Lonely Wrist: All Things Watches & Horology
Lonely Wrist dives deep into the intricate world of watches, unearthing the stories, craft, and passion behind every ticking piece. From timeless classics to modern marvels, this podcast winds through the history, mechanics, and cultural significance of timepieces. Whether you're an avid horologist or just someone who admires the beauty of a well-crafted watch, Lonely Wrist offers a unique perspective, uniting enthusiasts and curious minds. Join us every episode as we explore the art of watchmaking, discuss the latest trends, and interview watch industry experts, all while appreciating the silent yet profound voice of every watch's lonely wrist.
Lonely Wrist: All Things Watches & Horology
AnOrdain & Paulin's Lewis Heath walks us through Artistry and Creativity in Watch Design.
Imagine taking a serene stroll by a Scottish lochan and stumbling upon the inspiration to craft timepieces that intertwine local artisanship with the elegance of enamel dials. Our guest, Lewis Heath of Anordain and Paulin Watches, did just that, transforming a vision into meticulously crafted watches that challenge the luxury market's status quo. Join us as Lewis recounts the birth of Anordain in the tranquil Highlands and how an art school graduate's dedication led to the mastery of enameling, encapsulating the true spirit of bespoke watch creation.
Watches are more than timekeepers; they're storytellers and companions in our daily lives. In this episode, we delve into the playful world of Paulin Watches and how they infuse whimsy into the routine of time-checking. We also examine AnOrdain's approach to creating mesmerizing pieces without the hefty price tag, bringing luxury within reach. Discover the innovation that goes into designing versatile cases that embrace various movement types, and revel in the joy of hidden visual treasures tucked away in minute markers.
Navigating the intricacies of watchmaking, we uncover the less discussed challenges of the craft, from the health hazards in enamel production to the complexities of logistics and manufacturing. We ponder the possibility of in-house movement production and share an anecdote that may make you view the after-sales service of luxury brands in a new light. Strap on your horological curiosity; we're unwinding watch design with Lewis Heath, where every watch is a testament to dedication and passion.
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Welcome everybody to another episode of Lonely Wrist. Today a very, very, very special guest, mr Lewis Heath from Anordane in Pollen Watches. What's up, lewis?
Lewis Heath:Thanks, blake, nice to be here. I'm on Vegas. I'm on Vegas, I should say I'm in the Highlands.
Blake Rea:It looks like you're in a cabin somewhere right now, I mean it's sauna actually, so it was.
Lewis Heath:The kids are in the house. Obviously the kids live in the house as well, but they um, it's, yeah, it's eight o'clock in the evening and they're all just messing around and making a noise. So I came up here, so I'm in a little uh, little, oh yeah, just that's a good little spot.
Blake Rea:Hopefully you're not cooking in there, right?
Lewis Heath:now no, no, there are no fire ones, so we're good yeah.
Blake Rea:So let's start in. This is going to be a challenging one for us, because I've never done like two brands at one time.
Lewis Heath:Oh yes.
Blake Rea:So this is going to be particularly challenging. Let's start with Anordain. Tell us about the brand. Tell us how you got to where you are today. You know, obviously a lot of people have probably been asking how the name came to be.
Lewis Heath:Um, yeah, sure yeah, um, well, it's a good place to start, I suppose. So, um a long time before I was interested in watches, I uh, I think I just finished, finished school and, um, I came up for a holiday to this place in the Highlands that I used to go with my family a lot and I always loved this place. It was very peaceful, but no one really lives up. Well, I say no one lives up in the Highlands. I live in the Highlands now, but it's not somewhere that would be easy to find work. You could either do some fishing, a bit of farming stuff like that, and I got thinking what, what could you do here that would give you a living and be interesting to do, and for some reason, I thought watchmaking would be, would be good, um, and the thought kind of stayed with me for the next 15, 20 years, something like that.
Lewis Heath:And um, and the place I was at anyway, was a little lochan, where a lochan is a lake and a lochan is a small lake in Scottish language. Anyway, the lochan was called Anordain, and it's not only that, but it's probably the only name I can remember from all the little lock-ins they have very, very strange Gaelic names and yeah.
Lewis Heath:So it always stuck with me and that's kind of it was the idea I was saving for when I knew a little bit more about what I was doing. So I did before this I had another business that was designing products, and so I learned a bit about business in my kind of 20s and early 30s and then I felt like this was kind of the right time to do it. So in about 2013-14 I started looking at what we could, what we could make, uh and and the the idea. It wasn't initially about enamel. The idea was because my wife and I had gone to to Baselworld in, I think, 2013 and and she was interested in the Poland aspect of it, which was much more about being kind of a design, high street, kind of affordable brand, and I was much more interested in the kind of manufacturing and design and the kind of craft aspect and we went into in A, you had Baselworld and B, baselworld had manufacturing halls, so you'd go in and you'd just have these little cubicles you'd pop in and what amazed me very quickly was how all the parts for a watch were made.
Lewis Heath:So a watch factory doesn't make watches. It assembles watches and the cases are made by a case factory. The dials are made by a watch factory doesn't make watches, it assembles watches. And the cases are made by a case factory. The dials are made by a dial factory. And so you have a handful of factories that make dials, a handful that make hands cases. So what you end up with is a fairly similar palette to work with.
