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Scottish Watches Podcast #683 : Garnets, Goblins and Gobshites – Rikki and Rob Talk Arcanaut Watches
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the Scottish Watches Podcast. We've got a returning guest, a buddy, an old friend, somebody that's been around the world with us over many, many years. He's worn many hats, he's written for many publications, he's worked behind the bench of many a brand, but he's here today to talk about probably one of my favourite independent brands, because he's involved in it. There's another gentleman that's involved in it that I don't know. And then you've got James Thompson, the Black Badger, the man himself. So welcome back to ScottishWatches podcast. Mr. Rob Nutt. How are you doing?
- [00:28]
B
I'm very well, Ricky. Thanks for the invitation. It's a pleasure to be here.
- [00:32]
A
Yes. And I owe you a debt of gratitude, a big, massive thank you, because you dropped off my latest pickup and that was at Watches and Wonders this year. I had waited a very, very long time for an archinaut watch to come along that had just the right look, the right style of Fordite, the right coloration. One popped up. I immediately reached out to you, Black Badger, and said, if it's still available, if somebody hasn't grabbed it, I want it. And you did me the duty and the pleasure of coming across to the hotel that I wasn't even checked into yet because I was held up in the airport. You actually dropped that off. So I was able to wear my latest wristwear, two watches and windows this year. So big thank you for that. But I'm going to tell everybody, instead of just listening to us prattling on just now, you want to be checking out our show notes. That's where all the pictures of these watches we're about to talk about will appear. And that is where you really want to pay attention, because these archinaut timepieces are something to behold. And when you find out the price point these come in, and each of these are unique pieces, you will be absolutely astounded, flabbergasted, and your breath will be taken away. But the next thing to do is to check in and find out what you've been up to, what you've been doing, because it's been quite some time since you were last on your layer.
- [01:38]
B
Maybe it's been a while. Yeah. And it's been a busy period for us, that's for sure, because we had to get our noses to the grindstone to fulfill all of the outstanding orders that we've been taking over the last few months, and even, even longer in some cases, because it's never easy to do what we're trying to do on this scale and we are trying to grow, we're trying to reach more people, we're trying to expand the awareness of the brand and why they cost what they cost. Because it's nice of you to say, of course, that you'll be amazed by the price when you see the watches on the wrist. But so many people haven't seen the watches on the wrist, they are sometimes themselves a bit confused by why they cost what they cost in the other direction from what you're expressing. And that's because there's a huge amount of research and development that goes into every material that we use. And there's a lot of time spent mastering those materials and then there's a lot of time spent making them. And there's a huge amount of QC failures working with a material like Fordite, which is its own animal, as it were. So we have been busy. We have also been designing new models for the future, which we'll talk about later, and releasing some pieces that I hope we can talk about a bit more in depth today.
- [02:39]
A
Fantastic. Well, a lot of people are already scratching their head because, as you know, you're in the industry, you're in media yourself to do with watches, there's a churn rate. There are new people that come into the fold, start checking out podcasts, having a listen, and then there's people that move on to other hobbies. Maybe the crypto bros, the NFT guys that just came here for a bit of a giggle a couple of years ago, they've moved on to pastures new. So Arcanaut, maybe folks don't actually know anything about the brand, the company, and are busy scratching their heads. So why, why don't you go back and time a little bit, tell us the history of the brand, who it is, where it is, what it is, and why it's unique.
- [03:11]
B
Okay, so Arkanaut is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Amazingly, it doesn't feel like that because for many years it was more an incubator of ideas than it was an active watch company. But it was started in 2015 by Anders Brandt and Simon Goldman. These two gentlemen met each other in a bar one night. I believe Simon had just bought himself a new Breitling, of which he was very proud. And he was loudly explaining why he was so proud of it to his friends. And Anders overheard him. The two didn't know each other at the time, but he just went over and he was like, oh, I bet I could design a better watch than that. And so they Put their heads together and they got working on a project which at first was called Goldman Brandt, which we always laugh about now as being a fine name for a solicitors or a legal firm, but maybe not so much an attractive name for a watch company. They did actually go as far as producing a prototype under the Goldman brand name. And it looked sort of like a Panerai, to be honest, with a more of an onion crown. And they decided after doing some market testing that perhaps that wasn't going to be the way to go. And so Anders, I'm not sure whether he licked some South American toad or stumbled across some hallucinogenics somewhere, but he had a dream one night about this watch case that looked like a spaceship that just crash landed on Earth. And so he woke up and he sketched it and he spent the next few months developing it. And then the Arc capsule was born. And we launched that first model, the Arc one, over six, seven years ago now. And that was a very different model from the models that we've become best known for. That had more of a traditional dial layout. It was just a normal dial, had beautiful, very expensive hands, might I add. Each handset was like 200 francs. Don't ask why. It had a 12 o' clock numeral, it had a 9 o' clock sub dial. It was nice, very smart. But not the wild materials for which Archonaut soon after became known. Now, that was around the time that Anders partnered with James Thompson, your friend, the Black Badger, a loom specialist known for his experimentation in weird and wonderful materials in watchmaking. He's worked with MB&F, Linda Verdelin, Schofield, Sapaneva, Debitune, MW&CO. The list goes on. I've probably forgotten some people. Sorry if I forgot someone important, but he is a mad scientist working out of his workshop up in Gothenburg, creating these things that we've never seen before. One of those things was a material called dark matter, which is a slate composite. Now, he used to borrow this slate from a fountain near his home. I won't give his address on here, so the authorities won't be able to find him. But he take this slate to his workshop and he'd grind it into a very fine powder and then he'd mix it with a resin, a UV resistant resin, and he would cast millable blocks of this stuff so we could make dials basically out of a stone resin. And then he presented this material to Anders and they went ahead with the ARK to Dark Matter series, which was a 50 piece limited edition, which came out in 2020, I believe. And that was really when Arkanaut in its current guise was born. I joined almost three years ago now as the head of brand development to help whip the back end into shape, as it were, as. As kinky as that sounds. And I've been obviously involved in product development, release planning, new media acquisition partnerships, events, and so on and so forth. I also make the coffee and clean the office. I spend most of my time cleaning the office, actually. So alongside the dark matter, we're very well known for our work with Fordite, which is a waste product of the automotive industry in the latter part of the 20th century, in and around the Detroit area. So whenever a car is being sprayed, its components will go into a spraying bay and they will be hit with paint. And all the paint that misses the component and lands on the walls and the floors and the tools and the jigs and whatnot will harden over time. It'll be cured again and again and again in these bays, and it'll build up into these jagged lumps, these. Not these nodes that need to be chipped off eventually and disposed of. Somebody, some bright spark at some point realized that when you crack into these lumps, you have these inimitable patterns formed from industry. And so when we decided this was an appropriate material to use for Archinaut, James pulled all of the experience he had from having done a similar project with Bamford and Tag Heuer before and brought that to the table here. And that is exactly what's sitting on your wrist right now. Molten magma. Possibly all of our favorite dial that we ever made. And you snaffled it.
