The kickstarter adventures of Sólás - solaswatches.com

A short video up passed on to me from Turas Leather about the process he goes into when making the horween (or in this video - the salmon) leather straps.

Put it this way - for something that's made in Ireland (I think we can all accept we're not the cheapest country to be living in) - and the amount of work that goes into the making of the straps (as well as the quality of materials used) the price being asked for (€41.50) really is good value - yeah that 50c is needed to cover some of the paypal fees

I accept that mass produced leather straps may be cheaper elsewhere - but for salmon leather and full grain calf leather - it's a very good strap price I would think.

All part of the large strap update we have for 1 February that I'm in the process of writing up now.

We're almost at 240 sales now - the latest of which was particularly touching as one gentleman is purchasing four to gift to his groomsmen for his upcoming wedding. With the pre-orders coming in it's great to hear about why people are getting a Starlight as with a Chinese micro-rotor movement and aventurine dial most people who get one have a particular reason for getting one rather than just "seems cool" or "a more affordable Rolex" (which are perfect reasons to get a watch too).

It means I am really looking forward to seeing the watches on the wrists of people who got them to celebrate events - hopefully people can share in the sólás and joy too.

CNY should be finishing up soon as well so I'll be checking in with Hangzhou to see what progress there has been and if we can get some photos of something (or when we can get the first photos of something).

If I had known that Hangzhou would send out a photo the day after I posted the March update I'd have waited an extra day

The first photo of the first ever blued screwed version of the HZ5000A - while the camerawork can be improved (Unkel was that you taking the shot?) I think in hand and on the wrist it will be spectacular (well spectacular may be an exaggeration - but very beautiful I think).

I might delay the March update 2 of 2 a week or so - by that time our boxes and packaging will be ready to show people too - we're very much on track for expected delivery date (otherwise I would never have agreed to make sales to people ordering the watch as wedding gifts etc.)

We're starting to get noticed

I'm currently speaking to a clasp manufacturer who has shown me his factory's custom clasps made for some *very* well known Swiss made brands - these are brands that sell in the price ranges of 800-9000 euro - (obviously the clasp cost for the more expensive brands are more expensive too) - but just goes to show how much of Swiss is potentially well made, high grade Chinese stuff. Quite impressed by the selection of clasps they can make - but will have to see what's on the more affordable side of things.

First "all-in" pricing has come in for the Equinox - going to physical prototyping with moulding costs will run to more than 10k straight off (which by the way would use up most of the profits from the Starlight). Future Starlight owners don't need to worry though I have provisioned for Starlight maintenance costs already for the expected/unexpected issues, those are separate from "the warchest" for Sólás model development - a financial risk for sure that the returns from the Starlight work are being plowed straight back into more watch development - but one more step towards the repeater endgoal.

A lot more marketing will be needed for the Equinox too - as MOQ has risen from 300 to 500 in order to get unit costs down (and moreso that factories would be interested in quoting for making custom tungsten cases/bracelets) - MOQ unit prices have definitely gone up because everything is custom made (but at least it hasn't doubled) - hence I couldn't afford tritium this time round.

The problem is that on this larger scale I will need to start charging VAT - and pricing will again be key - if EU customers are paying 599 euro (non-EU 486 euro i.e. less the 23% VAT) it is a bit of a jump from 329-369-399 for EU customers - perhaps then it needs to shift to mostly US directed sales (or selling to our UK neighbours) - though as an EU based microbrand perhaps EU residents will be glad that they know it's 599 without having to worry about import charges. Psychologically I think a €599 purchase is a lot more significant than a €369 one...and I'd need to get more backers than with the Starlight due to the higher MOQ. I would love to do a sub 500 i.e. 499 - but after taking away the 23% VAT that's 405 and KS's cut of 8.5% would be 370 - pretty much the price I was charging for the Starlight when unit costs were much lower.

For US backers it would be a potentially good deal in that they are getting quite a bit more custom design for around 100 euro more. Though of course at 599/486 pricing I am starting to compete against pretty established microbrands and even some value oriented Swiss/German brands - using a Chinese movement of all things(!) I'll have to run further numbers to see if something like 529-599 KS pricing is even possible (every euro dropped in price means I'd need to have an extra 10-20-30 backers before costs are covered - for example if it was priced at 529 - that would be 430 after I give over the VAT to Revenue... and KS takes away an extra 8.5-9% too - pretty quickly that brings it down to around the 399 that I'm current charging for Starlight pre-orders.

You can see why a lot of microbrands are operating from Hong Kong/Singapore etc. with their naturally export orientated situation and the fact that backers don't have to see the import/VAT charge directly at the back/buy screen - harder to get EU based microbrands off the ground I think when the sales tax is already baked in the price.

One other option would be to sell to microbrand stores to try and bring down the amount of funding that would be needed to be raised from crowdsourcing - profits will go to the stores - but on the flip side it raises the chance that I'd only need 100-200 people to commit rather than needing 300 etc.

