The Business of Watches [010] Ming Executives Ming Thein And Praneeth Rajsingh Talk Design, Manufacturing, Pricing, And What's Next For The Innovative Brand¶
Published on Wed, 7 Jan 2026 16:02:17 +0000
Why a bracelet might be the most significant and important new product from the brand, and how Ming plans to capitalize on success.
Synopsis¶
In this episode of The Business of Watches, host Andy Hoffman sits down with Ming Thein (founder and creative director) and Pranith Raj Singh (CEO) of independent watch brand Horologist Ming at Dubai Watch Week. The conversation provides a rare, transparent look into the financial realities and operational challenges of running a young, independent watch brand in today's complex market.
The discussion centers heavily on Ming's groundbreaking polymesh bracelet—a titanium mesh created through additive manufacturing that has generated significant buzz in the watch community. Ming Thein details the extensive development process, including creating prototypes at five to six times scale and iterating through seven or eight versions to achieve the right kinematics and feel. The bracelet contains approximately 1,690 components with some elements as thin as 50-70 microns, and remarkably achieved 400 Vickers hardness through repeated annealing during the printing process. The team reveals plans for straight-lug versions for other brands and discusses the considerable challenges of producing variants in different materials or widths.
Beyond product development, the conversation delves into Ming's unconventional business model and financial structure. With banks unwilling to provide credit lines without prohibitive collateral requirements, the brand has developed a "project financing" model where qualified investors fund specific watch projects in exchange for returns on sales rather than equity. This approach allows Ming to maintain creative independence while accessing necessary capital. Hoffman and the Ming team discuss the realities of production costs, tariff impacts (particularly the 39% US tariffs that Ming has been absorbing), and profit margins that are less than half those of traditional watch brands. The brand also teases an upcoming integrated bracelet watch called "Starfield," featuring innovative tool-less micro-adjustment capabilities, set for release in Q1, as well as plans for a more accessible subsidiary brand that would allow for experimentation without the weight of Ming's serious brand identity.
Links¶
Transcript¶
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| Andy Hoffman | Welcome to the Business of Watches, where Horology meets high finance, and each tip tells a story of markets, margins, mishaps, and mechanical mastery. I'm your host, Andy Hoffman, Senior Business Editor at Hodinky. In this series, we dive deep into the global watch industry, a place where centuries-old craftsmanship intersects with billion-dollar valuations, executive brand strategy, and investor speculation. From Swiss Valleys to Silicon Valley, we trace the movements shaping this uniquely resilient sector. Just how big is the business of timekeeping? Well, some estimates place the entire watch industry from ultra-luxury maisons to smartwatches and micro brands at north of $100 billion globally. But behind that figure is a complex web of legacy, innovation, and ever-shifting consumer tastes and demand. This is the podcast for collectors, analysts, watch buyers, and sellers, and anyone who's fascinated by the intersection of wristware and wealth. Because if time is money, then money is most certainly time. So let's get down to business. Horolloger Ming is a truly unique force in the world of watches. It's a young brand, just eight years old, and it's genuinely international, with its founders, operations staff, and executives scattered across the globe, from Malaysia to Switzerland, Dubai, and beyond. At the center is Mingtian, the brand founder, creative head, and as it says on his business cards, Supreme Overlord. Informed and inspired in part by his work as a photographer in the interplay of light and materials, it's his designs and vision that are the brand's products. But how do you make that a business, a business of watches. Pranith Raj Singh is Ming's CEO. It's his job to run the operation and make it work financially. The company's evolution and approach is not like the others. We talk frankly about production costs, novel project financing solutions, and the path to make Ming's creative output and ideas a sustainable watch brand. There's plenty of news in this podcast from how Ming will evolve its polymesh bracelet that has set much of the watch world abuzz to plans for an entry price subsidiary brand to a sneak peek at a new integrated bracelet watch, a first for Ming, and one that is sure to have an impact when it gets revealed. It was on one of Ming's wrists when we talked in Dubai, on the other, an Apple Watch Ultra. That's not random. Apple comes up a lot in our conversation, the Cupertino Tech and Design giant looms large over Ming's singular creative and business approach. One note the reduction in US tariffs on Swiss watches to fifteen percent from 39% hadn't taken effect when we spoke. It's now been implemented, but still needs to be finalized in a permanent and ratified agreement. Here's our conversation with the And business heads of HoralaJerming. We hope you enjoy. We are in Dubai or at Dubai, watch week. We are in Dubai. I'm here with uh Pranit Raj Singh, who is the CEO of Herolager Ming. |
| Ming Thein | Thank you for getting that right. So many Ming watches which is Yeah. Who is the what is your title? Ming. This is actually this is actually something which is subject to much debate. I mean I I should be like chief creative, co-founder, chief creative, chief designer, whatever you want to call it. But the problem is you do so many things that my business card actually has supreme overlord on it. It does. That's that's right. It does. That's right. So you are the supreme overl |
| Andy Hoffman | ord. Technically chief creative. Okay. Yeah. Excellent. And only creative at this point. And so you've been here probably uh four or five days. How are you finding the show? How are you finding interest in the products right now? What what do you make of uh where we are in the cycle. |