- [07:28]
A
Well, I missed out on the first one. It was called Mellow Yellow. And that one went up and by the time I got in touch with you guys many, many months ago, it was gone. So I have been on the mailing list, waiting patiently ever since. And then this one appeared at just the right time, just as all the planets were aligning. I had moved house. I had just got married. I had just changed up my car. And with the strap that it now lives on, a strap that you weren't too keen on to begin with, it actually works phenomenally well. I just can't say enough things about it, considering the number of watches we constantly get sent in, as you do yourself to review, check out short term, medium, long term testing. This ends up in the wrist more often than not. And there's something I wanted to say. I always went on the renders. I always went, not even the right. Can't render this thing I always went on, the photography, the videos, the Instagram reels, I got to see this on your wrist a number of times. I have seen them in the wild. But see, unless you actually take it from the person that's wearing it, have a look at it yourself. There is so much hidden. I didn't realize that the crown on this was unique. I didn't realize on the back. The case shape, the way it all comes together is unique. Even the hardware, the edge of the buckle at the top, the way that it's cut in, those are things I never spotted. And again, let's just let the cat out the bag. I believe this is around about three and a half thousand euros plus VAT.
- [08:49]
B
Yeah, that's right. 3595 plus VAT.
- [08:52]
A
Yeah. And you're getting Swiss made internals. You're getting a unique dial put together and the fit and the finish, that is, it's impeccable. I don't even know what you would call it. It's almost as you say, it's a UFO shape to the case. But the way that everything joins in, even the rubber strap that you've got on it, the way it articulates, it sculpts itself in there, it comes with all the tooling so you can change them in and out yourself very easily. It is just phenomenal. And I don't usually say that about watches. And you know fine well that I was after this for a while when I got it. I was a very happy, chubby.
- [09:23]
B
Yeah, I mean, I was thrilled to see your reaction, or to hear your reaction as it were, because we really believed in that dial in particular, we did think it was a great example of what Fordite can be. In fact, it's quite an unusual one because it's one of the very first matte finished Fordite dials that we did. We used to polish them all and then we realized if you mattified them, you could see the layers of clear coat much better afterwards that you could see these transparent layers between the colors, which gives it like another element when you catch it in a different angle.
- [09:50]
A
You've explained something I didn't know. I thought about this because I looked at it and when I was showing it to people, I was catching like you say, a shimmer, a lacquer, a concentric circle design. And I didn't know what was. But now you've explained. Yeah, it's the lacquer that's coming through and it just gives a 3D look to it. So. Yeah, absolutely. First class. Check the show notes. Check the thumbnail for that. And that leads into the wrist. Check. So this is what I'm wearing. But you can tell us more about the tech and the details of it?
- [10:17]
B
Well, yeah, I mean you've given a very good account of it already. To be fair. The integration of the rubber strap is one thing that is worth touching upon because it is extremely complicated to get that fluid flowing. Look, from the case to the strap, we needed to put in so many angles on the, on the end of the strap itself and also in the case. So that just meets perfectly and it's properly anchored and it all integrates. All the pressure points are taken care of so the screws enter the strap at the right point so that when you bend the strap down, it doesn't flare away from the case. That there's a hard plastic plug effectively that sticks into a recess in the side of the case. All of these things go into explaining why there's no metal bracelet for Arkanaut yet. Because already even though the diameter of the watch is only 40.52 millimeters and the lug to lug, the actual lug to lug is just a little bit under 50. The active lug to lug, as I say, once you've got that strap plugged in there is closer to 60. So it's quite a long watch that wears on the wrist. If your watch is, if your Wrist is under 16.5cm, which is what mine is, and or if it's particularly round rather than flat topped as mine is, then it may feel a little bit big on your wrist. And we're mindful of this and we don't want to to increase that active lug to lug by putting a metal link in there. So we are developing a smaller version of this case which will have a diameter of 37 millimeters. And also it will possibly be able to receive a bracelet in the future. Although that is another task for another day. First we've got to get the 37 millimeter case working.
- [11:48]
A
Makes sense. And always keen to hear of future developments. Maybe that's something you've let out the bag that you shouldn't have, but let's flip it around and find out what you've got on the wrist. It's probably something quite similar, I would presume.
