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The kickstarter adventures of Sólás - solaswatches.com
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I don't expect YouTube reviewers to be fluent Irish speakers but you might want to inform them that Celtic has a hard "C"!! - 2 of them in fact
Let's just say if it was a "Selltic" watch I'm not sure I'd have rushed to back so.
***WARNING This Post contains linguistic pedantry***
Celtic is actually an English word, not an Irish one, and although the hard C pronunciation is now the norm, except when referring to the football team, this is a fairly modern change and both are equally correct.0 -
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@ThirdFox well done, mate, that is a cracking review.
The chap is super annoying, but he knows his onions
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Btw - one person threw me for a loop recently when they enquired if I had applied for a lottery permit for running a lottery (d'oh!) - one speedy and apologetic application to my local Superintendent later - I can confirm that I have been given permission to run the prize draw on behalf of Alone on the gofundme campaign 0
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Btw - one person threw me for a loop recently when they enquired if I had applied for a lottery permit for running a lottery (d'oh!) - one speedy and apologetic application to my local Superintendent later - I can confirm that I have been given permission to run the prize draw on behalf of Alone on the gofundme campaign
You can blame that slip on me
or This Is It!
In fairness, the 1st bit of advice I always give to prize giving fund-raising is to get the permit. I think the giveaway was my shout, and I never said about the permit...
Sorry
This is it, came up with the worthy cause
And I won't blame him :P
But ALONE's fund raising officer...
Dropped the ball!
On a serious note, it's never nice to be asked a question like that and being caught on the hop in a good deed through a simple oversight.
Delighted the Gardaí got you sorted quickly.0 -
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somebody_else wrote: »@thirsdfox
Looks like aliexpress already copied you watch (kind of):
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000717323707.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.54145e36rhRnnG&algo_pvid=258f63af-c2ae-4520-827f-e2a1c20305d4&algo_expid=258f63af-c2ae-4520-827f-e2a1c20305d4-51&btsid=0be3743615941490991903828e2b7a&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_
Quartz and every dial is exactly the same but on 1st quick look might look similar.
Tom
Hey Tom - I'm not sure that dial is aventurine or literally a "glitter dial" - and as you note on the actual specs it very different (zinc alloy case, mineral glass case, movement, bracelet vs strap, hands and indices are different too).
But the dial itself is the dial so if they went with "sparkly dial" it's not necessarily a copy. Just like the Starlight isn't a copy of say the Saxonia here:
https://www.hodinkee.com/articles/a-lange-and-sohne-saxonia-copper-blue-introducing
I think most people will be able to distinguish between buying say that $13 quartz watch, the €399 Starlight and the $22,000 Saxonia without confusing between the three of them 0 -
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Hi Thirdfox
I was just having two thoughts (ow - my head!).
First, I was wondering if you thought of contacting any radio station to discuss your watch and journey? I listen to Newstalk regularly (mostly the breakfast show), and with your background - Yu Ming Is Anim Dom, with Frank Kelly (who took part in a live Newstalk broadcast in the Marker Hotel with Ivan Yates some years back), with the journey to make this an Irish watch, and with the charity element, this could be a story that they would pick up.
Second, do you know any Americans (or other nationalities) who might post on less prolific message boards than the likes of Reddit and who could give a nod to your watch and your story? A link to this thread makes for a good read too. I've noticed one poster here on boards who is America-based, seems helpful, and may be able to give you a steer (I can PM the name).
Hey Snowy - I'm doing a lot behind the scenes (and in front) to try and advertise it aggressively now. Thanks for your suggestions - on the Irish publicity front it's something that I prefer to keep separate as my work generally requires that we keep a low profile. I would unlikely be able to get clearance to speak to Irish media (even for non-law related matters) so doing interviews would not really be possible for me due to my employment.