Lewis Heath:And so we'd gone through all the different manufacturers and realized that you could kind of do the same things with any of them. And so that got me thinking. And so we came back to the UK and I thought, well, could we turn people's skills to making watches here? So could you get a CNC machinist to make a case, or a leather worker or a belt maker to make a strap and that kind of thing? And I was you know it was very naive at the time and I thought that'd be simple, it'd be easy to do, and I think it wasted about two years trying to get that all going. And you know it didn't at all, because I mean people. You know the tolerances are so far from what anyone else works with, um, that you know it's just, it's just a disaster.
Lewis Heath:But the one thing that came out of. It was, um, was a dial-up bit, which was which kind of started looking at coins and um gone to birmingham to the, to the, to some of the mints there, and and there was one coin that was it's a commemorative coin with an amulet on it and it was just this really vivid red poppy um, and I was just very taken with that and I thought, well, I know they use, you know, enamel and dials, so maybe we could, uh, maybe, try that. So initially we tried with a you know a manufacturer in birmingham to make the dials and it was just, you know, as I said, with the other people, it was just they were, were just not kind of up to tolerance. So in about 2014-ish, well, I put an advert at the art school and we had one person apply for the job and that was Adam, and luckily we had one, yeah, and he spent the next three years just working out to make a dial, basically, and then that that took us up to 2018 when we launched um and uh, and, yeah, we've. So that that that was 2018 and, looking back on it, we didn't really like it was.
Lewis Heath:We've learned an awful lot since then and I think, yeah, it's been a pretty steep learning curve for the past. However many years we're now, I think since then we've gone through. We're about to move into our fifth building. We keep kind of outgrowing them and realize we need different things that you can't fit in the current building. I think we've got about 26 people now and we are training people, which is really nice, because when we started we were just no one knew what they were doing. We tried to work out how to do things, but now it's kind of we've got knowledge ourselves and we're able to kind of pass it on and and learn more and things like that. So it's it's really nice. It's like it's it's grown into a. It's a very nice space, I think, for people to do yeah.
Blake Rea:That's, that's it, I mean you guys are absolutely crushing it. When I was in San Francisco. I mean I got to see like the piece of ash that you use for the Model 3. You get to like they had a table. It was just a huge piece of it. You just got to run your hand. I mean, at least I did.
Lewis Heath:I don't know if I was allowed to, I ran my head across it and I was like man, this is crazy.
Blake Rea:And so it sounds Sorry, go ahead.
Lewis Heath:No, no, it's just going to you. Carry on, Blake.
Blake Rea:So I was going to elaborate on that. You know, for you the design language and the DNA started from the dial, kind of outwards, it seems like, and you just wanted to create beautiful tapestry, or you know art or I mean, and then just work out, right.
Lewis Heath:So yeah, I mean the dials proved to be where we've been able to do things, you know, initially. But it's really kind of experimenting and bringing bringing different disciplines and ideas together, which is where where I think we will kind of find enjoyment in what we do. And I mean the, the, the piece of wood that you're talking about that came very early on I think it was actually a year after we launched, but it just took an awfully long time to get it out. That was when you look at old enamel. You'll see transparent enamel and underneath there'll be these sort of engine-turned patterns and these lovely engravings. And the reason they did that was that when you move the piece then the light bounces off the metal, the different angles of the metal underneath the enamel, and creates these lovely, you know, sort of patterns of light.
Lewis Heath:And I really kind of respect these old crafts, like the engine turnings. But it's not an aesthetic that I particularly like myself and I thought, well, if we're doing things now, yeah, I mean it's certainly it's very classical. That I particularly like myself and I thought, well, if we're doing things now, yeah, it's, I mean it's it's, it's certainly it's very classical, yeah for sure, and we wanted to do something that that, that use that idea.
Lewis Heath:You know, the idea of playing with light and playing surfaces but was, you know, hadn different and and yeah, there was um, yeah, this is, this is really brilliant um design kind of making studio in not far from us, um, who do a lot of kind of boxes for for high-end watches and whiskey and stuff like that, and um, and they, they developed the surface from, you know, chiseling it out, and so we scanned it with a, with a light scanner, and we shrunk it down and then created a stamp with a laser and pressed that into silver to to replicate the pattern, much smaller scale, and then enameled over the top of it. So very simple to explain, but it took bloody ages to do. And, you know, I actually seems weird that it's now launched, because I'm so used to it, not, you know, having just being one of these things that's in the studio, but we haven't managed to get out.
Blake Rea:But it's um, yeah, it's nice to see I think I think everybody loves you for, for it now that is, uh, that it's out and it's a you know relatively available, you know um yeah, it's relatively another, um, another issue, but I think I think on the waiting list front, people are seem to be more kind of.
Lewis Heath:I think we, we kind of got a lot of stick for at the beginning and then people have realized that it is a fair way of doing it. You know, we're not, we're not kind of you can't buy one unless you've, like, you've got to get in in the line, you've got to get in the queue, kind of thing. And if you, if you're prepared to wait, then you get them and they're, you know the pricing, I think, is reasonable and uh, you know it's, it's not like we're not doing lost reason. We're not kind of uh selling to people that we like the most, whatever it's. Just so, yeah, it's, it's.
Blake Rea:The availability is a tricky one, definitely, but it's um, this kind of nature of uh making things I have a few, a few of my friends that are um, that are on the waiting list and um, and you know, I, I guess my take on it, um, I, I just can't, I don't know, I just can't wait that long. It's a long time to wait, isn't it? I know, I know, yeah, I mean.