- [11:59]
B
Yeah, it is. The only difference between what I'm wearing and what you're wearing is that I've got the linear Fordite version. That's the kind of Paul Smith style stripy version. And we cut through the block of Fordite that we get in a different direction. That's why it looks different from Ricky's groovy version of the Fordite. And I love this one in particular. It has an incredible metallic nature to it. So when you tilt it in the light, the whole dial blazes like a Aventurine. Really. It's an unexpected treatment. Finding true linear like dials that are absolutely perfect with layers that are exactly the same thickness, or at least thickness from one side to the other of the dial and everything is laser straight is very, very hard. It's just one of the hardest things that we've ever attempted to do. We've only made a handful of perfect linears in our existence. And yeah, I'm very proud to have one of those on my wrist at the moment.
- [12:50]
A
Shownotes will be your friend. This is going to be a very visually orientated audio podcast, so you'll want to have a look at the pictures in and also the supplemental information we're going to put on our Instagram. And I'm just staring into this dial. I can get lost in this. Even though I've had it now for approach well over a quarter of a year since Watches and Wonders. And it's almost a Damascus effect as well when you look at it the way that it's cut through. But we explained for date, if you want more information on that, we have almost a full episode when we had James Thompson on the show to talk about his material sciences because he is the crazy mad scientist in the cave. But what else has been happening? Because it's been a while and you guys don't sit still. There's always a new crazy creation, a new material, something going on in the background. So what has been happening?
- [13:31]
B
Yeah, well, we've been focused on over the last year, like I say, on delivering orders and designing new models for the future. That 37 millimeter case that I let out of the bag isn't really a secret. It's something that people know needs to come. But there are other things as well in the pipeline. I might give you a hint as to what they are in a little while, but we've also been trying to grow our retail network because we're fully aware that people see Arkanaut and they may like it very much, but they're not willing to take the leap on a watch that they've never tried on their wrist, especially not one that doesn't look anything like anything else on the market. So we thought it was very important for us to have like Some key retail locations around the world. We've been working with Collective Horology in California for quite some time, a couple of years now, and they've been a fantastic partner for us. Most of our sales go through the U.S. to be honest, so we've been a bit nervous recently because of the tariff situation that's coming in and going out and always developing and now lingers hanging over all of us as a possible threat that could be deployed at any point in the future. So we want to find some more representation around Europe. Now we are partnered with Ace Jewellers in Amsterdam. Nominally my co host on the Real Time show, Alan Ben Joseph is presenting our watches in Amsterdam. But we also have partnered with Chronoshop in Prague. Now, Prague is only two hours away from where I live in Dresden, and I visit there regularly. It's my favorite city in the world and I've got a lot of friends there that I like to pop down and see. So I was talking to one of those friends, Jan Lydmansky, who's on Instagram @watchthefood. He's a publisher and journalist and watch fanatic in Prague and the leading voice in watchmaking in the Czech Republic, I would say, although I'm maybe biased because he's a very good friend. And I was saying to him, oh, Archinaut needs some presence in Czechia, so is there anywhere that you would recommend? And he told me a story about a good friend of his called Jakob, Jakob Civic, who had a boutique for many years, but was recently robbed and had a huge amount of his stock and customer watches stolen. And although insurance covered bits and bobs, it didn't cover everything. So he was in a bit of a situation. But he wanted to restart a boutique from the ground up and he needed brands to create friendly partnerships. Now, Jakob is a dream retailer to work with. His retail store is called ChronoShop CZ. Anyone that's worked on the executive side of sales in watchmaking knows that you have good retailers and bad retailers. The good ones pay their bills, the bad ones don't. Jakob is extremely honest and he pays bills ahead of time, which is almost unheard of. Even the best retailers tend to use the 30 days or 60 days or whatever it is that you give them. But he really doesn't like to have any outstanding debt. And Jakob needed some help basically in that moment, needed the brands that he'd always treated very well and very respectfully and always been a great partner to over the years to mobilize and to provide him with some stock and some interesting news to draw attention to his new boutique and to get things off the ground. And I was more than happy to put Archonaut's hand up for that task. And we said, okay, well we can not only provide some stock for, well, if not on consignment, just as a presentation so people can get the watches on their wrist and they can order through Jakob and he would get his percentage, therefore. But we could also design a model especially for the Czech market. And Jan and I discussed this at length. And having been, I guess, a tourist in Prague for many, many years, I've frequently found myself staring in the windows of their garnet shops and seeing the same sign around the city, granat turnoff. And I never really knew what it was. I knew granat meant garnet because it's very similar to the German for the word. And I said to Jan, why don't we do something with garnets? And he said, oh, actually you know what, I've got a contact at the mine, Granap turnoff, which is what I've been seeing all those years, not knowing what it was. And so we move very quickly. Jan always moves very quickly and he's extremely supportive in any idea. If anyone ever has an idea and they need someone to help propel it along, He's a good guy to talk to. But maybe don't put anything else on his plate because he seems to have 15 jobs. Every time I speak to him he's doing something else somewhere else in the world.
- [17:24]
A
Well, I have an idea to put in your plate. Why don't you tell us what this material is?
- [17:28]
B
Well, on the Garnet Goblin, which is the name of the special edition that we've made for Chronoshop in Prague, the material is a garnet and resin composite.
- [17:38]
A
What is a garnet? For the people that don't know what's a garnet?