| Ming Thein | Dubai, you know, Dubai is always it does everything turned up to 11, right? And I think that's that's also reflected this time around. The show is a lot bigger than the last one. A lot more brands, a lot more participation, and it's I don't know what you want to call the density of people you you meet and the density of um interactions is really high. So, you know, if at the end of the day I'm trying to leave our booth, it takes me half an hour to walk to the exit because you keep bumping into people you know and you have conversations and it's um there's been a lot of serendipitous meeting which I think actually it's it's the one of the most valuable parts of coming to these things because there are the conversations you have that you don't expect and then suddenly it's like, oh maybe this will go somewhere. You And that's on the client customer side or I mean um other. Okay, so I'm I'm focusing these days more on the on the creative side and less on the client side. Obviously, there's a lot of clients that I'll bump into that I know. But I think for the for the most part, it's the chance to meet a lot of people that you you might want to work with, you might want to see this collaborations with, or they want to work with you. And then there's this it's hard to go and plan these things otherwise because it's like you trek out to the other side of the world for a meeting that may not happen. It feels a little bit forced as opposed to, oh, you know, casually bump into you, love your stuff, you know, we should talk and |
| Andy Hoffman | goes from there. Aaron Powell You brought up collaborations. Where where do you think we are on collaborations? I mean collaborations have become pretty ubiquitous um common thing. |
| Ming Thein | They have. I think collaboration the the thing with most collaborations is some work really well in terms of like each each brand has something they bring to the table. Some don't. Some are just like there because it's I don't know, we'll just chuck two things together and see what sticks and hopefully you know something falls out of it. I think the collaborations where there is a genuine reason for it to exist makes sense. The collaborations where it's just we're being opportunistic, I think those will die because eventually people will just get used to the fact that look, there's nothing interesting here. I |
| Pranith Raj Singh | also think a good collaboration would probably be the only collaboration between the two collaborating parties because by definition, each party has to make room for the other. Yeah. Right? So there's this constant tension between putting the most of yourself in there, but leaving room for the other person. And that is a taxing process. So at least I would assume and from our limited experience, by the time you're done with that, you're like, This is amazing, but I never want to do this again with you because we will kill each other. Right. And if you don't if you don't feel that way, I think you haven't pushed hard enough on the product. |
| Ming Thein | Uh yeah.. I I ag agreeree. I agree. actually with that I agree with that. I I also think that these things have to feel organic. It's not like, you know, we're we're going to be two large corporates forcing a merger. And then the entity that comes out of it has like five names and nobody remembers what the hell it is. But it has to be something more along the lines of look, I like what you do, you like what I do, the this the space for us to work together. You know, wouldn't it be cool if you know we had your movement in in our design or you know, I'd I wish you could do a case for dial for us and see where see where that falls out. But to elucidate a little bit more on what Pernice said, if each brand has a strong identity of its own, trying to find room to accommodate enough of the other brand's identity that it's very clearly a child of both. That's hot. Aaron Ross Powell And |
| Andy Hoffman | also because, you know, Ming, even though you haven't been around for a very long time, your identity is pretty well defined. Your design language, you know, when I wear a Ming, people across the room say that's a Ming. So how do you find that balance with a collaboration where the where the partner has at least some semblance of um of identity in that in that piece as well. |
| Ming Thein | Aaron Ross Powell For us at least it's about saying this is what you're responsible for, this is what I'm responsible for. You have to trust them a little bit that they're not gonna give you something that completely doesn't work. That they understand what you do in your design codes a little bit. I think I think that's really important. And likewise, you know, we try and respect their design codes and integrate some of that essence into into what we do. But at the same time we don't sort of drop our own stuff. I'll show you something later that I think tic |
| Andy Hoffman | ks the boxes for that. Okay. Very good. And uh you know, we were talking before um we started rolling you're here at DebiWatch Week, I saw you last it But you know, in terms of the organization and sort of the the public-facing situation with the brand, you were saying that you're gonna be maybe not as attending as many public events and and and as doing as much you know public facing time. What's going on with the the structure and the organization of the of the company |
