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The kickstarter adventures of Sólás - solaswatches.com
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Shamrock92 wrote: »Lucky few people.
I have to say, I'm blown away by your vision. I very much agree with your idea of special dials. It's the part that sells a watch to me. It's what I have to look at everyday, and something beyond a brass plate certainly speaks to me.
If you ever need help 'testing' a watch at 40,000ft, just shout
I'm very much on board. It's great to see such vision for an Irish watch brand.
Airline pilot?
Funny you should mention 40,000ft - there are plans to do testing at 100-120,000ft too (but that wasn't public knowledge…until now
).
But that's looking a little too far ahead. Concentrating on the Starlight right now
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I can't wait to see how that test looksAirline pilot?
Funny you should mention 40,000ft - there are plans to do testing at 100-120,000ft too (but that wasn't public knowledge…until now ).
But that's looking a little too far ahead. Concentrating on the Starlight right now
But seriously, great work and looking forward to what's to come.0 -
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Sinn do some great cases and bracelets - I think if I'm going for a super clasp I'll go for one of the top ones and hopefully then it can be something that I'll be able to use across the range going forward (for bracelets anyway) - it's something that I've designed for Sólás too - so while the tech is glidelock the design certainly won't be.
In order to not deal with factories that may be making fakes (sadly most of the factories which are currently making glidelock clasps are adding on the crown emblem) I plan to work with a factory which hasn't made this type of clasp before to ensure I'm working with legitimate suppliers. Afterwards - to ensure they won't just add a crown emblem onto the clasp I have made my own design which means the moulds will only be used to make Sólás clasps and can't be repurposed for other brands.
I think this is a good way to show that yes we'll take on board anything that can be done legally (expired patented tech) while leaving the homaging for others. Use the tech, not the design 0 -
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Great to see the numbers on kickstarter rising steadily - up to 550 now, you must be happy with that TF?
Indeedy - I had said that I would have launched at 600 and I think by Oct 15 and with another 12 reviews to come we should be at that number.
The way I've looked at it is - there are around 80-100 people who were at the previous launch and have carried over - they are quite likely to back again.
From my previous launch I saw about a 20% conversion rate from follower to backer - so taking out 100 followers of the carried over launch if I there were 600 followers it would be 500 (less previous backers) and a 20% conversion rate would get around 100 backers. At around 200 backers this would be enough to go ahead with the project and get the watches made. Of course I would hope for more backers than that but with a make or break first attempt I do want to play it as safe as possible (in terms of achieving the funding goal).
Don't have funds to attempt this again if it doesn't work out so it's all or nothing come Oct 15-31 0 -
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Hey TF,
Just want to drop a note and wish you all the very best and honestly every success with the new relaunch plan.
The watch and the effort you have put in deserve every success.
Your openness and responsiveness are a thing rarely seen in what is after all a personal vision.
Apologies again for my moments of tetchiness and over sensitivity at times on this thread, my ego likes to think I'm far more important than I actually am :P
Will have everything possible crossed for you for the KS launch and it's successful funding.Very well said banie01, agree with you and wishing TF every success and I'm looking forward to one of the watches on my wrist .
Thanks guys - just being realistic - sometimes things don't work out in the end. ...having said that getting another 49 followers (and ultimately hopefully at least 200, ideally 300+ backers) should be quite do-able with 12 more reviews on the way.
Definitely starting to get butterflies now - because despite all the planning/calculations etc. you still never know what might happen on the day.
But as of today - it's t-minus 30 days to launch.
Here are some of the dials in uncut form already in the factory ready to be processed:
Oh and Banie - don't worry about it - I've been trying to practise what I said about positive interpretations too and it's helpful (as long as I remember to do it!)0 -
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Very - to make the 14 review units we had 3 cracked dials. The possibility of a crack appearing increases as the number of holes drilled into it increases.
Maybe that's why H Moser only drilled 2 holes into theirs :P :
For the Starlight we're drilling 27 holes into the dial - so we will get quite a few cracked dials.0 -
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Did you look into casting them with the holes already in the moulds? I think that's what AnOrdain do with their enamel dialsIn my work, we use a lot of ceramic and zirconia. When you want something very thin, we generally cast or mill it thick, drill the holes and then lap it down to thickness, the yield is much higher
Good ideas - the problem with that is you guys may be thinking of the wonderful world of Swiss in-house manufacturing where the elves are casting and moulding and drilling all close to one another and for mutual benefit :pac: .
Here as the dial material supplier is different to the dial finisher/indice installer there isn't that sort of vertical integration that we can control each and every aspect of operations unfortunately. The ideas do sound good and I'll definitely raise it but it could be a case of the dial supplier thinking (thicker dial means more cost to me) and dial finisher thinking (I don't want to need to train our technician on a different procedure vs just drilling as carefully as possible and taking acceptable (to them) losses). That's all presupposing what they are thinking but it's just an example of how sub-contractors may prefer to do things.
From my perspective - I've paid an agreed price - so it doesn't affect my bottom line as we get the delivery of the agreed dials, in agreed quality and by the agreed time - any savings won't be passed onto me (though I certainly don't want any more wastage than necessary) - it could even be that they figure that the thicker dial and lapping down wastes more material overall than cracking (potentially they can ship back the cracked dials and reform them into new dials)? Glass and copper both sound like things that can be recycled... lapping into fine ground dust may lose more material than having a few cracked dials getting shipped back to the materials factory. 0 -
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Hey Shamrock - these ones will all be "céad eagrán" engraved rather than numbered - numbering is one other thing that can go wrong as often people will request certain numbers or change orders/add to pledge etc. that throws which backer gets which number out of sync - I'm still trying to think of a robust way to deal with requests and number allocation for when we start offering numbering.
When it goes to serial production afterwards at a retail price there will be more options available along with numbering (not limited editions but rather sequential numbering).
There however won't be any céad eagrán Sólás watches (ever again potentially as I'm not certain I'll be bringing this back for subsequent models) - so who knows - maybe these CE models will be more "valuable" in due course (please don't regard microbrand watches as investments though - almost no-one can match Rolex on that front and that might be/is a bubble too
). This will be the model that (hopefully) kickstarts Sólás into being. 0 -
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Shamrock92 wrote: »Very much looking forward to what's next. A GMT would go down well Just sayin'
A GMT isn't actually on the roadmap currently - the head says I should switch over to Swiss movements if I want to convince people to back higher priced (and valued) pieces in the future but I really want to show people that Chinese movements have great potential too and not just in fakes.
Some of the new ideas involve a degree of mechanical engineering that even got my wife pretty excited as far as novel/useful concepts go.
Grounded on Starlight currently still - the first big batch of review units should arrive at reviewers' doors tomorrow 0 -
These cases a very simple (and cheap!) but it's what they represent that is interesting hopefully...
These are tester cases for some movements being analysed for long term stability. Expect to see the movements in a Sólás watch model in 2022 if they pass all tests.
With Sólás I currently have a long term roadmap looking five years into the future. So the Starlight is step one of that 5 year plan.
As stated in interviews - the ultimate goal for Sólás is to build an affordable minute repeater watch as a microbrand. Each step forwards we can take gets us closer to that goal.
...I asked my partner to produce the cheapest possible cases and dials/hands - as this is being used purely to test the movements first hand over 1.5 years - so it's a mineral crystal, 3ATM, simple hands almost no dial - I did spend a little extra to get Sólás printed on the inside of the crystal though
At least it represents a long term commitment to the brand and its ideals - interesting, affordable, different, desirable and definitely not primarily profit driven.0 -
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