- [17:40]
B
It's a semi precious stone. It's like a. It's like a. It looks like a dark ruby. Basically it's a stone they are mined, but they're not mined underneath the ground. They're actually mined on the surface. So you kind of like rake up the earth and these garnets turn over and then they need to be finished by hand. Granite Turnoff is a family owned mine that was started in 1953 about an hour and a half north of Prague, back in the direction of the German border. And it's I think the biggest surface mine in Czechia and it is responsible for hauling tons of garnets out of the ground every year and finishing them with their artisans on site there for all of that jewelry that you see on the high streets in Prague or BRNO or Ustinad Laban or wherever you are in Prague or in Czechia. Sorry. So yeah, these guys are experts in garnets. We spoke to them, we said what kind of garnets can you give us? And they said, oh well, we can give you these either give you finished garnets or raw unfinished garnets you can mess around with or tumbled garnets. And we ended up going for the tumbled kind. So these are tiny little 0.8 millimeter chips of garnets that have been tumbled to a smooth finish so not been polished or faceted. We took these and then we laid them in a kind of starburst pattern. I called it a, I think I called it a blizzard pattern, something like that on the website. And we laid them into these little molds that we've made and then we would paint them with like a layer of UV resistant resin and they would cure together. Then we'd do another layer and then we paint it again to make sure that everything was bonded nicely together. And we'd make these discs of garnet that looked like nothing else because no one's ever fused garnets together in that way. And then we polished them down to a gloss finish on a diamond wheel which takes forever because they're stones, they're quite hard and you know you've got to apply a lot of oil, take a lot of time. Each dial takes about three or four hours of hand finishing and that's after it's been hand set. So you know, there's a lot of work that goes into these. And then we set them on a, a gold colored base plate. Because gold reflects the red in the garnet very well, it brings out the fire in the stone. And then we place on top of that garnet a very thin 0.3 millimeter thick layer of sapphire crystal which is treated with an anti reflective coating in red which kind of, it gives it a very, very, very crisp, obviously perfectly flat, glossy surface. And it also like, you know, pulls out that tone from the garnet again a little more. And then surrounding that is a nine karat gold plated chapter ring with a matching nine carat gold plated handset with color matched Lume tips made for us by RC Tritech, which are placed on top of the hands. We went for nine karat gold instead of anything higher because it actually is a much nicer, more Inviting color. It's more yellow. So when you go up to like 24 karat gold, for example, it's really orange and it kind of clashed with the red. So we're not being cheapskates. The difference in plate and something like that, 24 and 9 carat is negligible really. It was just the case of we did all of the tests, we did like 9, 16, 18, 24 and we looked at them and we said the 9 is the best. So we just stuck with the 9.
- [20:45]
A
So as you were talking, I was refreshing my gray matter looking at the website because I know what this watch looks like. I've seen it before, remember the press release coming through. But as you talk about it and I look at the dial, it's bringing lots of different thoughts. It's like a lava effect. It looks like if you were looking at a furnace where the embers and the coals are, are just glowing red. And then you look at the case back and it is Diablo. It is the devil sitting there and it's the absolute perfect match. It's the coals. You would be dragged over in hell if you were a naughty boy. Which myself and you and Dave and everybody else that's on this show are definitely going to be ending up in. It is truly fantastic. The way this looks and as you were explaining the gold undertones where the light comes through like subsurface scattering, it would come back with an even richer color saturation and a deep hue. So that one there is fantastic. This one is probably the one that you're talking about the most because it's the most current. Is it available? What is the price differential? How can people get a hold of this one?
- [21:44]
B
Right, very good question. So, yes, it is available. It's limited to 66 pieces, but we have some pieces left. We're selling a higher click than we expected, to be honest, because we thought it would be a pretty niche proposition. But it's going well. So 66 pieces in total. You can buy it either from us directly on www.archinaut.watch or via chronoshop.cz. or you can go to the Chronoshop boutique in Prague, which is only about 150 meters away from the old square. So, right, central if you're a tourist, if you're there to see the sights pop up there, take you five minutes and just ring the bell on the doorbell. It's on a floor 1.5 on a lovely old building, so you can see that and lots of other watches that Jakob has in stock as well. The price is €4,450, excluding VATs. It is the most expensive watch we've ever made, along with another watch that we've just released quietly for our retail partner in Ireland. We can talk about that in a moment if we have time, but that's because it has a huge amount of hand work that goes into it and obviously the garnets themselves have a residual value. We we get these direct from Granat turnoff. We have to pay for them, obviously. And we'll be presenting the watch alongside Granat, Tunov and Chronoshop in Prague, hopefully in early October. So there'll be a an event taking place within about 50 yards of the Charles Bridge, which again is a massive tourist hotspot. If you Google it, you'll see exactly what it is. I'm sure you'll have seen it before somewhere, maybe not knowing what it was called, but we'll be just off that bridge in the Granach Tenhof Museum in the middle of Prague, hopefully early October. So sign up to the newsletter from Arkanaut if you want to learn more about that, because it would be great for people to come along and see it.
- [23:25]
A
Do sign up for this newsletter because it's not like a normal newsletter. I was a little bit apprehensive of putting my details into yet another web form, even though I know the people behind the scenes. And it is very sporadic that you'll actually get an email and it's something you'll want to read because it's full of good stuff. It's not just sales Blurb ran through ChatGPT, so that's a thumbs up. Details of the mailing list will be in the show notes. Well, let's not around here. Let's move straight on to the Irish connection.
- [23:51]
B
Oh yeah, okay. So we're very close to Johnny McElharan, who you may know through his work with Limited Edition and Pietro Tamia in London. And Johnny is the organizer of the Festival of Time, which takes place mostly every year, sometimes finally in Waterford in the old Medieval Museum, which is just a few meters away from the Museum of Timekeeping, also in Waterford.