| Ming Thein | there? Well fundamentally nothing much has changed since uh I handed off the operational role to Prenathan. He's he's uh doing a fantastic job as CEO so I can concentrate on creative. The thing is the longer the brands around, I think the longer the development time and the more complex the products get. Which means that even if we still stick to the same launch schedule of somewhere between eight and ten launches a year, we're gonna find that each project takes up more time. Now, on top of that, we've stopped using an external engineering partner and we're doing all the engineering internally. I we meaning me. I'm not a trained engineer, I'm a train watchmaker, I'm not a trained designer. So at this point, you're probably wondering, you know, why should you buy a watch from us? I mean the reality is we had to learn everything the hard way. So when I started designing watches, it was on paper with a you know drawing board and set squares and and all that. Then I moved to two dimensions in Photoshop, and that's the point at which I think the brand started. So I would give four-view plans to our engineering partners to try and figure out and basically expand to a three-dimensional thing. And then they would have to figure out how the internal construction would work. Somewhere in year two, year three, I taught myself how to CAD. So I I was doing all of the external structures and then you know we can dated design. So 3D work, basically. Parametric 3D work, which you can you can then translate into machinable components directly. But that was the start of our second generation design language where things got a lot more ornate. We had the flying blade lugs and we had side sculpting and and basically stuff that you can't easily do in two dimensions. You need three dimensions to make that work. And I think that opened my eyes to the possibilities of of just general changes and refinements in form. The problem is they didn't understand how all of that went together as as far as assembly goes. So third generation, there's no fourth generation for reasons we'll get into later, and fifth generation now. Increasingly all of the engineering is done by me, including the internal construction. Which basically means that now when we go to our production partners, they take the file, they add tolerances for the machine, like specific G code for the for the CNC paths and threading and everything else |
| Pranith Raj Singh | . And that's it. When we did the polymesh, for instance, um Jason uh who who runs the three D printers, the farm of three D printers now in the in the office. Well we started with one and then now you have a farm. Yeah. Because |
| Ming Thein | every month mingle comes like we buy another printer. Uh we have five of them now. Yeah. I'm serious because bringing all of this R and D stuff or as much of the R and D and engineering stuff internally as possible has really helped because we can shorten the process a lot. Rather than saying, look, I'm gonna make a a rough 3D file, I've got to wait for somebody to fill out the innards and see whether it works, come back and then inevitably they don't understand what is critical and what's not critical. So the design will run and then I have to fix that and then fix the engineering, check the engineering. Previously I would draw the outside of the car, send it off the engineering department, they would try to package all the components and then come back it would look nothing like the original drawing. Right? Now what we're doing is we're doing the external drawing, the internal packages and the components, and then we send each component away to be produced. But in order to do that, internally what we're doing is basically I will 3D print the car and the components and tessellate things and move everything around until I'm happy with it. And then it goes away for production. Now, with with polymesh, there are so many parameters in this, right? There's so many different geometries you can use to create articulation of the individual links. We went through seven or eight different versions, a lot of sub-versions. I have the the poly mesh in my hand right now. I'm stroking it. That's what everybody does. It's like titanium lingerie. You know, it has that it has that silky feel. No, so back to the geometries. I mean to to create the right kinematics and the right feel, basically, I have to control the way the individual elements move, laterally, horizontally, and together as a coupled system. That's not straightforward. You can't explain that to somebody and say, look, here's your design brief. But I know how it's supposed to feel. I know how much articulation I need for certain things. So we would 3D print them at like a five to six times scale, uh, because it's easier on a normal filament printer. Rinse and repeat. I mean, the thing was I would be thinking of improvements as the first one's printing. And because this is complex, it takes two days to print like a small sectional model. So as that sectional model was printing, I go, okay, you know what, let's do another revision. But then at that point it's I gotta wait for the first one to finish for the second one. We would actually have both printers running, like the first two printers running in parall |
| Andy Hoffman | el to do that. So talk about what I mean what the experience has been you you you have sort of collaborated on bracelets before and obviously you have you y you know, your straps and bracelets that you do. But have you been surprised by the response to the polymesh? I mean, you know, when we wrote about it at Hodinki and and so on, it's what people are talking about. |
| Ming Thein | I honestly wasn't sure it would work till the first prototype arrived. Because I a six times scale model in plastic and the actual thing at titanium are very, very different, both from just the kinematic point of view and a field point of view and as well as a production point of view. Right. We're talking about components in here where some of the connecting elements are like fifty to seventy microns. Wow. There are one thousand six hundred and ninety It's more than a human hair. It's more than a human hair. And the and the polymesh doesn't pull hair because the gaps between adjacent elements are smaller than the average diameter of a human hair. So to to be able to to to produce that And in terms of the re |
| Pranith Raj Singh | ception though, I think um I mean when we ha I think the the bit that I wasn't sure about is when you handle it Exactly reactions are universal. I was not I was not surprised, right? But a lot of the feedback has been without people handling it. And that's the feet. And that's it. But it's been no, it's been so overwhelmingly positive without them handling it. I think that's the bit that's been a surprise. So that when they even get to handle it, they're even more like they're like, I was expecting, like, I don't know what I was expecting. No, so the extraction was high and |
