Possibly interesting observation, about the Legends...
When I talk to John Keil, my marketing guy Josh, other brand owners, and my business growth coach, John Tooher, we often talk about how to grow market awareness beyond the niche of the hard-core watch enthusiasts. Within those discussions, we talk about the difference between enthusiasts' tastes and what the more mainstream market seems to prefer.
When Rusty attended the last session of Microbrand University, he had his Legends with him. Marketing guy Josh and coach Tooher aren't hard-core enthusiasts. They both flipped for the Legends, as did one of the other guys attending the course with Rusty.
We had a group dinner we held for the course participants and instructors. I was sitting across from a guy struggling to launch his brand with a model that presented pretty good "bang for the buck", at least on paper, and seemed like it checked a lot of enthusiasts' boxes - "Swiss Made", beautifully finished, restrained design, lots of nice features for the price, etc.
Ultimately, I felt he was struggling to launch because the design was a bit boring. It seemed like he had more passion for owning a microbrad than he did for creating the product the brand would sell, which was reflected in the promotion he was doing, which was a bit lacking, and generic.
Rather than bluntly telling him that, I showed his watch to Tooher and the other guy who flipped for the Legends, and asked which watch they'd prefer. I made sure to tell them the guy's watch was Swiss Made.
Both said the Legends. I asked which watch they'd be willing to pay more for, and they both said the Legends. I asked how much they'd be willing to pay, and they both said much more than what we actually wanted to charge for the Legends.
Neither of them asked about the movement, components, or specs of either watch. They didn't ask the price of either watch, so they didn't sit and ponder the bang for the buck. Their reactions were purely driven by desire for the design, and if they were able buy a Legends, it would have been a purely emotional purchase.
All that said, I wanted to point out to all of them that the Legends never made it to production, and explain why.
With everything we do, I try to be as objective as possible about why it works or doesn't. With the Legends, the dial layout and case shape limited our movement choices. The widely un-loved Miyota 82xx was really the only viable option. With all the other costly features - 10 ATM WR, "windshield' curved box sapphire crystal, rally strap, curved caseback - the price needed to be $450, which seemed like a lot for a watch with a Miyota 82 series inside, especially in 2014.
We started pre-orders well under that, I think around $300 or $325. Yet even at that price, we were only able to sell about 100 of them, almost exclusively to enthusiasts, many of whom were repeat customers - brand loyalists. Even on Kickstarter, which was becoming saturated with watch projects by then, we just weren't able to get it in front of enough of the right people.
Two years after starting sales on the Riccardo, and having since used much of the revenue from producing one model to produce the next - the Acionna, Spectre, Cerberus, and Orthos - I realized I needed to tighten up my decisions about what to produce, and how to finance production. I'd been way too optimistic and aggressive to that point. Those 100 we sold just weren't enough to rationalize the production of 300 pieces.
The Legends is the only design we worked hard to create, yet never produced beyond the 4 prototypes. It was a turning point for me, and the business. It stands out as a case study in understanding the importance of creating designs based on knowing your market, timing, rationalizing production, knowing when to walk away, etc.
I don't think it was a bad design, at all. I just think it was a bad fit for the market we were targeting, and the customer base we'd built by that time. It was over-spec'd, forcing us to make it over-priced for our market, given the movement we were using, which was the weakest link - too weak, in hindsight.
After failing to launch the Legends, we came back strong with the Phantom, then launched NTH even stronger with the 40mm Subs, both of which catered much more to enthusiasts' tastes.