- [24:14]
A
He's been on the show a number of times, basically running as the Robin to Pietro's Batman, and he's one of the nicest guys in the world.
- [24:22]
B
So Robin to Batman is maybe interesting. I'm not a huge DC fanatic, but I believe Robin at one point graduated to Nightwing, and so that's maybe what we're trying to do with this with this Chrono Maric. Johnny has his own channel as well, Chrono Lux fine watches. And we wanted to make a model specifically for him. We wanted to make a model that we could present at the Festival of Time. We wanted to thank him for his constant support to Archonaut. And so we came up with this idea to use Connemara marble, which is a green marble that occurs on the west coast of Ireland in unsurprisingly Connemara, and crush it, it mix it with resin as per, make a very, very thin layer of this marble. Overlay a luminous disc with this marble similar to the style of the Bonehead dial construction. And then again ring it with nine karat gold, chapter ring and hands and top it with a anti reflective sapphire, this time coated with green. And the result was absolutely incredible. It was, honestly, it's probably the best watch that I've had on my wrist for a long, long, long time. And just the look of the thing, like it's got an anti reflective coating on the domed sapphire as well. So it's got a green AR coating there, it's got a green AR coating on the dial. The gold of the hands and the chapter ring in between these two sapphire elements. And then the texture of the marble, it still looks like stone, but if you stick it under a UV light, it glows like it looks like it's gonna take your wrist off. To be honest, it looks kind of toxic, but it's brilliant. It's absolutely gorgeous. It's just enough, just enough strength on that glow in the dark to show the time. Because obviously the hands are silhouetted against this glowing background, as is the way that we are telling the time of most of our new models now. And it came out perfectly on the reverse there's a new third generation glow patch caseback. So for any of our listeners, any of your listeners, sorry, that don't realize that we're making glow in the dark case backs. We've been doing this for a couple of years now and we've gone through several iterations of how we construct these case backs. Because we don't have incredible movements inside the watches. We have Swiss made automatic Soprod M100. So very standard, easy to service, slimline, crucially automatic calibers 3.6 millimeters thick. So a little slimmer than the ETA or the Sellita standard workhouse tractor calibre. We thought that was probably the best thing for us to do considering how much space we need for these multi layer dials and these incredible case backs. So Our case backs which conceal these movements. Glow in the dark. This one's got a glow in the dark snake on it. Because, as you may know, Ricky St. Patrick reputedly chased all the snakes out of Ireland. So we were like, okay, these are the only snakes in Ireland, which makes them extremely rare and scarce. People like a bit of scarcity and, you know, that was the idea behind it. We just bring the snakes back. Should have a huge, like poster campaign, like a cinema campaign saying the snakes are back in Ireland.
- [27:14]
A
Very Metal Gear Solid.
- [27:16]
B
It is a bit. It's a bit. Yeah, yeah.
- [27:19]
A
And something I want to add in here because I didn't realize and for anybody that ever plays one of these watches or buys one, don't fall foul of the problem area. I arrived in and that was. I didn't realize that you can't wind these manually.
- [27:34]
B
Oh yeah.
- [27:35]
A
Do you ever get tech support calls about this one?
- [27:37]
B
Do we ever? Yeah, we have a few. I mean, obviously we don't make that many watches. We only make about 250 watches a year. And to be honest, that's like halfway to our max capacity. We think we could probably still get away with making 500 with the team, as small as it is right now, but that would take a. Still a huge uptick of effort on all of our parts, but one we'd be willing to make if it came to that. The vast majority of the customer inquiries we get from buyers is, oh, how do I wind my watch? Just shake it. And generally that's enough. Like, it depends what kind of lifestyle you have, to be fair. Like, I. I bought my Arcanaut before I worked for Archinaut, and I didn't know it was not automatic winding, which is idiotic. I'm a watchmaker. I should have realized. I just didn't think. I just didn't assume it. And it wasn't like as openly communicated then as it is now because when I realized, I was like, oh, right, we need to really tell people this because it's kind of a key fact you need to know. But I never had a problem with it. It. So I would just set my watch, put it on my wrist, and then it, because of my movement, it would charge sufficient sufficiently very quickly. And I never even noticed that it wasn't manual wind. I'd actually sit there and like twiddle the. Twiddle the crown in the dead position before I realized what I was doing was complete nonsense. And, you know, I understand why people wouldn't realize. It's easy to miss a Detail like that on a website, even if it is stated more than once, that's, you know, totally understandable. But ultimately it's. It's a couple of minutes, you know, give it a shake and then you stick it on your wrist and before you know it, it's up to speed. And yeah, it may be the most frequent question we have, but it isn't so frequent that we feel that it's a critical issue.
- [29:16]
A
It's something I wanted to bring up because I didn't realize myself. I got the watch and headed to Watches and Wonders. So obviously was in motion. Whereas if I put the watch on and then sat down at the computer, it would have died instantly. So, yes, shake to wake. It's like the old Seiko shuffle that the old Seiko 5s and SKXs used to have. So it is commonplace even with the biggest brands out there.