I've actually started Facebook and Instagram advertising now too so let's see if that helps (unhelpfully I don't have a photo of the latest version of the watch so I have to wait until July 15ish to get that from the factory). New photos will be taken and ads updated as soon as possible.
We still have Perth WAtch's review and Just The Watch's review due to come out too - hopefully when those come out it can push the numbers over 50% which makes it easier to attract new backers too.
And there are a few other things being discussed behind the scenes too. We're not giving up this easily 0 -
Just in the last 4 hours we've had 1800 seeing the ads and 41 people clicking through to the kickstarter (and potentially 2 people backing as a result of that) - so it could well have a big effect on getting funding.
Separately I am still looking at ablogtowatch too - we might be featured in the August micro monthly round up (for a substantial price of course!) but if that's the difference between getting funding or not I guess I have to believe in my project and go all in and commit 0 -
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Horoaddict wrote: »Another thought Thirdfox, I've been regularly listening to Scottish Watches podcast and they cover a lot of microbrands, have a regular podcast twice a week (recently did one with Maals watches) and have quite a big Instagram following too, the 2 guys seem really sound don't do paid reviews etc so could be another avenue to look into.
They've had Jory on a couple of times and quite involved in Redbar in the UK too.
Ooh - they are one of the people I hadn't heard of/contacted before so I'll be sure to send them a message now. I had only written to Bark and Jack previously.
I see Redbar covered an aventurine watch a couple of articles ago :
https://www.redbargroup.com/blog/2019/mm/ludovic-ballouard0 -
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Ooh - they are one of the people I hadn't heard of/contacted before so I'll be sure to send them a message now. I had only written to Bark and Jack previously.
I see Redbar covered an aventurine watch a couple of articles ago :
https://www.redbargroup.com/blog/2019/mm/ludovic-ballouard
Yeah definitely do, they do a lot with Bark and Jack and another podcast in the US called Tenn&Two. They formed a media group of the three called Hautix (May have spelt that completely wrong) and also Half Watch Tuesday on Instagram which regularly is full of Microbrands.
Theyre pretty good at replying on Instagram so definitely reach out.
I'll be buying one once I can slip it past herself!0 -
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Haha - well you can always pledge first - no charges will be made until/unless it is fully funded :P
And speaking to one backer who backed out he gave some really useful feedback - he found the three tiers of pricing to be really disheartening and making him feel like he "missed out" on the best prices... I really hadn't considered the psychological effects of having 3 tiers. I was looking at things the other way - namely:Looking at Chrono24 - the cheapest microrotor watch available new right now is $2,878:
https://www.chrono24.com/search/index.htm?dosearch=true&maxAgeInDays=0&onlyDealerAds=false&pageSize=60&priceFrom=0&priceTo=-1&query=microrotor&redirectToSearchIndex=true&sortorder=1&usedOrNew=new
And the cheapest new aventurine dialled watch is $489 (one example and then the next is a $747 microbrand):
https://www.chrono24.com/search/index.htm?dosearch=true&maxAgeInDays=0&onlyDealerAds=false&pageSize=60&priceFrom=0&priceTo=-1&query=aventurine&redirectToSearchIndex=true&sortorder=1&usedOrNew=new
So I would have thought that people would think that having both in a €399 watch is something that is almost unbelievable in terms of pricing. And it wasn't a marketing gimmick - rather out of wanting to share these normally very expensive items at almost cost price because I feel people should be able to afford "high-end" things for not so much.
But reflecting on this, I realised it is something that can put people off - the €50 between 349 to 399 matters to some people and I can understand that if a "deal" is missed - even though I think 399 is still an amazing deal...you can always get the feeling that you missed an amazing-er deal.