Lots of things to think about for the Equinox ^ hopefully people find the honest, behind the scenes thoughts interesting - I believe in my end goal so I'm certainly willing to risk the Starlight funds in the Equinox model too but I guess it just requires some more careful spreadsheet calculations and analysis of permutations.

Oh and very interesting news was that apparently someone from a watch venture capital fund indicated they wanted to speak to me - I've made it clear that I'm interested in keeping prices as low as reasonable and bringing out new watch designs rather than getting returns on investments so that might have scared them off ha - will have to see if they are willing to take a risk on a microbrand that wants to do something as audacious as building a repeater and not just repeating a MVMT

It's all about the MOQ and economies of scale baby - it's why if you want a Rolex-like case or well finished mercedes hands then that costs pennies (or more realistically dollars) - but if you want a custom set of hands then that's a (roughly) $600 mould fee (per hand) and potentially, depending on complexity (heat blued custom shape?) MOQs ranging from 300/500/1000-3000.

3000 was what was needed to get the brushed/polished dual finishing (like you find on Seiko dauphine hands) - for a 300 MOQ you either end up with a lot of spare hands, or raise prices so this is covered by the price of each unit, or accept that currently you can't offer something that you'd love to offer - but perhaps in future iterations/revisions. With China quite often it's "all possible" - you just need to see if you can pay for it.

We're still looking at anglage on the Equinox's movement - it comes down to the pennies/dollars - is it better to have anglage (making 599 more palatable?) or target audience won't care two hoots about anglage and would prefer to just get a nicer wooden/pleather box - the beauty and terror of going with crowdfunding (rather than say something like watch forum projects is that you get to be dictator and decide :P - and then see if your design/marketing strategy works or doesn't).

^ btw - the current thinking is screw it with the fancy accoutrements - the watch is the thing that's going to be on your wrist permanently - leather rolls/"free" watch tools etc. are lovely but if it's at the expense of concentrating on delivering as much bang for the buck in the watch then I'd prefer the money to be spent on the watch... but that is to be counterbalanced by many people enjoying the unboxing moment too - damn economics and human psychology

Just as an example - I think one American store experimented with stopping sales and just offering averaged prices - after a year it was a complete failure as people wanted a perceived "bargain" - when rationally(?) it's better to just offer the same lower price all the time. But we're trained to regard the normal price as "bad" and a "discount" (DFS sofa "sales"?) as good... unless you're on a Rolex waiting list of course :pac:

This is it wrote: »

Kinda like paying for delivery.

€20 + €5 delivery, no way.
€26 + FREE DELIVERY!! Oh, yes please!

Nothing is free… well the free legal adivce centre is free ha (but I think they get government funding too - so partially tax payer funded).

I prefer to have things set out clearly i.e. separate shipping and goods but it does seem to work better to offer "free" shipping.

It's like when we postponed the first campaign and some people didn't think throwing more money at promotion/marketing is a good spend of money - I think we all rather the money is spent on the actual product but that was the biggest lesson for myself as a non-marketing guy. I can completely understand why Rolex, Patek etc spend around half of their budgets on marketing - for these kinds of non-essential purchases you need people to be aware and yeah we're all aware of Patek now - but that's not by magic (or even purely by craftsmanship - see Lange) - but lots of hardwork by the marketing department (in Sólás' case - marketing department = me )

I think people saw a static picture of our tester movement - here's a moving version of the S tourbillon (this is purely a movement tester - dial/hands/everything else is being done from the ground up again - and another foundation stone for the repeater model). Actual release of this will be in 3-4 years' time so it would give me a really long period of time to see what, if any, issues there may be with this movement.



https://i.imgur.com/KAwel9G.mp4

If boards.ie can't display a moving image then I've inserted the link too. Slightly grainy (just to show the concept - this isn't a marketing video) slow-mo of a co-axial tourbillon (rather than carrousel) in motion.

Chinese tourbillons themselves aren't necessarily very expensive anymore (though they are substantially more expensive than a microrotor) - the idea is to keep the pricing in triple figures however. Chinese ones on AliX can be had for around 400-500 I believe (pre-tax of course) - so again, it's about doing something new with the concept or else I'd just point people towards getting a AliX tourbillon or a Tag Heuer Swiss tourbillon (cheapest Swiss one on the market I believe).

Here is the full St Patrick's Day update on KS:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/solaswatches/solas-starlight-an-irish-affordable-micro-rotor-watch/posts/3132239

Synopsis:
In this update we have the updated movement photos (with blued screws), the boxes for the watches have been ordered, a new review (from someone who reviews both marquee Swiss brands and also microbrands from a design background) is published and a mini-Irish quiz for the day that's in it.

It really was, the really big pro was that he knew about aventurine from his knowledge of the more expensive Swiss brands and really wanted to show it off properly - his watch story was actually featured on Hodinkee too: https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/my-watch-story-january-13

I would hope over the next few days the Starlight may be completely sold out - this warchest for the Equinox means we don't start from the very beginning with the next model...

Onwards and upwards I hope