- [29:38]
B
Yeah, there is a forerunner, of course. There's several, actually examples of it. In the past, we have looked into what it would cost to create a custom winding work to flip the positions of the date and the manual wind. So we need a dead position on the crown so it can be relocated against the case. To be honest, the watches would be incredible as quartz watches. I thought this a lot because, you know, with the quartz watch you can have a date quartz watch, right? So you'd have like a second position or a first position where you'd set the date. If you remove the date from the quartz movement, that'd be a free spinning position. And then because there is no manual wind, you'd have the click in position against the case. So, yeah, it would work ideally as a quartz model. We don't do quartz. We have no direct plan to do quartz. We have discussed ways in which we might be able to experiment with it because there are a couple of interesting movements, especially one made by Ronda that doesn't have a crown at all. It has like a push button on the back of it, right. So you've got to put the button on the back of the watch so you could have a crownless watch, which was appealing to us because we thought, oh, this is kind of futuristic. And what that also means is you don't need to stem going into the movement because if you want to create a really dynamic and, how can we say, voluminous dial, then you have to always be mindful of the fact that there's a stem running from where the movement actually is to the edge of the watch. If you can remove that stem, you can put the movement anywhere. You could put it really close to the crystal and have a dial that fell away from the movement or you could put it really close to the case back and have a dial that crept up towards the crystal, for example, like an arena, like a bowl. So there are, there's scope to use quartz in a way that is necessitated by the dial design, by the aesthetics. And given that our, our main reason for existing is to create crazy materials and wonderful aesthetics and visuals and not necessarily to break the bank on horological innovation, I think that there is maybe a way we could do that in the future. What do you think?
- [31:30]
A
I think you're onto something. Reasons being quartz is not the dirty word it once used to be. Recently as in the last week or so, oh, Citizen Boulevard Accutron have announced they're bringing back the 214 SpaceView movement as the 314. So it's not quartz but it's tuning fork tech. And there are loads and loads of watches out nowadays that don't feature the second hand which this watch here that I've got on the wrist doesn't feature a second hand. So quartz or not quartz, it wouldn't matter a jaw. And like you say this is living art, functional living art on the wrist. I've not seen a piece that could eloquently describe that. Even better. So yeah, quartz would be a thumbs up and it may even be a little bit cheaper and a little bit easier to put together.
- [32:13]
B
That's true as well.
- [32:14]
A
Yeah.
- [32:14]
B
It's an interesting thing to countenance because although people that haven't seen the watches may question the price, given the basic nature of the Soprod M100 that we use to power the watches, we don't have much margin. Like the truth of the matter is like we don't have the markup that big brands, even small brands that are very transparent mention their names. But the most transparent of all recently finded brands, we don't even have the same markup as they do. And you know that's difficult when it comes to developing new products. So bringing a quartz module in would obviously allow us to reduce the price slightly but maybe not like drastically because the watches like materially already costs a lot. I think the thing is if there's a reason for it to be quartz, as in, you know, we've built something around a quartz movement and we've removed the crown then fine. You know, there is no way around that other than re engineering the case back to be manually wound like a resonance or something. So fine you know, if you want to. If you want us to do that, which we could do, then that would be a 25 grand Archanaut, but maybe we could do a quartz model that's like under 3K. Just perhaps, maybe. I haven't done the calculations, but that might be interesting for some people.
- [33:27]
A
Yeah, I've had a quick squiz while you were chatting there because you're good at monologues and they're interesting. So I'll let you continue with them. I can't find this Irish number on your Instagram or anywhere. Is it hidden?
- [33:38]
B
Yeah, it is. It doesn't really exist. It's a ghost. So that's why I'm. I'm very thrilled to be able to talk to you about it on air today because anyone listening will know to email me directly at Roberconaut DK and ask if you're interested in the Chronomara. If you want to see some pictures or learn some more about it, then get in touch. The reason why we haven't put it online yet is because we have one prototype which I left in Ireland deliberately, a D. I didn't like, just leave it there by accident. I left it with Johnny to show to his clients and his friends and to wear it and to enjoy it because, you know, it was a real labor of love. Like he's a great friend, he's a great guy. He really works his ass off to bring good quality content to the industry. And he'll also be restarting his podcast in the Metal very soon. So keep your ear to the ground for that. If you can't get enough of watch news in your ears. But yeah, it will emerge on the website eventually. But it's really not like our focus at the minute because we have two new models coming out in our core collection. Also limit to 66 pieces, the Phantom and the Green Fairy, which are follow ups to the Bonehead piece. So they look kind of similar. The main difference is the color. The Phantom will glow pink, purple and the Fairy will glow green and also look green in the day. And they'll have cool new case back designs. So they're coming out soon. And that's really where we're putting our main focus at the moment. And we'll communicate the Chronomara later down the line.
- [34:53]
A
Okey dokey. And I was to ask you about something to do with a fake fairy tale.
- [34:59]
B
The fake fairy tale is pertaining to the Garnet Goblin. So when we were designing the concept behind the Goblin, we were like coming up with names Just stupid names throwing them out there. And the goblin came out and we thought it was funny and cute and we could imagine a cool case back as you've seen, it's got the glowing garnet goblin on the back there. But we wanted to come up with some justification for why we called it the Garnet Goblin. And initially none of our skies are arcana knew that garnets were surface mined. We all assumed that they were mined, mind, you know, from the earth, like a typical, like Tolkien esque dwarf, like hacking away at a big seam of garnets down underground. That's not the case. And so we came up with this fake fairy tale about the garnet goblin who was born underground with all the other goblins, but never quite felt at home. And so she, she's actually a girl. She's called Maria. She's named after Maria Therese, the Empress of Bohemia, who is responsible for setting the standards of what Czech garnets must adhere to before they leave Czechia. So she's called Maria. So this garnet goblin, she's born underground, she never feels quite at home. And then one day she decides to escape to the surface. She just has this feeling that she's supposed to be out in the sunlight. And when she gets out in the sunlight, she realizes that she's made of garnets. She'd never noticed that before because it's very dark underground. And she sees all these garnets just like her lying on the field around her because it's a circle surface mine. And so she realizes that, you know, sometimes finding your place just takes a little bit of relocation. And that's. That was our story, which we put out there on Instagram with a disclaimer saying, this was, this is fake. We just made this up. Loads of people thought it was real. Loads of Czech guys were contacting us going, I've never heard of this story before in my life, but I like it. I'm gonna tell my child. And I was like, okay, okay, great. Yeah, like, what have we done? You know, like the problem with Instagram is like, you have to read more bit that you have to click on to see the rest of the post.