Looking at the budgets again one thing I can do is to remove the 399 tier and only have the limited 349 and the rest as 369 - will ask the backers to switch to that instead. With a limited 20 people on the "day one" pricing tier and the rest on 20 euro extra one would hope that this doesn't disappoint people who didn't get the 20 euro cheaper price. Looking back I probably should have just had 369 and 399 then I can't make that change now so can only move everyone not on 349 to the 369 tier. Losing those 30 euro from each watch won't put me in the red and may psychologically comfort people so they don't feel like they missed out. If it gets funded it's something I can afford I believe.0 -
Haha - well you can always pledge first - no charges will be made until/unless it is fully funded :P
And speaking to one backer who backed out he gave some really useful feedback - he found the three tiers of pricing to be really disheartening and making him feel like he "missed out" on the best prices... I really hadn't considered the psychological effects of having 3 tiers. I was looking at things the other way - namely:
But reflecting on this, I realised it is something that can put people off - the €50 between 349 to 399 matters to some people and I can understand that if a "deal" is missed - even though I think 399 is still an amazing deal...you can always get the feeling that you missed an amazing-er deal.
Looking at the budgets again one thing I can do is to remove the 399 tier and only have the limited 349 and the rest as 369 - will ask the backers to switch to that instead. With a limited 20 people on the "day one" pricing tier and the rest on 20 euro extra one would hope that this doesn't disappoint people who didn't get the 20 euro cheaper price. Looking back I probably should have just had 369 and 399 then I can't make that change now so can only move everyone not on 349 to the 369 tier. Losing those 30 euro from each watch won't put me in the red and may psychologically comfort people so they don't feel like they missed out. If it gets funded it's something I can afford I believe.
With that logic could you not stick a forth more expensive tier on and limit the 399 (a large limit but a limit none the less)?
I read those comments on YouTube and personally I think anyone who would throw the toys out of the pram over 50 quid and get annoyed about it is a tire kicker0 -
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Deleted User wrote: »A great review Thirdfox- congrats- high praise indeed.
As a novice watch owner, one point did get me in this review, around the whole guarantee/repair aspect if something goes wrong- even out of warranty (and assuming there is one), could this watch be repaired by jewellers in Ireland if something goes wrong?
There is a two year warranty if the watch is made (btw this is EU law requirement so if anyone gives you less than that you can update them on EU consumer protection law). However if it is afterwards I do plan to offer servicing in Ireland too - (which most likely would involve me sending the watch back to Guangzhou for actual servicing) - or if customers prefer a movement replacement service instead (at a lower cost than full service) with WR testing I can offer that too.
@John - Humans can be affected psychologically I think - they aren't looking at "but this is still an amazing price?!?" and more at the "but it could have been better"... I didn't fully consider having 3 tiers might make people unhappy about the offerings (I had seen three tiers before) - but it is something that a few people have picked up on (got comments like "oh there were only 20 at the good price" :rolleyes: ). When a watch is an luxury item - no matter how you look at it - you're not doing anyone a favour by offering to sell them a watch at a cheap price - it's not a public service - so they are entitled to be disappointed there were only 20 at a "good" price and 25 at a "better" price - I guess they don't regard the 549 as a "real" price (having been trained that rrp is never a real price).
I wanted to be honest and give a real rrp - something I could stand behind - so ironically people might think 399 is my actual rrp - it most certainly isn't - but how to convince a sceptical public of that?
edit: I went with a 3rd option there - I've limited the 3rd tier to 149 max backers - I think psychologically people might see "oh there's a 349 "limit" on the last tier - pfffft that's a fake limit!" (whereas actually it was a hard limit for VAT reasons) - so now I've amended the limit down to just enough to get to my funding goal - 149 units at the 3rd option - if we meet that goal then I can increase the number of people who can buy in increments back up to 349 which really is a hard limit. At least this way people looking at the page may think (from a psychological point of view) - "oh hey there's only 100 of these units left"...
An interesting learning experience on the sale side - I had thought - build a good watch and they will come...rude awakening - seems like you can build a terrible watch and have awesome advertising to sell, but you can't build a great watch and have mediocre advertising/marketing skills.
Again - I think there's time to turn this around still 0 -
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