Lewis Heath:I'm seriously impressed that people that that have that kind of patience. Actually, I think it's uh, I think it's impressive. But you know, the good thing about it, um, is that by the time you get to your slot, there will be other things that have come into the world on available. So you're not you're not waiting on a watch, you're waiting on on a build slot. So whatever's there at the time you can choose. So there are going to be some pretty weird and wonderful things coming up in the next few years.
Blake Rea:That's kind of a better way to put it out there into the world. You're just essentially reserving the labor right. Yeah, exactly.
Lewis Heath:That's what it is. No one is going to like the same watch they like today. In five years' time they might do, but not the chances are. I think it's a nice way of doing it.
Blake Rea:Let's pivot and talk about the sister brand Pollen, which I think, if I'm not mistaken, is owned by your wife, not anymore.
Lewis Heath:We bought it. It's now all ours. We've done this collaboration, I think, or one of these with them. It's been really fun for us because we've been able to.
Lewis Heath:One of the things I really like about not just watch design, but design in general is I think if you, if you can be, if you can be clever with design, you can make a product that's better for less money. Like you can, you can make a better product and it will cost less to make. Yeah, so I think with watches, a lot of the time people are kind of rolling them in glitter and making them, you know, adding diamonds and gold and stuff, and that can be great sometimes. But I I think we sort of lose track of the fact that most people don't have huge amounts of money to buy you know the kind of brands that we read about all the time. So, and even with anodane we're certainly in, you know, we're sort of several thousand pounds a piece. So when you talk to normal people, they're like I like your watches, and they realize how much they're like you know that's, that's not a swatch kind of thing, so so for us it was.
Lewis Heath:It was a really fun kind of design brief to be able to create something that we would wear, that was like as a watch enthusiast. It was a, you know, it had interest and it had character but didn't, you know, was under a thousand pounds, I think is the sort of ceiling we've set ourselves with the brand. And then when my wife and her sister got to a stage where it was just after COVID and the shops had kind of no longer profitable and they had families and changing life priorities basically, and they weren't sure what to do with it, it seemed like it would make a lot of sense for us to take it on, because we'd already been doing the assembly for a lot of the watches and, yeah, just my tent. So it kind of worked for both.
Blake Rea:Wow, yeah, I'm actually a huge fan of what you're doing at Pollen myself, and I mean, obviously, of course, course, I'm an ordained fan. But something about pollen that I think a lot of watch brands don't capture, and I mean you kind of, you know, alluded to to swatch, so I'm going to use that as as a leap, a leaping stone, but you know, brands like swatch have fun with watch me fun is it, isn't it?
Lewis Heath:I completely agree, yeah and obviously as well. Actually, I have to say, in my early days of um, I remember they did their waterproof watch was for swimming, it wasn't for diving, and I, I loved that they, they could kind of have a bit of fun with. You know, it doesn't go a thousand meters in the water, it's for the swimming pool. You know which is what?
Blake Rea:yeah, you know so, and yeah, I mean just taking um, you know, taking some unique aspects, and so I this watch that I'm wearing is one of you, one of yours, and it's not mine a quartz and um and something that's like a little easter egg is when you look down and it lines up with like one of the minute markers and you can see through the minute marker I'm like dude, that's so fucking good like that is such a little easter egg that you, it makes me, it makes me want to look down at the watch more often, which I normally don't do for you know some of my other higher end stuff, um, and then just having like I mean you, obviously you have the option right to to do like a solid case back or crystal, sapphire crystal or whatever, um, and just that kind of like parody aspect of having like a sapphire crystal on a quartz watch yeah, but I mean that movement.
Lewis Heath:I mean that's a very fun movement, isn't it?
Lewis Heath:it's um's, that's the one, I think it is I did know that for many years when we're uh trying to find the things. But, um, yeah, it's a great looking thing, they don't. I don't think that to make quartz movements well, they don't make quartz movements like that fun anymore. But yeah, we, we have a, we have a stock of them and they're just so cool to look at, though it's just kind of fun, because I think it's more interesting to look at that splattering of like gold and blue circuit boards and whatever else is back there than it is looking at. You know, a bog standards automatic move. You know it's something very sci-fi about it. I find now I can't remember, but yeah, there's that and there's also in that. The other, the other option, has the um 7001 in, which is another movement, that which I'm always liked a lot.
Blake Rea:I think it's so sort of thin and simple, it's just it's nice, nice one so yeah, you've got, you've got you've got the option and the case is beautiful like this, like tonu, tonu, like modular, like case, like with the gaskets that wrap around to the crown, like I mean. It's just a super unique watch.
Lewis Heath:It's funny, you know what? It's interesting because I think the way that we started going at projects, approaching them, is not saying we want to make a diving watch or we want to make a sports watch. It's saying here's the problem, we want to make a diving watch, we want to make a sports watch. It's it's saying here's the problem. And the problem with this watch is that we had, I think we had 200 movements that were new, old stock, and we had to make 500 cases. So we thought, well, we're gonna have 300 cases we can't use.
Lewis Heath:So the idea of it was that you had a, an internal case that you could fit this movement into and then you could swap that part out within the second internal and then the rest of the cases would be kind of universal, if that makes sense. So we ended up making, say, 200 for for the quartz and 300 for the automatic, for the mechanical, and that's where the so if you take the black part out, the pvd black internal part of the case, you could screw that out, the four screws that come in at the side, and it's completely waterproof. So you take that bit out and then you've just got a frame, the stainless steel frame and then you could slot in, say, the equivalent for the different dial or whatever. I mean it's more of a. You know it's a manufacturing thing rather than a. You're not advised to do that at home.
