? And maybe my answer is, I wasn't.

Speaker 1 It looked good to us, but not to many. Well, coming up with design can't be easy.
No, I mean, because you got to think of something that hasn't been done before, but also that people would want.

Speaker 1 And the fact that every single time we try something, it has a high cost. You figure every single one of those is manufactured for us.
Right. And I can't just buy one.
Usually if.

Speaker 1 I'm begging a machine shop to make 10, 15. And then if I throw, if we decide after the first one, we don't want it, we throw away 15 pieces.
Damn. Yeah, that ain't cheap.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then when we put it in production, right, we're ordering hundreds. Yeah.
Well, what's the next step here? You're about to sell out of everything. What's next?

Speaker 1 So we have a, that timepiece that you got is kind of a halfway prototype. You actually, if you look on the back of that, I think it's serial 000 on the very top.
On the top. On the balance bridge.

Speaker 1 When the parts that's spinning. Oh, on this part? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, I see that.

Speaker 1 So obviously we don't sell serial 000 to anyone.

Speaker 1 So that one is halfway in between. There's a model we're coming out.
I think we're going to call it Pure.

Speaker 1 And the idea is that it's going to take us a little bit more of a nod towards traditional watchmaking.

Speaker 1 So there's another timepiece I'm giving one of your colleagues, Charlie. Yeah.
And that one was one of my first timepieces. That one is serial 0000 of,

Speaker 1 that was my personal time piece. Quadruple zero.
Yeah, quadruple zero. That was all the prototypes are some versions of zero.

Speaker 1 But an earlier timepiece than that. So that one's a little rougher finished.
That one was my personal watch. That one's the one that went swimming.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 those

Speaker 1 in both of those have,

Speaker 1 you'll see when you open that one, that one has, I don't want to say it's cruder, but it had more skeletonization.

Speaker 1 But this one is going to be a little bit more nod towards artisanal workmanship, where you'll see on the gears on yours that you can see the way the light reflects off with snailing.

Speaker 1 We have a higher focus on playing with with light.

Speaker 1 Look at doing watch making and it's more pure form. So that's why we're calling it pure.
Yeah, I love that. Do you have a personal favorite watch? So

Speaker 1 I personally wear, I'm wearing one piece right here. There's two versions here

Speaker 1 of

Speaker 1 our personal piece. I love the skeletons, but that was more like a labor of love.
We were having a lot of problems with the dials with these. because they're so complex.

Speaker 1 You can take a look at this. This one's fully hand engraved.
Wow.

Speaker 1 God damn. And this is another one.
And this one's got even more serious engraving in it. Dude.
Holy crap.

Speaker 1 And those are hand engraved by

Speaker 1 a colleague of ours in Indiana, all done by Americans. Wow.

Speaker 1 And if you look at the level of engraving on that, it is insane. Dude, this is nuts.
Days and days of engravings. So detailed.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so we believe that is the lowest fully handed

Speaker 1 of high-end watches, that's the lowest priced fully engraved movement watch. How much is this one? $3,000.
Jesus. It's $2,900.
I haven't heard of anything close to that price.

Speaker 1 And so that's personally because of the amount of work that goes into these.

Speaker 1 I see what goes. There's a lot of work that goes to the skeletonization of that.
But I'll be honest, I don't personally have the skills to engrave like that. Not very many people do.

Speaker 1 You can see that and your audience will probably be able to see it on the B-roll, but

Speaker 1 it's impressive. No, that thing was spinning fast.
Yeah. And I just, so to me, that's,

Speaker 1 even though the, the back of the watch is not on the front of the watch,

Speaker 1 I like sitting there sometimes and just looking at the way the light reflects on it. Yeah, the way that was moving.
Yeah, I wouldn't even wear it. I would just be looking at it.

Speaker 1 That's a beautiful piece right there. That's, that's why we love it.
Yeah. For me, the skeleton AP is like my dream watch.
It's one of my, it was on my collection. Yeah, too.

Speaker 1 Now it's strange when you become a watchmaker, you, you feel guilty wearing other people's watches plus you can make it yourself and for a fifth of the price you can try i can try but it's not that i don't crave to wear some of my other time pieces as a watch guy you always

Speaker 1 you admire other watches yeah you feel guilty yeah yeah there's some cool ones have you seen jacob and coe's watches some of those are nuts crazy the space one or the bugati one yeah like that must be insane to make yeah i can't imagine yeah the price is pretty insane

Speaker 1 you can have have your your condo and and and then some vacation spot or your jacob yeah you want a house or a watch that's right that's where patecs are going to now too some of those are like two 300k two 300k or even a good even some of the base patecs you can pick between your s-class mercedes or

Speaker 1 yeah for real jason it's been awesome man where could people look more into this and potentially buy one 1776 atelia.com a-t-e-l-i-e-r check out the site guys i can't wait to wear this around i'll take some photos in it stay tuned i'll see you guys next time