[[email protected]]

Hi WUS, my name is Juan and I've just launched The McKinley Watch Co. Indiegogo page here.

I'm currently a product designer/manager obsessed with design and watches, and I'm looking to deliver hand assembled (in the US) fine mechanical watches with Swiss movements for every day. Exclusive campaign pricing will start at $474 (normally $599).

In addition to our in-house designs, I'm going to create a platform for budding watch designers to submit their personal designs, have the public vote for their favorite finalists, and produce/sell limited edition watches of the winning design. The designer will then receive a royalty for every watch sold.

Thoughts? Would you participate?

You can watch the campaign video here for more details but, please see below for below for some comments:

User Submitted Designs/Platform:

• I completely understand the sensitivity around sharing your personal designs/creative and I want to make clear that I have no interest in stealing anyone's intellectual property.
• I will look to create a legal framework where all designs remain confidential and property of the designer/user until the point that a winner is selected. It then becomes property of The McKinley Watch Company in exchange for royalties to the designer (5% of retail price per watch sold).
• There will be a weighted system applied to the voting. For example, a vote accompanied with a pre-order for that design will be weighed more heavily that a simple single vote.

Our in-house designs:

• Our watches will be hand assembled in Mentor Ohio by The Wiegand Custom Watch Co. (LÜM-TEC being their showcase brand).
• For now, we're only using Swiss mechanical movements from ETA and Sellita.
• Our initial 3 designs definitely have a vintage aesthetic but, we hope to produce a variety of styles in the future.

I'm extremely curious to see what how the watch community feels about this concept. The truth is, I've seen so much creativity in the watch communities online and thought this would be a great way to bring some cool designs to life. And since I don't see this type of engagement from the big brands, I figured why wait for someone else to do it?

Thanks for reading and for your feedback!
-Juan

 

[JSnipes]

Yep and I wish you luck on your endeavor.

 

[Mediocre]

Very interesting, looking forward to where this goes

 

[Elyscape]

With the big caveat that I am not a lawyer, this idea seems very risky for you. If someone submits a design that you don’t use, but then you later launch a design that has some similar attributes, there’s potentially an avenue there for a lawsuit claiming infringement. Mitigating that risk would require either intensely siloing information and roles regarding design submissions from those regarding internal designs, or legal terms in the submission process that designers would likely view as unfavorable. It’s an interesting concept, but I don’t know that it’s one that can actually come to fruition.

 

[gangrel]

With the big caveat that I am not a lawyer, this idea seems very risky for you. If someone submits a design that you don't use, but then you later launch a design that has some similar attributes, there's potentially an avenue there for a lawsuit claiming infringement. Mitigating that risk would require either intensely siloing information and roles regarding design submissions from those regarding internal designs, or legal terms in the submission process that designers would likely view as unfavorable. It's an interesting concept, but I don't know that it's one that can actually come to fruition.

I think there may be cause for concern, but the user submissions would need to be established as copyrighted or trademarked. By and large, you can't trademark most look and feel characterizations. There are cases where you can, such as the custom-defined font on the Slim d'Hermes, created for that watch. You may be able to enforce a combination of distinctive elements like the AP Royal Oak but that's not common, and not easy to pull off. Heck, just look at all the copycat watches are out there.

 

[[email protected]]

Thanks all! I've really tried to think through all the possible scenarios/issues that might arise but at the end of the day, to gangrels's point, ultimately it comes down to what is legally permissible. I'll do anything to try and convince folks that I don't have any interest in stealing their designs but unfortunately, I don't think there's any way to 100% prove that I didn't steal anything. I know that I'll run my business with integrity (just like I have throughout my entire career) but, it'll be hard to convince the everyone/cynics.

We plan on keeping everyone's designs confidential and property of the designer up to the point where it get's shortlisted for voting. It would then have to be posted publicly for everyone to vote on it - designers will have to agree to post it publicly for voting.

If and when their design wins the popular vote, then the design would become the property of the company in exchange for royalties to the designer. I've budgeted funds in the campaign for legal/intellectual property counsel and drafting of a solid legal document, it will be critical to have all participants agree to our final terms/conditions to protect all parties involved.