Blake Rea:Right, a manufacturing thing rather than a. You're not advised to do that home because, right, I'm curious as to as to how this design like came to be, because, I mean, this, in my opinion, is one of the more unique like approaches to watch case design. Um, so like. Where did that? Where did that start from? Like, how did that come.
Lewis Heath:Well, it was it. It was really trying to answer that, that question of how do we get, um, how do we not waste, like, if we can't get any more of these movements, how can we reuse the rest of these cases that we're going to have to order. So it was this idea of having a modular case that you could swap in different movements. So normally if you made a case, the size of movement in, because the, the, it would, the alignment would be off in the sizes and stuff. So it was really it was like a two-part modular case and so the the internal part is is bespoke to that movement and the outside is kind of not bespoke. So it was just working out ways to do this. So the screws coming in from the side, is, is a, is a kind of solution for that and it kind of created a form. Creating a problem to start with to solve gave you a brief that kind of constrained you into making a probably more interesting case than we would have had if we'd not had that kind of constraint.
Blake Rea:Yeah, I mean, I absolutely adore it. You know it's um that and then the easter egg, with the minute markers I mean, and how thin it is, I mean it's comfortable. You know, like I, yeah, the the bigger one. Uh is is nice, there's a yeah, there's a 39, 40 or something, yeah and it's.
Lewis Heath:it's because the with all watches I I mean if you take the thickness and you make it fairly narrow, because then the proportions change. But once you stretch it out to 39.5, I think it gets slimmer again proportionally. But to get it to work at that size I think it was really good it to work at that size is.
Blake Rea:I think it was really good. I I got to try one on in uh in san francisco, the note 40, because I this.
Blake Rea:It came in and at the time I've had this way too long. I'm sorry, um, I probably won't send it back to you, so don't kill me. But uh, but no jokes, jokes aside, uh, the 40 it came out and then I was like, well, shit, that's sort of been good to do. Like you know, I've noticed on my youtube but people like to to see, like here's, like what you get as you tear up, you know, or like to showcase, right, to showcase, like you know, an assortment of watches, and I was like, well, shit, it would have been nice to have the 40 to to show, or, like you know, maybe one of the uh, like the, the module b's or something like with um, like the manual or whatever, um, but anyways, then then the oh no, um, I think that's what it's called oh no, came out, and then I was like, well, shit, like this one is so fun, so unique.
Blake Rea:Um, by the time, people are listening to this, um, we are. We featured it on our best of wind up san francisco. So you got, you got that plaque right. Um, we featured this one on the best of uh, of intersect, which was another good one um and and yeah.
Blake Rea:So I just I just love. I love how playful it is, and then the 40. It's a bit bit more um wrist presence, but to me, um, I just I just love it and let's let's try bouncing back. So we're just going to keep this format going. See if we can. So a bunch of curveballs at you and let's step back to an ordain and design production. You know what? What drives design at an ordain?
Lewis Heath:that's an interesting question, I think. Um, so I think with with paul and it's, it's about it's very much kind of the graphics and, as you say, the Easter egg. It's about the design and thinking about how you can be fun and playful and I guess it sort of originates on a computer or a sketchpad. But with Anodyne it's much more about experimenting in the workshop. So in the Enameling Studios, you know, initially when we started, right at the beginning, we had designed because one of the kind of founders is Imogen, who's a typographer, and so she very much drove the design at the beginning which was around, you know, maps, typefaces derived from those maps, and there's a very clear aesthetic from there. But as we've gone on, it's much more about what's coming out of the Annamling Studios and the kind of experiments and a lot of the accidents that happen. You get these really really interesting kind of results and so the watches are often based around those discoveries and then Imogen's work with the typography comes to kind of complement it. So so it's, it's yeah, it's very much kind of workshop based.
Lewis Heath:The design there, um, I think so. I mean I was. It's weird because we've got so much stuff that's been happening. Um, I think so. I mean, I was. It's weird because we've got so much stuff that's been happening that isn't out there. But I think when people look at what we do, it's probably very different to what I think of when I I kind of see what we do because there's a large body that's not come out yet, um, but but the the kind of experimentation has gone into other areas, most notably the movement and the case as well. So there's a lot of very interesting things coming out in the next couple of years using, you know, interesting ideas that have been realised in the movement and the case, as well as as the enamel and the dial. So, um, one thing that that I'm going to say. But by the time this podcast comes out you might not still have got out and I will probably regret it slightly. Then I'll be told off for it.
Lewis Heath:It's like a hangover once you listen to it yes, um, one of the other things that we've been experimenting with for quite a while now is is, um, porcelain. Porcelain's a really interesting material because a lot of people understandably get confused between porcelain and enamel. So porcelain is clay, essentially that's fired, and enamel is glass, melted glass on metal, but porcelain is has, um, it also gets confused with ceramic. There's another thing I should say is that when people look at ceramic dials, what you're looking at there in, in the majority of cases, um, all the cases I know of is is a very hard material, normally called zirconia, which is what you make uh, watch cases out of if they're ceramic. Or you make teeth out of for, for kind of false teeth, um, and you buy that in a sheet form and you mill it out. So you get your disc and you that's kind of your, your dial. But what we're doing is is kind of casting circles from what you think of as pottery and then finding ways to fire them and keep them, kind of the surface, flat and glossy. So what we've come out with is really lovely sort of luster on on these glossy dials and um, and they've got a character of their own. They're not this. They're similar looking to an animal, but they're not. You know it's, it's um, yeah, they have different properties. So that's something that we're going to be bringing out in the next, hopefully early to mid-summer, or previewing at least to that stage.
