The kickstarter adventures of Sólás - solaswatches.com

Bank account a *few* grand lighter and off to collect the hundreds of straps now - have a few special ones ordered for Equinox too (optional add ons and something to give Turas some work potentially as a diver model is mostly going to be on the bracelet or the bungee cord diving attachment). Model 3 "Eclipse" will be returning to straps mostly.

Pieta is fully on board for our "Ó dhorchadas go solas" campaign in 2022 and the good thing with getting permission and working together so far in advance is that I can really integrate some Pieta designs and elements into the watch for the Pieta unique version. Apparently they have solutions that don't incurr fees that GoFundMe charges so more funds can be sent over to ultimate recipient so all in all great news.

...oh ho ho - almost time to start ironing those cuffs

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/solaswatches/solas-starlight-an-irish-affordable-micro-rotor-watch/posts/3175993

New update out - almost there folks

Dev1234 wrote: »

Jesus TF, that's a serious amount of quality checks and effort on your behalf.

I remember backing Solas last year and to be honest it was somewhat of a distraction to all that was going on so thank you for that.

The timing of getting the watches out to the backers coincides nicely with the lifting of restrictions so a double whammy of positivety coming our way!!

Well done!!

Thanks Dev - it's only right that for people paying a microbrand premium (yes we're competing with Swiss luxury brands from price pressures above but also with Chinese factory brands from below too) - that buyers get value for what they're paying. The same will be done for Equinox too.

Right now I'm working for free with Sólás - because that means any Starlight profits get invested into Equinox/retail Starlight orders - all in those 5 minute repeater goal hopes.

Model 3 (Eclipse) itself is something that should be pretty spectacular in its own right too to be honest - and something that lays down the engineering framework for Lir.

Ha - strange you mention that - there are people pushing me to do PM models quite a bit - but I think that's not in the spirit of Sólás at all.

Lir may be in a precious metal ultimately to celebrate Sólás reaching a summit. But there could be other options for PM models, just not from Sólás the quality has to be there first of all before I could even consider looking at PM (which to be honest is commercially sensible - but Sólás isn't fully about "commercially sensible" at its roots).

Just transferred over a 5 figure sum to start physical review sample manufacture of the Equinox - the last thing to be settled with 60 or 120 clicks bezel and I went with 60 - it's more difficult to implement correctly with tighter tolerances than 120 and I prefer the chunkier clunk vs mini-clicks of the 120. Also influenced by the fact that my Pelagos had the best bezel feeling action of all the divers I've owned (never owned a 120 click submariner which I'm sure will be smooth too) - but preferred the Pelagos over the Seamaster or Tag in terms of 120 vs 60 - was waiting for factory samples to arrive from China to determine whether to go with 60 or 120.

Now the (5 month) wait begins for physical units and for it to all come together.

Also transferred a 4 figure sum to a shipping company to collect the first batch of CE Starlights from Guangzhou tomorrow - they're almost here

I believe so david - anything that is custom means a factory needs to charge custom fees for doing so (if you even meet MOQ requirements in the first place) - the cost of the Equinox is already huge (compared to Starlight) - so while I did ask about it, it was just one of the things that a 4k watch can incorporate that a 1k watch might not be able to.

The alignment was perfect on the samples I looked at - and while I enjoyed having the Pelagos "lock" at 12 - it's a question of would people pay an additional (hypothetical) 60 euro for it (when factoring additional potential QC issues, moulding costs, trialling time etc.) - just like tritium, it's something that I had to leave out due to trying to get cost/value balance right. Hence making the point that a 60 euro feature might be relatively negligible at 4k but at 1k (and less for KS) you have to count the pennies (or at least €60s).

For the Equinox - the idea will be tungsten case/bracelet - including first in world ratcheting tungsten clasp is the key seller - thin, weighty, super scratch resistent well finished watch - on the way towards building our repeater watch - is the angle that Sólás will be going for.