| Ming Thein | then they were even higher than we managed to surpass the thing. I think that's always a challenge because either and I think the industry is very good at this, and look I'm coming from a photography point of view here. There's a lot of imagery that's out there that portrays watches as something that's perhaps not physical reality. Let's put it that way. There are composites, there's like weird lighting, there's a lot of retouching work, there's a lot of three D work. I mean we try very hard not to do that. So basically everything that we shoot is actual light. What you see is what you get. If you put your eye where your camera is, you know that's what you see. The problem is that we have two eyes, cameras have one. So you don't have stereoscopic perspective, which means that you don't have any sort of depth perception. You don't have any sort of It's hard to convey how light and reflection plays off uh surfaces like sapphire, for example, because your right eye can see one thing, your left eye can see another. And we made it a lot more complicated with the iris because your left eye might see one color and your right eye sees another color. Right. And a reflection. So when you look at it in person, your brain is actually having trouble processing what you're looking at because it's not something that you normally see. It's not something that, you know, is is within the realm of regular human experience. The polymesh is a similar thing because I you know what a bracelet looks like, you know how it feels, you know what a strap looks like, you know how it feels, you know what cloth looks like, and in in most people's minds this is kind of like cloth. It's as soft as cloth, but it has that weight and draping of metal. So I you know, it's almost like water that's like stuck together, it's like mercury that's stuck together. It's very hard to expla |
| Andy Hoffman | in. But an image doesn't convey it. Trevor Burrus The image does not convey it, doesn't do it justice. And so you have a hit on your hands. Aaron Powell I hope so. Aaron Ross Powell And so what are you doing to meet demand and what lessons have you learned? Because you know, when you guys came on the scene, after a very short time you made a huge splash and you know your demand was outstripping supply uh by a hu |
| Pranith Raj Singh | ge ratio. Aaron Powell I think several questions. Before we I answer yours, just close out the previous loop and you're asking about operational changes. Mm. Everything means about polymesh and iris. That's just two products we did this year. Right. Right. And the amount of thought that goes into how do you deliver that that c wearing experience is sort of it's a it's a good example of how much work is going into into product development now. So he can't be on the road as much, which is the biggest operational change. And even philosophically, uh we always have this conversation where he's like, Oh, if I'm there I think you know it'll make a difference. I'm like, Yeah, man, if you're in room, it'll always make a difference. But the question as you build a sustainable brand isn't can you do it better, is can other people do it well enough. But that's the other project where we start to clone people. And and that's why he's trying to |
| Andy Hoffman | Well no if you're cloning yourself it's fine. You only need consent from yourself technically. So this is how you get around the uh the key man uh issue here because I mean, you know, we were talking and we've heard you know here at Dubai about some sort you know succession plans and and how brands are, you know, as founders get older, you're not anywhere near that kind of age, but I mean, you know, talk to me about how you're thinking about, you know, how to keep this brand sustainable and and and to have others maybe have some creative uh role. And then I I do want to get back to the how you're gonna meet demand for for polym |
| Ming Thein | ers. The roadmap beyond that is also pretty much fixed up to year five. So we've just seen So five years out from now. We've just seen the first of the fifth generation stuff with the with the iris, the monopusher. Which was also a you know quite a I've completed the entire fifth generation. Hmm. And it's not one product, it's not one product line. The the fifty seven series alone has about twenty different variants in it, and we have an entire lineup from low end to high end. Not just with that case design, but an entire fifth generation design language. So that's done. I'm working on the sixth generation. Now, the thing is, your question about legacy planning and succession is a little bit more complex because it's not just like I hire a design and say, take this and run with it, right? Because the way we operate philosophically has always been to question fundamentally why we're doing what we're doing, how we're doing it. Is there a more interesting way or better way of doing it? What new technologies can we incorporate? What hasn't been done before? You know, how do we create a different experience? Because fundamentally as as uh as a watch brand, we're we're not in the business of making something people need. We're in the business of making something that makes people feel good. And in order to do that, we recognize that we need to deliver a different experience. We need to deliver a unique product, we need to deliver something that we've seen before. We need to deliver things that people don't know they want. Right. So I need to find somebody who has that openness of mind to sort of work with me in parallel for the for the remaining time I'm going to continue doing this, which is I I don't know how long that is, it's probably a while. But they need to sort of be we we need to run in parallel along the same lines so that when I let go, the momentum is there and they'll they'll keep going. They'll eventually find their own path, which is fine, but they'll be continuity. I think the continuity is important. But it's not just a do you know how to do CAD? Do you know how to copy paste? No, you need to be you need to have enough exposure that you need to understand how I'm going to think in order to solve a certain creative problem. How do you find that person? Note the resounding silence in the room at this point |
| Pranith Raj Singh | . I was gonna say I think that's a problem which I might we hoped really hope I don't know. I'm taking random interns at this point. |