At the end of the day, if someone submits a Rolex sub knockoff and we release a diver that might be in the same vein, they can't claim we stole their design! A Rolex knock-off wouldn't make it past our initial internal review anyway.

Ugh - the idea of homages and "inspired by" watches are such a slippery slope... 🤦

 

[Ajaccio]

Hi Juan,

I've just checked your Indiegogo campaign.
I've some comments.

- You ask for US$220,000, which is quite a high bar to pass. The risk is important that you won't reach it. Why not target a more reasonable amount ?

- You don't even have one single prototype to show. Only CGI pictures. It's better than a simple hand-drawing of a watch on a piece of paper, but not much. Having a prototype made doesn't cost thousands of $. And it shows that you invested a minimum into this project

- The fact that you only have 3 backers so far seems to show that you didn't prepare your pre-launch campaign enough. When you launch a KS or IGG campaign, you should already have a couple hundreds people that you know will want to buy your product

- Your Perks are rather strange... Out of the 5 possible perks, only one is a watch, with a price of $ 799 USD. However, in your campaign text, you write :
"with exclusive campaign pricing starting at $474 (normally $599)."
Did I miss something ? Where are the $474 watches ?
(Edit) : Oh, OK, the $474 is for the Archer. But you have to scroll quite a bit to understand this. And it's only a stretched goal...

- It seems that even the pictures of the straps are CGI. Why not get real watch straps ?

- Stretched goals at $390,000 and $495,000. You are optimistic...
It means that you consider that it will only be worth producing the Ogden if you have $170,000 more sales of the Slylark (above the initial target of $220,000). And I'm not even going into the $495,000 for the Archer, which is the cheapest of the 3 watches.


So, good luck with your campaign, but I'm really not super optimistic with the outcome...

 

[[email protected]]

Thanks Ajaccio for checking us out and for the comments, much appreciated!

For me, it was important to have these hand-assembled by established, professional watch makers in the US and there is, obviously, a premium for that. This might not appeal to all but, I do think there will be some who appreciate this aspect of the watch. Add in rear and front sapphire, custom case and hands, tooling costs, shipping, etc, costs do add up quickly.

Regarding the goal of $220k and stretch goals, it’s purely a function of the movements we’ve selected and production MOQs. I can assure you that no one is getting rich off of this goal. It was important to me to use mechanical movements - we didn’t have to but, it fit with our mission of trying to make unique, hand-assembled, mechanical (Swiss watches) for under $1,000. Each watch has its own MOQ so that is why you see large jumps in stretch goals.

Most of that money is for materials and production costs. Part of those funds would also go to the expenses needed to bring out user submitted platform to life. Legal, web development, creative, etc. And once Indiegogo takes their cut and you pay your taxes, I am basically just looking to cover my costs.

Prototypes require tooling to be cut which, in fact, does cost thousands of dollars. As this is a passion project and, I have already invested thousands of dollars and hours into this project, I’ve decided not to invest additional money into prototypes. And actually, this is the reason why I’m not on Kickstarter and am on Indiegogo, Indiegogo does not require a working prototype. Same thing with our straps, all would be custom colors and require additional investment.

I completely understand that photographs of actual product/prototypes are much more impactful than renderings but, at this stage in my life, this is what I have budgeted for this project. I’m using this campaign as a way to test this concept (user-submitted designs) and our in-house watches.

This has definitely been a passion project, something that I’ve worked on because I loved it. I don’t think I could ever be properly compensated for the years of late nights and long hours of designing, teaching myself the entire Adobe Creative Suite, primary and secondary research, taking the subway from Hong Kong to Shenzhen early on to meet with vendors (who I ended up not using), etc, etc, etc and I don’t care.

I gladly did it because I fell in love with watches, I enjoyed the process, and I was driven to bring this passion project to life. In the end, it may not get funded – and that’s ok. I just never wanted to look back and regret not trying.

 

[gangrel]

I have to agree with Ajaccio. $220K has no chance of being met with the perks you've got.