Lewis Heath:And one of the really nice things about that is that that process of of porcelain making a is very, very hard. Actually, you think of porcelain as something that you know a teapot's going to smash. It's actually really quite tough if you fire it to these like 14, 1500 degrees centigrade, but then it lends itself slightly to batch production so we could make, you know, maybe five or ten in the time it would make it take us to make one or two enamel dials like there are. There are other challenges with with with 10 in the time it would make it take us to make one or two enamel dials, but there are other challenges with with, with failures in it, but it's something that we potentially do at a slightly more affordable price, which is which is appealing.
Lewis Heath:So I think a lot of people because I mean, that's still also talked about that with Paula, but with Anodyne it's still and always has been kind of a big driver, is kind of giving people access to, yeah, kind of affordability, I suppose, and so we've got, I think, this, yeah, this could be really really fun. Actually, this is what we've got coming out with that. So that would be the first thing that I think is going to be new for us and, yeah, so I'm hoping it'll be around the time this podcast coming out so well yeah, that'd be awesome.
Blake Rea:Um, let's talk about so I, I again, you're gonna have to forget my ignorance. I'm a watch guy. I'm not a, a craftsman, a tradesman. I don't know anything about. You know, I know some of the materials. You know, to a very rudimentary level, um, but something that I think about, especially when I think about enamel, um, and even porcelain, right like over time, like you know, porcelain pocket watches, they, they start to kind of patina um I don't know if that exists with it within the enamel space, but you know, I'm curious to see what an anordane watch would look like, you know, two centuries from now.
Lewis Heath:Yeah, me too. I'll never see it, unfortunately. Um, yeah, but it's so. I mean, one of the one of the kind of primary qualities of enamel is that it doesn't fade. So the best way of explaining it, I think, is, if you think of a stained glass window in a cathedral, in a thousand-year-old church, those have been sitting in the sunlight for the past thousand years and they are still richly coloured, and that's one of the qualities enamel has. I mean, it's essentially the same material, but it's on a kind of metal backing, so they shouldn't look any different in 200 years' time, I think, is the answer, which, yeah, is a pretty special thing, I think.
Blake Rea:So obviously we're starting to get a grasp of enamel and some of your processes, but what would you say is the most challenging aspect of creating dials within with enamel and, and you know how, have you, as as a brand, overcame those challenges?
Lewis Heath:I think I think with I mean there's enameling in, if you were to make um one dial, that's, that's one color and you know the plain dial. And then there are more complex techniques, um, you know the closet name shop and things like that, and they, you know, they take another level of kind of time and training to get to. But what I'd say is definitely the most difficult thing is the finishing quality. So the difference, I think, between what's you can make one dial and you can kind of take a picture of it and it can look great in a photo or it can look great from a distance, but it's getting up close and looking at the dial under a loop and at different angles and different lights, and it being kind of passing must on all those and being able to do that time after time and producing like that.
Lewis Heath:And that I think that's the great skill that the team here have developed is is, you know, having an incredibly high standards and being able to produce. You know, because we I mean we've got um eight enamels and we we're making 50 dials a month, which isn't, you know, for eight people isn't a huge amount but it is. You know, they're 50 dials that get into watches and past qc, um, and that's every month and so that's. You know that that's a tricky thing.
Blake Rea:I think is is getting to that standard and maintaining it how many of the dials that you produce, produce like, actually get past. So, like you know, obviously, like we've talked about quality here and um, obviously you produce x and y makes it through qc, like, what is the production to, to quality control ratio?
Lewis Heath:yeah, I mean that's. That's a good question, I think. I think there's a lot of the perception about enamel comes from the way that the very simple white dials are manufactured. So if you look at a lot of the videos, you'll see you'll see kind of like a bread oven and you'll see a dozen white dials coming in, they'll set on fire and then they'll come out and if you produce in that message, you tend to get a very, very high failure rate.
Lewis Heath:And that is very good for marketing, because I can say to you that you know 95 of the dials go in the bin and so your dial is really special because it's, you know it's one of 20, but that's, that's the way of kind of almost mass producing enamel dials, whereas when you're working in the way that we do and this isn't because it's better or worse, it's just because this is the way we learned to do it is that you have one enamel who works on one dial and that's their sole focus.
Lewis Heath:It's just this one dial, and so as a general rule, they'll be working to make one. It takes about three dials, so it it's not, but they work until it's perfect and they will kind of you know if there are issues, they'll, they'll fix them. It's only when you know with enamel you can overwork it or you can take it too far, that you can't kind of fix those issues. So say, two of the three dials will won't make it or they might get cracked when they're in the pad printing or something like that. So generally it's one in three.
Blake Rea:But it is a very different way of working than the kind of the kind of bread tray with the with the big, you know dozen white dials on it so I'm assuming, as you have this huge demand for your product right now, there's probably a thought that's crossed your mind like oh shit, like like we, you can take two paths, right, like you can continue to do the slow, methodic, like quality, or you can be like oh well, shit, we got to ramp up. You know, like um, and it's. It sounds like you've taken like the first approach to say like, hey, we're just going to make sure we do this the right way there.