| Ming Thein | So you're taking a little bit of an intern. So this is a first. December and January, I'm taking two interns. I mean, the reason for that is like sometimes you just meet people and you go, well, you know, maybe there's some potential here. I I don't actually want to hire anybody who's got entrenched industry experience because it's hard to unlearn stuff. So I'm I'm taking people basically fresh out of college. Yeah. And you know, I I want to this sounds wrong, but I mean I want to influence their thinking because I want to show them that there is not just one way of doing stuff. My way might not be the right way, but I want to show you an Well it is the right way for the brand. Trevor Burrus It's right way for the brand. But I'm saying even in the long term, it might not be the right way for the brand. Because we might hit a we might hit an end where it's like we've exhausted everything that's reasonably both |
| Pranith Raj Singh | . We're still at the point of the brand where the brand is you. So it's the right way for the brand is still you. If the whole thing is wrong, that's that's a whole other meta discussion. I mean that but they need basic |
| Ming Thein | ally But the way I work is also questioning if it's right. Right. So philosophically at a at a higher at a higher meta level, it's not just saying look, you need to do something with flare lugs and and this particular design index and and all that. It's not. It's like why do the flare lugs exist? Well, because we wanted short lugs with visual balance. So we needed to give them some weight. So that thinking has to apply to everything else |
| Pranith Raj Singh | . But part of it's not legacy planning, but I guess growing the brand. The phase we're at now and we've been for the last two, three years is when we started off we were doing everything Yeah, we had a toilet cleaning schedule. We take turns. I'm not kidding. Was it posted on the wall? It's in the office. But if you look at any any sort of not just consumer brand, but any brand across any industry that really company brand that made it. You usually have founders who have a very specific vision and a very sort of to the point of being micromanagers and learning how to let go is is the hardest journey and it's you know Jason for instance uh manages our Instagram account and when he joined the team every single caption, every single post he would have be sent to me and I check the comma, the period and it's been a one year process for me to be like, you know what, he has his own tone How difficult do you think it was to me for me to hand off everything to you? So I think it's it's But it's not easy to No, it's not. And we're in that part of of the journey where it's handing off some of the operational stuff, some of the forget designing watches and product, right? That's that at the very top of the pyramid. It's there's a lot of other stuff where the team needs to how we ideally want to run the brand is find good people, trust them that they can do a good job, empower them. I mean set, you know, set a fence and say, hey, boundaries, whatever else, and let them operate within that. But even that is a learning process and I think that's where we are right now. Like letting the team sort of go to cer certain trunk shows on their own without mingle me. Right. Uh that was huge for both of us. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean |
| Andy Hoffman | for th for someone else to speak on behalf of uh of the brand and and and Trevor Burrus, Jr.: What I also find so interesting about Ming as a company is you're sort of all kind of digital nomads in a way, right? I mean you're I mean uh you know, I don't think about it necessarily as a Malaysia based or maybe I should, but you know, I think about you you have an atelier in Switzerland, Pranit is here in Dubai. I mean what does the structure look like? Where is everybody |
| Pranith Raj Singh | ? How many people? The operational team, there's eleven people, four in Europe, so three in Switzerland, one in Vienna, uh I'm in Dubai, and the rest are in in Kuala Lumpur. I'm probably the most nomadic and digital, but I also increasingly have the least hands-on with the product until it's ready. Yeah. Right. I I mean I'm I'm involved in the messages, I'm seeing all the discussions, but I don't have like when I go to Switzerland, I don't go as much anymore because I don't speak French. And I find that when I'm in the room with with suppliers I'm I'm a liability because everybody has to accommodate for me and like translate. I'm like, guys, we we're here to make watches, like just get the job done. Yeah, like we need to get the job done. Yeah, I don't go to Switzerland because too much wines involved. Um So I I'm the most nomadic. I think most of the team, otherwise uh working person. The only other person who works remotely is is a co-founder in Vienna. Right. But a lot of his job is finding these processes, like with Polymesh for instance, he identified uh the prototyping partner. Right? Oh interesting. So he's got an academic background, uh he's got a PhD, he's done years and decades in biotechnology. So he's very good at approaching it from a very academic perspective and finding people who are good at the the literal research and development bit. Right. And once we've proved proof of concept for a watchmaking application, he'll then hand off to the Swiss production team and say, hey, hey, this is when we figure out how to make it re-producible. Sure. In a commercially sustainable manner. |
| Ming Thein | He also takes care of our IP protection after that. Which is quite important. Especially when |
| Andy Hoffman | you're doing a lot of new stuff. Exactly. Protection do you think you have for something like polymesh at this point? I know a lot of people have 3D printers. Aaron Powell In filing. |
| Ming Thein | There's a lot of it's a deceptively simple product. Knowing what we know going through the development of this, there are things that kind of work. There's not many things that work in the way that that works. So I can make something that's 3D printed and on the face of it ticks all the boxes and is functionally similar. Will it feel the same? No. There's a lot of fine tuning that goes into this. I mean the links look the same, right? But there is camber, there is taper in two axes, and I think maybe only thirty-five to forty percent of the thousand seven hundred give or take components in this are the same, which means everything else is different |
