The kickstarter adventures of Sólás - solaswatches.com

Just an update on the 2nd reviewer to have received the watch - interesting that he mentioned how hard it is to take a good (i.e. representative) photo of the aventurine dial:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CBGk58rHxFf/

Contrary to when you see a photo taken with the flash on - it really isn't "blingy" like diamonds all across the dial. Instead it's a subtle shimmer in almost all cases. He makes a good point about direct flash hiding the hands too - I'm sure in the video review it will show that the hands are highly visible and provides a good contrast to the dial (which doesn't look brilliant blue like in his second photo unless in very strong light (direct sunlight or if a camera flash hits it in the right angle).

Funny that I chose such a hard material to photograph for the first dial on the watches

challengemaster wrote: »

I think you may actually lose people solely because of launching it on kickstarter. I certainly won't be the only one out there to have backed something before and have the person do a runner with the money, and for nothing to ever materialize out of the campaign. Turns out you have zero comeback if this happens, kickstarter are under no obligation to do anything either.

I don't think I've backed anything since then, and that would have been 4+ years ago now. Even with a lot of campaigns I backed that did turn out, it just hasn't sat very well with me regarding the platform.

Don't get me wrong, in no way am I accusing anyone here of similar shenanigans - you're pretty well known on boards, the Alone gofundme and Dev's blessing also count for a lot (on here anyway). But I don't doubt the lack of security around a platform like kickstarter will stop some from backing the project.

And I still remember you from the time back on the photography forum too

The whole thing only came about from the opportunity that kickstarter gives to creators - otherwise I'd need to convince my family/a bank/VC angel investor to spot me 100-200,000 euro on an idea, that if it doesn't work out, may lead to me losing my house or something.

So yeah - Kickstarter has horror stories of nothing materialising at the end of the funding period and that's the risk that people have to take - you should always make sure to ask the person behind the business what their business plan is and see if they have covered their bases sufficiently.

In return - you get to have direct almost 1 to 1 contact with a brand and potentially heavy influence on what is made/decided on. And of course it does mean that with the smaller scale operations costs can be less if I don't need a warehouse to keep unsold stock, employees, etc. - balanced against economies of scale of say companies that make 10,000-100,000 watches a year.

If my business plan involved "I'm building this watch and for my first act I'll need to buy this Ferrari" - I'd be concerned too - in that case I'd probably be better starting a religion and asking people to send me "televangelist seed money" (it's a real thing apparently :mad:):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y1xJAVZxXg

So - if it wasn't for Kickstarter - this project wouldn't have been made - and it'll be up to folks to decide if this project is worth taking a risk on.

Not going to lie - while I think I have my business head screwed on right and have left myself comfortable space/backup if some things go wrong - you can only have so many plan B, C, Ds (and to be honest I'd only have planned up to plan C currently - if 3 factories fail to deliver in a row I'm not sure I could conjure up a plan D) - so it's not impossible that nothing materialises from this project either at the end but I can only promise that I'd be absolutely clear with all backers whats happening with the project. You can't expect the unexpected - that's an oxymoron - but you can use some business sense and try and anticipate some expected setbacks and cost accordingly.

Though - if I just wanted to scam people then all bets are off - I wouldn't need to go through such an elaborate scam just to make a relatively small amount though, plus I've put my name out there so people can look up where I'm working - lawyers need integrity (despite the jokes). I'm thinking more likely that for this project if nothing gets delivered at the end it would solely be because something catastrophic has happened with the business plan and not because I did a runner with everyone's money - and hopefully that kind of scenario would be a big enough iceberg that could be spotted and navigated around in time.

And I would always encourage people to do sufficient due diligence into any kickstarter campaign - I backed Hamtun H2's campaign after seeing the H1 mostly working out. If someone was advertising a similar watch to this for €100 on KS I'd be pretty wary of their costings and if they could ever hope to delivery on that promise.

If a project creator has their project thought out correctly they wouldn't hesitate to answer reasonable questions - if they hadn't thought about a particular issue that would be slightly concerning! :P

They most definitely didn't get all of those 3 million anyway - straight off Kickstarter will take 8.0001% - so that's a nice edit: chunk of change for them from this project.

And as for being featured... I could have been "featured" on ablogtowatch if I wanted to - doesn't mean that my watch wouldn't be terrible (or even an imaginary proof of concept idea). From experience you really do need to check if those "features" are actual review/analysis or just a paid advertorial. And that's not fair to ablogtowatch either - maybe they do QC check their advertorials too - so they won't review absolute awful watches - but even if you have something that appeals to many of these youtube channels/blogs etc. you'll need to pay to get featured.

Maybe for Sólás 3 I'll stump up the 5k to get on ablogtowatch or Hodinkee etc. - but currently there is absolutely no budget for that. And it's sad in a way because while I think I've built an "honest" watch that people would like, I still find it slightly weird to pay for editorials. Maybe I'll just do a watchuseek ad or something like that - that seems more honest to me but advertorials appeal because they seemingly work on people. #Lawyers with a conscience :pac:

So maybe it's not so bad if you have a good product and get an advertorial? Not like those MVMT etc.

If you look a few pages back you'll see I've contacted reviewers and are only using reviewers that are getting "paid" in return/onward postage paid - so people will give their honest opinions. So when I put up on my kickstarter that I'm "featured" on X/Y/Z I can honestly say "unpaid reviews" from X/Y/Z. If I wanted to be "featured" on the top watch sites/channels it might have costed me a few tens of thousands of dollars and the Starlight's price would need to be bumped up further.

^ this all relates to the 3 million btw - when I see that project being featured on so many rather big name companies I'm thinking they probably had a 50-100k advertising budget. And depends on did they actually produce prototypes - though I don't know about cost of adapters... so maybe 120k cost to raise 3 million - but front loaded with that 50-100k of advertising cost.