- [36:48]
A
In the last couple of days, I have seen some of the best memes appearing from the Onion online. And is it the Bee Network or something like that? And they're absolutely top class. And it's only if you know, you recognize that it's satire. But if you don't know, then you think it's legit.
- [37:06]
B
Yeah, well, we've had some first hand experience that now of creating fake news. Basically, even though we told people it was fake news, it still didn't get through that it was fake until. Yeah, until they contacted us. It was quite funny. And the reason why we did it is because the Garnet Goblin is technically part of the experimental series. Now the Experimental family is our playground, basically, where we just try new stuff, whether it's a new case, a new dial material, a new strap design, a new case back, so on and so forth. With this model, although there was obviously a lot of experimentation with the dial itself, we wanted to experiment with the communication. We were thinking, well, you know, why do people buy watches? You know, do they buy them just for the watch? Is it. And in that case is it mostly the dial? Which I think is probably the general consensus of why people buy watches. But what about the story? Because people always talk about the story. You've got to have a story to justify this watch's existence, blah, blah, blah. And sometimes you get the feeling that the story's just been phoned in after they've made the watch because they've looked at a spreadsheet and they've seen, seen that this year blue dials are selling. So stick a blue dial in it, blah, blah, blah.
- [38:09]
A
I'll be talking about Grand Seiko again.
- [38:10]
B
We can talk about Grand Seiko all you want because it never gets old. Like making up press releases for Grand Seiko is like what I do on my days off. Like it's hilarious.
- [38:18]
A
I want Grand Seiko toilet paper. It's a bit like dictionary toilet paper, but it's got a new quote of a different season every time you wipe your arse.
- [38:26]
B
Yeah. That's an image I didn't want to have in my head in the middle of the afternoon. But it's also a great idea. I'd actually buy it, you know, Grand Seiko should take if they had a bit more, more like self awareness. And this is a lot to ask for from like a very serious like high end Japanese brand. But that would be such a funny giveaway at an event. Could you imagine there was a watch.
- [38:43]
A
I can't remember who made it, maybe Richard Mille. And there was a mechanism built in, a complication where you would press a button and it would rotate around multiple words. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah. And Grand Seiko could basically create something where it just drops in random words in different places, where it picks a certain type of tree and a certain type of season with a certain type of hue. Press release Done.
- [39:07]
B
Do you remember that old Christophe Claret watch? I think it was like they did a couple of casino inspired ones. One with like a roulette table. I think one was like cards as well. You pressed a button and it dealt you a new hand of cards. You can do that as well. That. That's a complication that needs to come back and be put to good use for Grand Seiko.
- [39:24]
A
Yeah, indeed. Anyway, we digress. We're not here to talk about GS, we're here to talk about Arcanaut. And we're almost at the end of our time and there are many other things that you do need to tell us about and probably the main thing is where people can check these out in real life. You've mentioned retail establishments, but across the world, where can people come to see? Are you at Intersect? Are you at Wind Up? Are you at Geneva Watch Days? Dubai Watch Week? Where can people come and have a look?
- [39:46]
B
Yeah. So over the last couple of years we've kind of done all of those events at least once, but we haven't been ever present at any of them. We are going to be for the rest of the year. I'm going to be in Geneva watch days all week. You will find me at the tent. Basically I'll be outside the tent for most of the week in Geneva. So that's down by lan, near the Beau Rivage. If anybody wants to get in touch then my email is available. Like I said, it's Rob archonaut.dk and I will have watches with me so you can come and have a look at those.
- [40:15]
A
Are you going to be like the guy from. Well, I don't even know how old you are. Maybe the think of the 80s and it was a guy with a trench coat that would just open it up and there'd be all the watches and he would throw them off.
- [40:25]
B
I mean, yeah, you know my style, Ricky. That's generally how I roll.
- [40:29]
A
But usually say the guy had clothes on underneath the trench coat as well.
- [40:33]
B
No. Well, I've modified it. I've brought it up to date. You know, I'm a bit more liberal.
- [40:36]
A
Global warming, I understand.
- [40:37]
B
Yeah. And it is very, very warm at the end of summer in Geneva. So no, I won't have a trench coat on. I'll be stark bollock naked and I'll be holding Arkanauts above my head screaming to attract attention to myself. Probably. No, if you want to see them and nothing else, then let me know and I'll be there. We'll also be at Micro Praha in Prague. I think it's in December, first week of December. Dates aren't finalized yet as far as I'm aware, but we'll definitely be there and please come down and see us. In the meantime. We will also. Actually we'll probably be at the timeout event in Maryland at Little Treasury Jewelers. Steve Mahlian, owner there, good friend of mine, has asked me to come out again and I have graciously accepted because I love Steve and I love Little treasury and it's the best place, in my opinion, in that region to get your fine watches. They are also the biggest Grand Seiko dealer in North America. So talking to Grand Seiko, if you like, go there. But yeah, that's it. So I would say for the rest of the year you'll find me at Geneva Watchday's timeout event in Gambril's Maryland at Little Treasury Jewellers and then again at Micro Praha in Prague in December.