Lewis Heath:You know, um, I'm assuming there has been thoughts of of ramping up production yeah, I mean, I think a lot of my thoughts start with oh shit, actually like you're saying this a lot, of, a lot of panic thoughts, but, um, I mean the first thing to say is probably we, we do, we do have a lot of demand, but it's not. You know we sell, you know we're 50 watches a month, it's 600 watches a year. If you look at any of the other, you know comparable watch brands or whatever they're doing Way more, way more. Yes, it's a lot of demand, but it's relative to very low output. And yeah, I mean we could ramp up production in the long term.
Lewis Heath:But to train an enamel to the point where they walk in as a, you know, as a graduate jeweller, as a trained jeweller, to becoming a fully-fledged enameler who can produce on their own, you're talking probably two years, maybe 18 months, two years, okay, and to get that person to the two-year point, properly trained, fully fledged enamel, has to be teaching them.
Lewis Heath:So we started off with one enamel, then we moved to three and those three guys have been you know, they've kind of been the backbone of the business since then and they've trained people. You know, now, at the point where we're kind of we're eight people who are very competent and I think you make decisions you want to we are going to train more people and I think it's a really important thing to do. But but I, you know, yeah, it's a, it's a choice. Do we want to be creating interesting things and making sure what we do is just spot on or, you know, do we want to be trying to sell a lot of watches? And I, I, the interest for me and, I think, for everyone else in the team, lies in in creating new things and doing stuff you were kind of proud of. Um, so that yes not.
Lewis Heath:Not much good for the waiting list, but we are.
Blake Rea:We are yeah that's, that's, that's something that nobody really talks about. Like you have a fixed amount of resources, whether it's money, capital, labor, whatever right like here's the, the amount of it that's going into your production, right, your model two, your, you know, your model one, model three, and then you're like this is the percentage of that that's going into like R and D, like research, development, like future, you know future, innovation, like it, you know it. Just something nobody, nobody talks about that you know.
Lewis Heath:Yeah, no, it's, it's very true, I mean we've we've had a kind of 20% rule. That's not always, we've not always been able to maintain, but the idea is that you know you're 20 at the time, be working on a project that's not commercial, which a keeps people interested um and b produces some really interesting outputs. So that's that's always been, uh always been part of the kind of setup. But I mean we we had we had issues with um materials the end of last year and we got quite behind behind on on manufacturing. So everyone's had to ditch that that kind of play time, if you like, of of having kind of 20 percent work on their own projects for the past few months, and that's that's noticeably more stressful. I think in the in the enameling studio that everyone's just flat out in production. So it's good, it's a healthy balance to be doing R&D as well as manufacturing.
Blake Rea:I kind of want to talk briefly and this may shift back to Paulin, maybe shift back to Ann or Dan and let you decide where to take it. But something that I've noticed with Paulin, for example, you know you guys are very transparent about like your supply chain. You know, like you're like, hey, here's where the cases come from, here's where the dials come from, right, whatever, right the movements you know um, so it doesn't seem like and this is where we get spinning back to an or Dane. But you know, something I've also read about you guys is that you guys are trying to kind of get away from being so reliant on the supply chain for Ann or Dane.
Lewis Heath:Yeah.
Blake Rea:You know because I was reading an article that you guys are. I guess you guys had a bunch of little studios like scutters yeah, around like glasgow and then, and then you guys are trying to, like you know, like bring them like in house or under one roof or whatever, um, and then so I'm assuming in terms of you know, your, your supply chain for enamel, um, has that been limiting you, has that been crippling you like?
Lewis Heath:no, I mean enamels, I mean some interesting things with enamel. They the health and safety aspect of it. There are some pretty toxic chemicals in enamel. When it's in a kind of powder form, when it's in the watch, it's fine. But you know, regulations over past, over the years really, since the late 80s, have changed what you can put in enamel and every different colour of enamel from every different producer is, you know, a specific recipe. So there'll be.
Lewis Heath:You know, we did have a lot of problems a few years ago with kind of you know, the main colours we were using no longer being available and we didn't have stock of them. So that was, that was a real problem. But generally, I mean, enamel isn't a hard one to kind of overcome because you can, you know, generally you can just stop pilot, uh, which is, which is what we've done, um, but in terms of the other, I mean the other aspect, so the, the studios, the, the article you're reading was at the moment we have five or six different spaces from everything from kind of watchmaking to, you know um, hydraulic pressing of blanks and things like that. So they're sort of scattered around the place because you can't fit a 500 ton press on the fourth floor and you know all this kind of thing. So we bought a factory or we bought a building um about 18 months ago now and we've been we've been kind of refitting it into a factory. So in late summer, hopefully, we'll have a kind of purposed built watchmaking factory for for the you know, for exactly what we do. So there'll be a lot of watchmaking factory for exactly what we do. So there'll be a lot of engraving, enameling, ceramics, now, cnc's, things like that. So it'll be a really good opportunity to get everything in the same place, which would be brilliant, and it'll allow us to take on some new aspects. So things like the cases, hands. I mean we do some of the handwork ourselves but some of it we get from Switzerland. So it's a mix at the moment and so that, yeah, that's in the long term, some things aren't feasible to do. If they're feasible, but it depends on, I suppose, the different aspects.