| Pranith Raj Singh | . Okay. So approximately one tho |
| Andy Hoffman | usand seven hundred, but uh one thousand six hundred I had to draw |
| Ming Thein | all of them. Yeah, I filed that away in the trauma cabinet. But I mean the thing is it you can take it, you can look at it, you can have some idea of how it works, but there is a deep understanding of both kinematics and the materials behind it that makes this a reality. Aaron Powell So |
| Andy Hoffman | let's get back to what is your plan for it? Because obviously people are very interested in this product. It's about a thousand francs, I think, for 1500. Trevor Burrus, sorry, thank you |
| Ming Thein | . I mean we're making as many as we can. Once we fulfill the back orders, we'll open orders again and and proceed. I understand our supplier's also working in a way to make the production cycle a bit more efficient, whether it's through positioning things on the bed or I don't know whether they're looking to another machine, but those things are not cheap. I mean talking millions of francs, yeah. Well there's also a two year lead time to get the actual machine. And there's two year lead time to get the actual machine. So I see. It's not so straightforward. We have explored parallel sourcing and it turns out it's not that straightforward either. So there's an expertise required in machine setup and parameters. We've discovered ourselves using just 3D printing with filament. Jason is Jason is the expert on that. We will do a short version and a straight lug version. Obviously, we have no watches with straight lugs, but the straight lug versions because there's been so much demand for this for other for other brands. We will offer it to our AHA partners. Straight lug, I mean could you actually be a supplier to other brands outside the AHA? Aaron Powell Yeah. I mean if if they want it, absolutely. |
| Pranith Raj Singh | Otherwise, going on. But I think for us obviously we want to prioritize our customers. Yeah. And then our friends of the AHA. So those are like priority one and two. And if you manage to get can do you get enough bracelets out and |
| Ming Thein | But I would you know what I would say our customers and AHA also includes potential straight lug customers because we've got customers who've got other watches. So making a twenty straight makes sense. It's not so straightforward to make different widths for the simple reason that that taper means that a lot of the components will change. It's not a simple scaling problem. Because some things if you scale any smaller, you can't print them anymore. You're you you've dropped below the tolerance threshold. Aaron Powell Interesting. So so yeah, this is twenty to do twenty-two, eighteen is is a going up to twenty-two is sort of okay-ish, but then the whole buckle system doesn't work. So it's not that straightforward either. So you have to scale part of it, but not all of it. To drop to eighteen, forget it. That's basically a redesign. Aaron Ross Powell How quickly can you get there in steel? You did talk that you may be able to do that. We thought it would be straightforward. It turns out it's not straightforward because the way the powder fuses is different for different materials. There's |
| Pranith Raj Singh | also the um because the process is basically a bed of metal powder that's fused by laser. Yep. The final aesthetic uh impact and the way it looks, you're not gonna see a huge difference between steel and titanium. No. And this current polymesh, for instance, I know Ming wanted to try a version that was polished. Right. It can't be polished very well because the the link shape isn't there isn't a flat surface up top, right? So mechanically that isn't easy way to polish it. So if you want to do something in steel, then the only reason to do it would be if you could do a different finishing, in which case he has to completely redesign the entire bracelet. For the tolerances of steel, working with steel and the process. And for that finishing and for the for all of that. So these are all in exploration. Yeah. Though I mean I'll be telling people this is might be a little arrogant, but who cares? Uh I I compare the polymesh to the first iPhone. Wow. That's a that's a statement. It's a new genre of product because it doesn't use you know so hand stitching, it's not machining, it's using additive manufacturing. But we're only beginning to explore what additive manufacturing can do. Who knows where we'll be 10 years from now with fifth generation or 10th generation. So that's what I mean by like it's it's whole new gen |
| Ming Thein | re. I think that look, there have been other brands that have used editive manufacturing for cases for dials for I mean, you know, even Halton Richards did it at one point, even Apple is doing it with with the the latest generation of Apple Watches. But what they're not doing, I think, is trying to push the limits of that. Maybe for resolution and finishing, yes. But in terms of really exploiting material properties? Hard to say. One of the reasons polymersh works is because when you sinter the powder, every time the laser makes a pass to infuse additional powder, it actually puts the whole thing through an annealing cycle. So it's basically like heat treating something. But you're not heat treating it once, you're not heat treating it twice, which is normal for for metals. You're basically heat treating this for every layer. So it's being annealed two hundred times. What it means is that this is a four hundred Vickers strength bracelet. For the average person, everybody asks how strong is it? Because it feels quite delicate. We put this through a lab test, buckle the two ends and basically pull until it broke. It failed at about a hundred kilos of yield strength, so about a thousand newtons, but it's not the bracelet that failed. It's the spring bar. Every spring bar will fail at that point. Every strap bracelet, whatever has a spring bar, it'll fail. The polymesh do not fail. So we don't know what the yield strength is, but we know it's above the spring |