I'll be putting up to a 6 figure sum personally for production - KS won't be used to fund the entire project (as was the case with Starlight) - backers will be seeing that they are getting 1k watch value at a true capital funding discount (as was the case with Starlight). And keeping in mind that 1k microbrand value watches will be trying to compete with 2-3k Swiss watches (or higher) in terms of effective quality.

Since Equinox will be the last time I plan to use crowdfunding - it'll be the last time such deep discounts will be available too - people will be able to judge what we've built and see if the value is there for them - but Sólás won't be "bottom of barrel" value like Pagani/San Martin (who offer amazing value if you just want a homage watch) - but great value independent design that aims to do something different but horologically useful/significant (though it's debatable if "affordable noisy lume" is useful at all :pac: ).

People are interested in buying the Starlight at €549 which we will be selling in around 4 months (and pre-orders open in 2 days ). I am placing a 6 figure bet that they will understand why Equinox comes with a €999 (pre-VAT) price tag too (and the people who only wanted a $200 or $400 watch would probably be much better catered to by San Martin or Lobinni in terms of offering best bang for their buck).

All of the above will require a very strategic marketing campaign to make the people who are considering 2-3k watches have a look at our KS campaign I think. And at the end of the KS Equinox campaign the principle "profit" will be building brand equity (at least at the KS tiers) in preparation for our Lir moonshot. But nothing ventured...

I've been informed by my shipment company that the cargo should arrive by 15 May (customs clearance will take a bit too) - but as planned I am getting the watches by mid-May and can start doing last stage QC and "assembling" the straps/clasps onto the watches :P

...oh and since I've pressed go on the Equinox's physical review production now here's some more info about our upcoming diver...



Since Gaelige wouldn't fit/be useful as a bezel etching - instead I'll be using Ogham.

It made perfect sense to me - instead of having "simple" teeth - why not have it intrinsically tied to Irish too? The Ogham spells out Sólás Cónocht (Equinox). Outer bezel is in tungsten too (a massive engineering headache btw).

Some eagle eyed people spotted that the crown size was used from the Starlight's 4mm rather than 6mm - here is the correct crown size render in proportion to the case:



Much better sized now

And what the markings that go around the bezel translate as:

Seems like YT just takes its time to "unlock" the custom URL feature (might be useful info for Fitz too) - thanks for helping guys - at way over 100 subs now and still no option for the custom url (you'll actually see that on the warranty cards I gave a tinyurl address: www.tinyurl.com/solaswatches to redirect to the YT channel for the instruction e-manual).

All going well the shipments from Dublin should start next week at some point (hence me sending out the survey to backers asking for confirmation of addresses) - then I'm aiming for about 10 watches shipped out per day - so all the KS backers should be covered within 19 days+weekends when I'll have time to QC more watches but post office isn't open on Sundays.

banie01 wrote: »

I should have bloody bought 2!
Completely forgot my baby brothers 21st birthday is next month and now he has seen the watch he is trying to lay claim!
I may well be a customer at retail too TF

Ha - well the retail pre-order comes with a 100 euro discount (and a serial number too - depending what variation you get a no.2 serial is still available :pac: - and while I say September on the site - it's more likely that August would be the actual delivery date.

fat bloke wrote: »

With the easing of restrictions is a mini-meet / handover a runner? Hassle to organise and suit everyone I know but... would be nice, y'know before you get all famous and ivory towerish...

I would love to get the meet up - there is a slight issue on my part (I remember we had mentioned perhaps even doing something using the postage fees to organise an event somewhere before C19 hit). There is a Thirdfox jr (thankfully not named that) on the way - and in fact it's a very good reason why I will most certainly have the watches sent out by end of June - as such I hope it's understandable that I will be safely cocooning myself in my tungsten tower for the whole Fox family

I'd be keen to have an Equinox party in the future - and even before that hopefully boardsie meets will occur again and we'll all have a chance to meet in person.