Lewis Heath:So the movement manufacturer example is something that people talk about a lot. A few years ago it was all about in-house movements and I think the reality of that, because I looked into it an awful lot, and it's really about scale. If you can produce 10, know, 10, 000, 100, 000 movements, then you know it's worth doing. But if you're doing, you know, a few hundred, a few thousand it's you know you're going to be charging your customer a huge amount more than you would be for the same movement. And if you were using a, you know an s or LJP.
Lewis Heath:So I think it is being pragmatic and saying what, what can we do that gives the customer like a better watch at a good price? You know, because we can make a movement and we've, we've got, you know, we've got a watchmakers just been working on designing modules and things like that. And you know, over that period of time we've realized that this is fun and it's interesting but it's not really commercially viable. For unless you want to be selling kind of roger smith type prices which well, not only that too, but then becomes like the bigger problem.
Blake Rea:I'm I'm a huge fan of, you know, off-the-shelf calibers, you know because, I think longevity plays a huge picture in watches. You know you sell the. I have a Rolex story right. I've got a Rolex from the 1960s and I sent it back to Rolex to get serviced and they were like nope, nope, not going to do it, sorry, sent the watch back to me, you know.
Blake Rea:and they were like nope, nope, not gonna do it, sorry, send the watch back to me, you know. But they, you know, rolex, in other brands they sell this dream that like you know this is a watch that will be like your, you know, pass through your family for generations and here here a watch is nearly 70 years old and and you know that's one that's one lifetime technically almost two and they won't service it.
Lewis Heath:What was it? Which one?
Blake Rea:It was a 1601 Datejust.
Lewis Heath:Okay.
Blake Rea:It's very common.
Lewis Heath:Yeah, you'd have thought that would be. They sold millions of those things.
Blake Rea:You know, and they refused to service it for whatever. They gave me no reason. You know, the watch just came back and they said service it for whatever. They gave me no reason. You know, they, the watch just came back.
Blake Rea:They said yeah, they rejected it um yeah so go going back to to to off the shelf calibers, like I I don't mind them, you know like I like being able. It's like, um, you know, like if you buy an expensive car and you have to have some like really special wrench to like. You know, like if you buy an expensive car and you have to have some like really special wrench to like change the spark plugs or something, so you can only get that tool with a dealership or whatever you know, so you have to take your car to that dealership to get it served. It just seems stupid to me that this is your product and you know you have the ability to take it anywhere, like you know.
Blake Rea:If something's wrong with my watch and I rely on my watch like you should just be able to pop down to the corner, your corner friendly watchmaker, and have it serviced yeah, yeah, no, I I agree, yeah and brands brands are.
Blake Rea:Brands are exploiting that. You know they're exploiting that system because you know here, here's, and even going back to the boutique model, like we've talked about, on some of the other other brands and podcasts, um episodes, like we've talked about brands that are straying away from, you know, the multi-brand, the shop and shop. You know every brand wants to take back their customer and that's the way that they do it. So that's the reason why they spend millions and millions of dollars developing these in-house calibers, because then they own the customer for the long term. But if I buy your watch from XYZ Jeweler, I'm not an inorganic customer, I'm an XYZ Jeweler customer. You know what I mean?
Blake Rea:Yeah, so they realize that and that's the reason why the people that do follow the like, multi-brand, shop and shop model they're like oh you know, register your your watch with us and we'll, you know, extend your warranty five years or two years you know, because then you're becoming that customer back of the brand, which is a weird silly thing to say, um, but going back to your brand and ordain like it just seems like it would be silly, with the amount of of, I guess, aesthetic developments that you guys are doing, to even consider that you know to.
Lewis Heath:So I think you're going in the right direction by not doing just yeah. I think when I, the kind of conclusion I came to looking at movements and development a few years ago was that you have you have the kind of reliability and the value with off the shelf.
Lewis Heath:But what you're missing is the aesthetics of, you know, having a beautiful finished movement. So the idea that we've had is to try and kind of have the best of both worlds, to. So to take a stock movement and, and you know, apply finishing to it in a way that you know makes it more interesting to look at and more pleasing. So that stuff we'll bring out, you know, the next year or so. Hopefully there are things we can improve. But yeah, I definitely think if you start making road movements then you're going to be adding a lot to the price.
Blake Rea:Right, let's pivot again. You talked about porcelain, um, is there any other materials that you guys have experimenting with like that you guys are? I mean, obviously you don't have to put the cap before you get the cat out of the bag. But I mean I'm sure there's more traditional materials out there that people aren't using that, that have excited you, that, like you guys are, you know, in the lab with or we do. Yeah, I mean we've.
Lewis Heath:We've used a lot of. I mean, engraving is a big thing that we've got into the past couple of years and we've got um car is is one of the enamors, is also kind of her specialities hand engraving, um. So there's that um, and with engraving comes things like um filling, like inking. So if you remember the I don't remember, look at old um your grandfather clocks, and they've got these, these um, normally kind of um german silver dials with the black, so that that's a kind of wax that you'd put into the silver. So things like that have been interesting. We've not got anything.
Lewis Heath:I think everything at the moment coming through from an anodyne is enamel. I think Portland's certainly more experimental in that respect. I mean, we did the anodized aluminium dials, which is really a lot more difficult than we thought it was going to be, which is why you generally don't see them. Getting consistent finishes is a nightmare. So they were actually for a very affordable watch. They're incredibly, incredibly limited batches of. You know wasn't by design. So yeah, I think Paulul is definitely one for playing with materials, um, in that respect. Uh, but yeah, there's, there's always. We kind of always keep an open mind for what we could, what we could use, I think I kind of want to um there's.