| Andy Hoffman | bar. You have to revolutionize the spring bar ne |
| Pranith Raj Singh | xt. So this brings you with that quick compatibility problem. Well, but the but the there's other reason for my iPhone analogy is that also kicked off a whole new wave of like development on smartphones and communications, right? Yeah. We know for a fact that since we've announced this, several of our partners have gotten inquiries of like, hey, can we do this? Can we do that? So there's there's a lot of other people thinking about how they can apply additive manufacturing. It makes our lives harder. Yeah. And there's a risk we accepted going into it. But it also means I think hopefully in the next five years you'll see a lot more interesting things coming out using all the manufacturing as a process. No, we have more interesting things. We have stuff too, but I'm saying someone else might find an application outside of straps, bracelets, accessories that uses that, right? I don' |
| Ming Thein | t know. For the record, what I would like to do is integrate the case and the bracelet in one piece. So polymesh integrated with the case. The whole thing is one piece. Seamless. But this presents a whole bunch of problems. Yeah, what's what's the major issue there? You have to finish the case extremely precisely in order to fit the movement and dial and everything else and have water resistance. But post-processing that is going to be super hard because what are you going to do with the loose bits of flippy polymesh? So exactly like this. You know, like the 1970s uh gold watches which I don't know these |
| Pranith Raj Singh | are great. If we try to print it, like this transition from the case to the bracelet, yeah. Finishing that. |
| Ming Thein | I'm not worried about that. My my concern is that finishing the inside of this so that it fits the movement precisely is one thing. The other thing is you can you can have tooling to clamp everything in place, but the two bits of polymes are going to flip around. They're going to be damaged by whatever tooling is going on, whatever machining is going on, and all of the effluent that comes off that. So conceptually it's doable. Engineering wise, from a design point of view, it's doable. Execution part is another is another headache altogether. Aaron P |
| Pranith Raj Singh | owell Well and the execution part is a headache. Um actually one one of the products we look at very closely is the Apple Watch shirt. And does that mean I can expenses? I I thought you already did. No, I didn't, but I'm going to no. Is that the ultra you're wearing? It's an ultra three. Ultra three, nice. But what we've since discovered is if you if you're someone who only values the best manufacturing process out there in the world, the Apple Watch is probably the best value out there? It's not even the |
| Ming Thein | best value. The Apple Watch is insane. Because you look at the the two examples that come back to. The bracelet that they do, not the Millennius, not the mesh, not the new mesh thing, but the the titanium on a steel, it's a steel bracelet where the links have got built-in quick release, right? The finishing on that is insane. They have Anglage on the little button that's that's used for the quick release. And it's a hundred and eighty dollar boost. It's a hundred and eighty dollars. I mean from a manufacturing point of view and a finishing point of view, like my drawers on the floor. From a design point of view so so because it like it lacks a half link and it's not super flexible, all of that. But just from a production standpoint, it's insane that they can do that |
| Pranith Raj Singh | . But uh but what we also realize is Apple makes how many millions without Apple. Ex |
| Ming Thein | actly. Exactly. So they have a machine specifically to do one thing. I mean the other thing is if you buy a mid-range Apple Watch, you get a sapphire crystal, which doesn't seem like a big deal until you think about it a bit more, because it's a rectangular sapphire crystal that's curved in the corners. That means that's a machine sapphire. Even if they've got a way of making blanks roughly the |
| Pranith Raj Singh | right shape, they still have to post finishing machines. Which if we had to make an in our quantities with our traditional supply chain. Six thousand franc at cost component. Yeah. Wow |
| Andy Hoffman | . Yeah. But you get that in a five hundred dollar Apple Watch, which is insane. Againaron Powell But how then do you think about ramping up is that it it allows. I'm not going to make 100 milli |
| Pranith Raj Singh | on bracelets. I mean, it's not it's not going to happen. But I think what I'm saying is we have to work within not just the constraint of it hasn't been done yet with the seamless case bracer for instance, but we also have to work with the constraint of we're probably going to make let's say two thousand watches over the lifetime of that product. Right. It's still a drop in the water of someone like Apple trying to crack that problem. Because they could probably do it in a year or two, because they could build machines around it. They could build a whole supply chain around it. We have to work within a lot of existing constraints. Yeah. Uh same thing for the polymesh, right? We have to do that within a lot of existing constrain |
| Ming Thein | ts We're seeing the process unfold in real time here. Yeah. Yeah. People ask actually people ask a lot about the whole design inspiration stuff and they're like, well, you know, is this inspired by X, inspired by Y? I mean sometimes I'm just observant. Things chunk around in the back of my head for weeks, months, sometimes years, and eventually it comes out as something, and then you're like, oh, maybe it was a bit of this and a bit of that and a bit of something else. There is no direct translation. I think this is the mistake that a lot of people make in in understanding how design works. It's a mistake that's propagated by 99.99% of the industry where you see some guy scribbling on a bit of paper and then magically that's a finished watch. I mean I've seen that. You have. But it's useless because you can't take that and then productionize it very easily. It's like a concept cost sketch, right? Maybe it's useful in expressing an idea and a line and then there's some translation, but most of the time when that happens, everything's already been designed and they're actually just sketching from memory. Right. This is not a real-time process. That is not how |