I've backed...geeze, 5 watches now on KS. My Solas Starlight should arrive tomorrow. Of note: this one failed to be funded initially, in part because of inadequate publicity. There were some articles...but didn't mesh well with the release. You've got no publicity. So the campaign was delayed until better prep was completed, and was successfully funded the second time around.

I understand this is a passion project for you, but there's an old saying: your desire to have it, does not mean I desire to produce it for you. Here, what I see is a project a good 3-4 steps away from an IGG offering, and even a business that hasn't identified a model for itself. Sorry, but that's what I'm seeing.

BTW: the 2893...feels like a very poor choice, simply because it's too high for your market positioning. And starting with a GMT...the others aren't on offer until you hit stretch goals...feels quite wrong as well. A GMT rounds out a stable of offerings, IMO it shouldn't be your first offering.

 

[tx6309]

I'd be more interested if you plan some smaller (no date) quartz watches.

 

[[email protected]]

I have to agree with Ajaccio. $220K has no chance of being met with the perks you've got.

I've backed...geeze, 5 watches now on KS. My Solas Starlight should arrive tomorrow. Of note: this one failed to be funded initially, in part because of inadequate publicity. There were some articles...but didn't mesh well with the release. You've got no publicity. So the campaign was delayed until better prep was completed, and was successfully funded the second time around.

I understand this is a passion project for you, but there's an old saying: your desire to have it, does not mean I desire to produce it for you. Here, what I see is a project a good 3-4 steps away from an IGG offering, and even a business that hasn't identified a model for itself. Sorry, but that's what I'm seeing.

BTW: the 2893...feels like a very poor choice, simply because it's too high for your market positioning. And starting with a GMT...the others aren't on offer until you hit stretch goals...feels quite wrong as well. A GMT rounds out a stable of offerings, IMO it shouldn't be your first offering.

Appreciate the feedback gangrel. The challenge with not having physical prototypes is that, it makes it difficult to reach out to reviewers/content creators since they have nothing physical to talk about. Physical prototypes require investment ($5k+) in tooling which, I wasn't in the position to invest and that's why I'm going the Indiegogo route (they don't require physical prototype).

This is definitely a passion project, something different that I wasn't seeing in other campaigns. I wanted higher quality materials and components in sub $1k price point. There's plenty of other campaigns offering quartz options and less expensive materials/production methods but, I wanted to see if there was an appetite for something else.

Again, maybe it'll fail and that's fine. I've learned a lot along the way and it's allowed me to spend hundreds of hours working on watches and design (dial, logos, typography, etc). Thankfully I have a day job/career that will allows me the ability to work on passion projects, I'll take these learnings and apply them to future projects!

 

[Ajaccio]

"Physical prototypes require investment ($5k+) in tooling" ??
I don't know about mechanical movements, but from my experience, having a custom prototype made with an existing quartz mvt is less than $500

 

[6R15]

No offense, but any Indiegogo or Kickstarter watch startup in my opinion is a cancer to the watch community. You don't have the money or a solid plan that would get a bank to loan you the funds, so you ask for crowdfunding. You don't have the design experience or time to hire a designer, so you outsource the work and pay with the money you crowdsourced. You can't even choose, so you have people vote on the design. Everything about this is just lazy and scummy.

 

[c3p0]

No offense, but any Indiegogo or Kickstarter watch startup in my opinion is a cancer to the watch community. You don't have the money or a solid plan that would get a bank to loan you the funds, so you ask for crowdfunding. You don't have the design experience or time to hire a designer, so you outsource the work and pay with the money you crowdsourced. You can't even choose, so you have people vote on the design. Everything about this is just lazy and scummy.

Sure. Tell that to Breguet.

Dress Watch Desperados Present: Giveaway Competition...

Inspired by @Mediocre 's giveaway that successfully ended yesterday (see thread), I decided to start one of my own. Although under the auspices of the Dress Watch Desperados, these particular items may not be true dress, or even dressy watches. Nonetheless, they did serve me well and provided...

www.watchuseek.com

 

[Cptam]

I think voting part is quite nice idea actually, as it is as well telling the designers if their idea is well perceived or not, additionally it is great for users engagement and at the end you can think about some coupons for those ones who were voting for the winning project.