Blake Rea:There's probably at one point when you guys are working on something and you kind of realized there was like a oh shit moment, like maybe you mix this or you know, yeah, oh good, oh shit you know yeah or maybe bad whichever one.
Lewis Heath:But I mean the fumé was that? I mean that was very much where the the fumé? Because we stumbled upon the way of making an enamel fumé dial. I mean there was no kind of fumé enamel before this and it was just because we'd swapped from using copper to using silver as a base metal and one of the dials just warped in the middle. It kind of rose up and because there was less enamel covering the top and more at the sides, it went from being light on the top to dark on the sides. It looked amazing. So we were like we've got to work out to do that and make it flat. And that's two years later it came out.
Lewis Heath:So yeah, these are definitely the good bits is when things go wrong in a good way in the studio, that's why I love it.
Blake Rea:Yeah, and it seems like so. Let's walk through the collection. You have the Model 1, model 2, model 3. The Model 1 was the first to release. Is that?
Lewis Heath:Yeah, model 1 was the first. Yeah, no, we've done it in kind of in that order 1, 2, 3. So Model 1, it was our first watch. It's kind of sort of everyday sort of dress watch, almost sort of everyday sort of dress watch, almost um. The model two is a more field, fieldy, kind of slightly more rugged outdoors watch and that that's the, the way we're taking the, the porcelain and that'll be going down that route of.
Lewis Heath:You know, the lovely thing about the porcelain is trying to you know, not explain very well before is that you have this the dials have a real character. They have a character that that I associate with vintage watches, in that you you'd get over 70 years of wear and fading and you know it's not a perfect dial but it's got it's just a huge appeal about it and it doesn't look like you know anyone else's watch. It doesn't look like it came off a factory line, you know it's, it is, it's got real character and and I think to get a new watch where that kind of character is just a really rare thing. So these, these, that the porcelain going into the model too, um, I think it's gonna be really exciting because when you think about it. You don't really think kind of fields or sports watches, but I think this is going to be an interesting watch. Then the Model 3 is the basis for more experimental things with textures. We had the sunburst that we did with the Dinky.
Blake Rea:With that first, the Method, it's really playing around with enameling different techniques there. Yeah, I, I think, um, I mean, the model 3 is is probably, in my opinion, like the, the most beautiful, like the model 3, uh, like licking, licking like liking, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, lickin, lickin.
Lewis Heath:Yeah, that's right. It probably is Lickin in some countries, I don't know Again.
Blake Rea:Yeah, I mean, it's a stunning watch and that's the one to me that sticks out like the most.
Lewis Heath:I'm glad, because if you said the earliest one then we'd be going the wrong way. So I think that was one of our most recent.
Blake Rea:We have also have a watch club here in vegas and we've got almost 100 members now and um one of our collectors. I think he has four or five of your watches no way can you say who.
Lewis Heath:Well, you can tell me after who it is, or probably.
Blake Rea:Yeah, I'll tell you after um, yeah, I mean he's so, like you know, everybody else is like oh, man in ordain, like you know, like, and then he's, he's the one that's like oh yeah, you want to see some, I got you man, you know so he's got a little like his little showcase of your brand every time it comes to some of the watch clubs and um, that's, that's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, we're. Um he's. Yeah, I need to circle back, I know he's got, I think at a minimum three, but I think he has a slot for four or five.
Blake Rea:One of the two um, and I'll say his name after we stop the recording.
Lewis Heath:Um, let's circle back here actually this I my battery is saying it's red and I don't have a charger in this sauna, I'm afraid. So in case I get cut, uh yeah, that's very unprofessional there we're, we're coming up on an hour.
Blake Rea:This has been, you know, nearly um an epic podcast and there was a lot of questions that um were kind of addressed pretty quickly. Where do you see the brand heading in the next? You know, 10 years or decades no, that's yeah.
Lewis Heath:Um more training, um, not necessarily a lot more people. I don't want to get too much bigger, but I want to be just developing new techniques, um bringing more in-house, not for the sake of bringing more in-house, but just so that we have more control over experimenting with different aspects of watchmaking. So, yeah, just just continuing, and I think it'll probably go quite quickly, because the last yeah, what has been the most rewarding part of owning a watch brand?
Blake Rea:This can be Paul and Ann or Dan, whatever.
Lewis Heath:I particularly love being in the studio and seeing what is produced by the team, so just going in and seeing what people are doing and it's lovely. One of the original Anambers was crowned Precious Metal Worker of the Year in the UK last year and that was for her work in Anandane and that was really special, I think, having kind of realised that you've kind of beaten everyone else at making precious metals, so that was very cool. It's just being seeing a team that's become very good at what they do and I'm very proud of that. I exclude myself from that, by the way. I can't name all the shows I'm watching them doing it.
Blake Rea:Well, let's leave you on that. I don't want to take up too much of your time. We're approaching an hour here. Conservative of your battery. Yeah, yeah, Thank you so much for coming on. It's been amazing. We'll have to have you back here in the future and we'll do like a 2.0, and we'll revisit. Yeah, yeah, do that, and we will absolutely see you here on the next one. Thanks, mate, very nice talking to.