- [41:46]
A
Well, I think we've covered quite a lot, but we do have a couple of minutes left. So anything else you want to tell us about what's coming down the line or how people can get a hold of these things? Is the generally a waiting list? You said you only do around about 250 pieces a year. That's not many at all. What is the process for people that want to find out more apart from emailing you because you've done that thing where an advert comes on a podcast and they repeat the web address four times in a row like Rogan does. So apart from your email address, which people can click on in the show notes because they'll forget by the time they get to work, they can look through show notes if you like. What they see they can click across. But any other information you want to divulge?
- [42:20]
B
Yeah, of course you can see what we have currently available on the website. If there's something on there that you've heard of and you don't see, then please do get in touch. But you'll see all the current Fordite models listed online. They can be bought immediately, they can just be checked out. The delivery time on them is between four and eight weeks at the moment because we're waiting on some new cases to be made and for me to return to Denmark to assemble the watches because I'm currently in Germany trying to.
- [42:45]
A
Are you the guy that puts them together?
- [42:46]
B
Yeah. Yeah.
- [42:47]
A
Seriously, I didn't know that. Yeah. A watchmaker, Ricky, I know you're a watchmaker, but it was bremont you worked for. And then I thought you just did all the marketing and the PR and the promotions. I didn't realize you were at the Bench. Wow.
- [42:59]
B
Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is, this is like where like some of the developments of the case and the new dial construction that come from. For me, actually having hands on experience of building them, I realized how we could optimize them a little bit and make them more robust and make it easier to assemble as well. Because, you know, you want to make a watch that is like intelligently designed so that when a watchmaker comes to fix it, be it someone else other than myself, that they'll intuitively be able to, you know, take it to bits and put it back together again.
- [43:25]
A
So you're basically Porsche, not Audi.
- [43:27]
B
Yeah, we're Porsche, not Audi. Yeah. That's a nice way to put it.
- [43:30]
A
It's easy to work on afterwards instead of Audi, where you have to take the whole car apart to change the timing belt 100%.
- [43:36]
B
But I believe that that's part of good design. Like if you don't build something with that repair aspect in mind, then, then you'd. Well, for me, you're a flash, Harry, just trying to grab someone's cash and disappear into the night. You know, you should do the job like properly so that it can be done again by somebody else who isn't at your knee. So that's just my personal perspective on it. But yeah, it's a good one.
- [43:57]
A
It's a good one. I agree with and genuinely, hand on heart, I didn't realize you were part of that. I thought. I know in the past you'd worked for Bremont, you've done everything, you've done media, you've done journalism.
- [44:07]
B
I was an Omega apprentice. Like, I've worked for Long Jeans, Hamilton, Rado, done all the Swatch Group stuff. Not Breguet, to be fair. Yeah, they do a block pan once.
- [44:16]
A
What were you doing? Were you scraping off the founding day?
- [44:20]
B
No, I wasn't doing anything quite so controversial. I just serviced it, put it back together.
- [44:24]
A
Well, we are at the end of our time and there's a lot to digest here. There's going to be a lot of images. If you can furnish us with some pictures of some of the things that you have mentioned that aren't quite yet on your website, just so people can get a bit of an inkling of what's going on there and then they can reach out. But yeah, it is a pleasure to chat with you and again, thank you so Much for orchestrating my new wrist piece across at Watches and Wonders this year. It was something to look forward to after the multiple hours. This is the thing, right? Everyone talks about Switzerland. There was an advert on the TV about it was a breakfast cereal in the UK and it was talking about you could set your watch by it. And everyone talks about the Swiss industry and how you can set your watch by your clock. By it. See their bloody airport. It is the worst airport in the world to get through passport control. I was in Bulgaria, which is no offense, Bulgarians listening the arse end of the world. And when I came through their airport it was a dream, it was a breeze. It was the easiest thing in the world after almost breaking my spine on all the potholes to get to the airport. Once I was there it was almost as if they didn't have security, passport control, etc etc Geneva, Wow. You can't even see the end of the line when you arrive. And it doesn't matter what time of day it is, it doesn't matter if it's the day before, two days before, three days before Geneva watch days or watches and wonders. You are going to be queuing there longer than the actual plane trip itself. So yes, there we go. I'm glad I got that off my chest. It's been sitting there bugging me for a long, long time. Every time I go to Geneva I just hate it. That's one of the reasons I've now got a Bulgarian wife, because hopefully I can get dual citizenship and get one of her passports. That would make life a lot easier. But if anybody wants to check you out, what you're up to, all the rest of it. What is that web address?
- [46:02]
B
One more time, www.archinaut.watch and Arcanaut is spelled A R C A N A.
- [46:08]
A
U T and as I say, heartily recommend you sign up for the mailing list. You will not be pissed off. This isn't once a week or as I've noticed with some other watch places, multiple times a week. So only when good information is ready to be received will it be sent out and it's pertinent. So one to watch and obviously check us out twice a week. We're out Mondays and Thursdays generally, unless there's some technical hitches and some gremlins behind the scenes. And you can check us out on Instagram cottishwatches. So until next time, and next time will only be maybe a couple of months away because we'll be coming across to Geneva Watch days team handed myself Dave Simona. I think Sarah might make an appearance. Gav will be along yet again. And because we know where you're going to be hanging out, we're going to come and pester you. We're going to see exactly what your little three wheeled Robin Reliant Del Boy antics are going to be like outside the big marquee tent at Boravage. But always a pleasure and we'll catch you again soon.
- [47:01]
B
Thanks, Ricky. Speak to you soon, Sam.