It's one big thing I'll need to look at in the future - of course you need to have a good product, but perhaps having a 5-10k advertising budget is important vs. 500-750 budget for the Starlight (which is spent on posting to reviewers). Maybe one ablogtowatch/Hodinkee feature is worth X number of sales... For me though - it's concentrating about building a good watch first and foremost - though I realise to succeed you need to be very considerate of the business end of things too.

redlead wrote: »

I think there are probably different scales of paid reviews in terms of the degree of trust people have for them. The bottom tier is the "influencers" who the likes of MVMT or DW use who will shout at the screen and tell you the watch is better than a Patek bla bla bla. Obviously no one in your target is going to take note of those.

The next is your watch guy paid review who will generally present the watch for you without really giving an actual review. It's probably not the worst way of getting awareness out there because people into watches know what the deal is.

The next is the full on paid review with affiliate links and all that. These are the ones I am most sceptical of. Classic example is just one more watch. To be fair to Jody, he seems to give mostly honest reviews but there is an element that the success of the channel is largely based off getting people to buy homage ****ters and that doesn't rest easy with me. There seems to be a cult like following of his channel which really does lead to sales. I know a couple of people who think what he says is gospel and have bought a few watches off his affiliated reviews. These are otherwise streetwise buyers, so I can't get my head around it. I don't know what he charges and with your limited number the economics probably wouldn't make sense, but getting your watch featured there would definitely lead to plenty of sales which ultimately is the end goal.

I have one question on the watch which is unrelated to the above if you don't mind. I'm intrigued by the micro rotor movement. As you say, these are usually in much more expensive watches so I've been trying to find examples of other watches that are using the same Hangzhou movement because presumably no high end manufacturer is using a Hangzhou movement. The reason is, I'd be interested to see a review of the durability and effectiveness of the rotor itself on other watches that have used this. I'm struggling to find any. Is it a relatively new movement?

Thanks for that in-depth post - it's definitely something to look into more for the future. I may be too conservative in my thinking ("people will want to cover this novel/interesting thing purely because it's novel/interesting") - but...people need to eat too.

Onto your question about the movement - it's not a new movement - they've had it for a 3-5 years now - but from speaking to PTS (who are minority stakeholders in Hangzhou) the reason they haven't had huge demand for this movement is mainly due to the cost of the movement. While it doesn't compare to an ETA/Sellita movement it is a big step above the Seiko NH35s that are found in quite a few affordables.

I would presume that microbrands who are looking at making "expensive" affordables would rather go with the tried and tested 2824/sw-200 rather than take a chance on a Chinese movement (might be easier to advertise too with a Swiss movement).

So - yeah in a way we're all taking a bit of a leap into the unknown slightly - PTS has Chinese customers who buy the movement though. I think the Starlight will be the first non-Chinese model to use the movement ever (so that's something special/scary depending on how you look at it).

Because of the cost of the movement it's why I paired it with Aventurine too - adds some further value to the watch.

I suspect if another profit orientated microbrand was using this movement in their watch they couldn't offer it at €399 - and if they were trying to offer it at €699 they might be worried the market would be sceptical of a Chinese movement at this price tier. Safer to offer an ETA instead. For other brands they may need to treat it as their primary source of income so can't "risk it all" on an unknown. I have the luxury of treating this as a project that I don't need to make money on.

It's also why I got tired of waiting for one to come out and decided to try and do it myself - hopefully there's a "first to market" reward for this

I would suspect you'll see more watches with this movement coming out if it turns out it worked out for Sólás. Not sure they could offer it at this price though - perhaps without aventurine (which ha - some people may prefer!) and other "nice to haves" such as a high quality leather strap, QR springbars, special deployant etc. - cutting pennies and dollars away will result in adequate profit to survive on...


TLDR: - I think it's easier to make a profit on other movements. So logical businesses would choose most profitable option. I wanted a microrotor watch and decided to get one made and to hell with profits :pac:

Nylah Red Pope wrote: »

That first strap...is...well....interesting.

Thirdfox....when is the kickstarter starting?

Plan is 1 August - 30 August.

893bet wrote: »

Best photos I have seen so far and they are only ok.

I suggest you engage a pro or semi pro to take some pictures. Worth the investment.

Decent photos will sell the watch for the Kickstarter.

Let's see if there's time for that once the review pieces come back from their round the world trip.

What kind of photos were you thinking of when it comes to pro-photos? Examples would be really appreciated.

And with the first review (not to say I'm surprised) come the first "but it's not realllly Irish" comments (in fact I had sent on an info FAQ pack to reviewers which addressed this "how Irish am I" question) - it played a part in me deciding that I needed to emphasise my Yu Ming background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9vcE2rf0f4

I asked the channel owner to recommend the McGonigle to someone who wanted an Irish movement in a €399 watch :pac:

banie01 wrote: »

Very positive review IMO, great to see the plug for ALONE too.
I hope the rest of the reviewer feedback is as positive!
Having read the comments there does seem to be a lot of really positive vibes towards this, and there's always one whingey asshole :P
I'm bloody delighted to see this getting some wider traction, well done TF!

Ah yeah - the charity shoutout was great - drew in a few more donations too on that front the SoK version should be ready mid-July so hopefully once that comes in we can do another mini-advertising push on Alone's social media once they have the actual watch photos to show.

And I was ready for the "but he's not really Irish" comments - I was just taking precautions trying to head it off in case people thought I was disingenuous about my background "Dónal McBhú".

Once lockdown is all over hopefully we can do a watch meet up and I'll have to tell you about surprising a south Georgian (US) gentleman when he met a Chinese looking Irish fella doing a year's study in the US - who doesn't drink (I got a handshake from him out of that...I'll tell you the punchline in person).