Steve & I were in Shanghai last year and recounted one of the many occasions when we feared we were staring at impending disaster. Thankfully, on this occasion, it turned into a massive opportunity.
I saw the opportunity first (well, the engineer did!). But once Steve understood what I was talking about and the implications for SNGLRTY he became very excited. That realization, how we could make SNGLRTY truly singular, and what a massive opportunity it was for us was a rush. We were not only going to help people to #seetimedifferently but also introduce many more people to individually configured watches, a truly singular experience.
Here is The Story
Steve:
Do you know the interesting thing about SNGLRTY?
When we started, it was all about how we would display the time.
It was about one hand.
It was about the movement of the minutes against the hour hand.
It was all about that presentation of time.
But I remember the phone call where that changed.
I received this strange phone call from Daniel.
It was a bizarre call initially; Daniel was a bit frenetic.
Daniel started off with, “I didn’t realize, I went and talked to the engineers today, and we’ve got to redesign the watch face.“
And I remember, I remember exactly where I was.
I was walking up some steps in a very hot and sweaty Hong Kong.
I was thinking to myself, “what do you mean we have to redesign the watch face?“
Daniel was not going to be stopped.
“It’s amazing; it’s absolutely amazing. We have to take the watch face apart because if we use the standard watch face, it’s not going to work.“
And all I could think was, “Oh dear.”
I felt it was one of those moments.
My heart sank, and I thought, “ah, another hurdle to get over.“
And I said, “Okay, well, let’s talk about it tomorrow.“
But Daniel kept going, “But no! No, this is a good thing!“
Daniel:
It’s true. I had forgotten that.
The thing was, exactly, that the dial could not be one piece.
Because the minutes are rotating, the outer part is the hours.
The hour disc cannot be linked to the center, and that is where the dial is typically fixed.
And secondly, I realized that the SNGLRTY dial has four parts.
Four sections, this is a diamond in the rough.
This is fantastic because it allows us to do hundreds and even thousands of possibilities out of a couple of colors.
And it allows us to offer to our customers, to our buyers, to our fans a watch that is singularly theirs.
They really can create their own watch, and it is not that challenging for us logistically.
Because they can choose the hours.
Choose the color of the hours, and they can choose the minutes, the center, and the seconds center color.
We have two hands to choose from in different colors.
We have luminous colors as well.
So besides the unique, some say the singular way we present time.
Besides seeing time differently with the backward rotating minutes.
We have a third point which is absolutely unique.
