Though they may be little, these independent watchmakers are plugging gaps in the market and building a reputation
Then there are the microbrands that plug a specific gap in the market that makes little sense for the big brands to fill. Hyungsoo Kim had the idea for Eone after a blind classmate at MIT in America mentioned he felt uncomfortable using his talking watch in class. Eone’s design uses two metallic balls to track hours and minutes. The masterstroke came when Kim spoke to a focus group of blind people who said they felt just as concerned about how their watch looked as a sighted wearer.
“These smaller brands all have an idea of what their strategy is going to be,” says Lucy Cheesewright, head of WatchPro Live. “But when they meet people and get their thoughts, so many times the feature that resonates is not the one they expected. I get that feedback all the time. It really helps in developing those brands.”“You and I could do it tomorrow,” says Giovanni Moro, co-founder of Unimatic, the Italian microbrand with a distinct minimalist design language. “It’s very, very, very easy.
Aera was founded in early 2018 and spent its first four years in research and development. Handle one of their watches and you get the sense that every detail has been sweated over. He started with savings of £30,000. Using Facebook leads-generating ads, he created a mailing list of potential customers by offering a £50 discount or a free strap . Then he raised £27,000 on Kickstarter and produced his first collection. It took him four months, and he delivered the watches in time for Christmas 2017. For the second collection he went back to Kickstarter and raised another £45,000.
One of the features of Unimatic watches is that they all come in small batches: limited runs of 300, 100 or, in the case of 2019’s U1-SP , 50. He got permission to use NASA’s logo by writing and asking them. Something similar happened with Unimatic’s U1-SS, otherwise known as “the SpongeBob SquarePants”. Being a fan of the cartoon, and realising its 20th anniversary was coming up, Moro sent an email and introduced himself.
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