| Andy Hoffman | it works. Aaron Powell So part of what we were talking about there, though, is investing in machines, you know, a a a a cash flow, um or not cash flow, but um access to to capital kind of issue. Are you considering at all changing the structure in terms of the ownership of the business? I'm sure you've been |
| Pranith Raj Singh | approached. What does that look like? have been approached and I saw every conversation with don't put money in watches. But if you have to put money in watches, give us the money. Right. We talked about this on on the car ride over Andy. The watch industry is unlike anything else and in your career c covering you know hundreds of businesses, you probably know this. I actually do struggle to find a good investment thesis for this industry because it really is driven by passion, irrationality. Uh it's not really like a booming industry. It will continue to survive, it'll continue to you know people doing the right things and hopefully we're one of them will continue to do well, but it doesn't really leave space for someone to just come and put in capital the way the rest of the world expects. No, I think there' |
| Ming Thein | s a cognitive disconnect. I think my the reason why it doesn't work is because people from the outside look at this and go, oh, you know you got there are six figure watches, right? There must be a lot of money in this. But the reality is there isn't because the cost of production is so high. You're making very few units of something very precise, which means the unit cost is astronomical |
| Andy Hoffman | . I mean, I think that is something that the consumer doesn't understand when you're not doing it at a significant scale. Indeed, the I mean the cost of manufacturing, the cost of development, uh the cost of materials, um et cetera. A |
| Ming Thein | aron Ross Powell It's more the cost of development than anything, actually, because you have to amortize all of that across your production run. If we're doing a special project with 20 watches and inevitably there's some new tech in there, it means that those twenty watches have to eat all of the R and D cost and spares |
| Pranith Raj Singh | . Right? That's not trivial. I mean that being said, we still do need access to capital and banks will not give it to us. I was in conversation with a few banks in in Switzerland for just an overdraft of credit line. And the reply I got was, well, if you're putt willing to put in 200,000 francs in deposit, we'll let you take a deal. A credit line of 200,000 francs. I'm like, well, that's kind of useless. If I have two hundred thousand francs, I wouldn't need a credit line. And then again, I was like, is this in the interest of building a long term relationship and you know, within a year you'll sort of release out like no, you just gotta leave it there. And because it's Switzerland, you don't make any interest on it either. No, exactly. So correct. That clearly doesn't make sense. I think uh what we found is we found a way to do I call it project financing, but it's a way where you have to be a qualified investor and I think also a watch enthusiast and someone actually j genuinely enjoys watches. But it's been successful for us where people who believe in the brand and want to support us have been able to sort of help us realize new projects by funding it. |
| Ming Thein | So previously what we did was a subscription model where we'd find individual customers and say, look, this is roughly what we're going to build, this is roughly what it's going to cost. You know, we need some of that money up front to fund RD. And then at the end of it, you get a unique subscription. But what we're doing is on a larger level, a single qualified investor may take the entire project and it's a larger project run, it's not ten or twenty watches. They take the entire project and say, We'll fund this, we get our return out of the sale of the watches, uh and |
| Andy Hoffman | you know there's a lot to all the cool folks at uh adming and and and I'm sure a watch out of it. And so yeah, it's a very specialized and that's not equity in the company. |
| Ming Thein | Trevor Burrus, I mean it has to be priced in such a way, going back to the business side, it has to be priced in such a way where yes, the project carries risk, here is the rough timeline. You know what your risk-free return on capital is over that timeline at the moment with interest rates, it's not great. Right. But you know, you also know that it's it's sort of uh it's not a very big amount of capital where you can't go and do a mega project somewhere else and see multiple X returns. You're not gonna go and and find something that you're gonna list, but nor is it something so small that it's like I can only deploy 50 grand and it's you know a limited kind of thing. But what we what we like to think is that you have both involvement in process, which a lot of people like. You can be a patron of the industry in that sense. You help to bring something new to life and at the same time will will give you a decent return. Interesting. As a business. We can pri |
| Andy Hoffman | ce in that return as well. How much are you I mean how much uh how many projects have you done? Can you give us a sense of how much capital you might have raised for these specific projects |
| Pranith Raj Singh | ? Restructure this this year. We're just doing two pilot projects now. Uh 'cause I also want to actually see them to completion before I take on more capital. But in terms of interest, uh everybody we talk to likes this model. And the big advantage of exit concern. There's an exit concern for an investor. But for and for us we retain our independence, we retain sort of control on how to run the project |
| Ming Thein | of the brand. Trevor Burrus So you've touched over on a very important point, which I think bringing in external equity investors creates. If if we bring in an external equity investor for the amount of money that makes sense that allows us to run a bunch of projects, right? Which would have to be the case because this is a one-shot deal kind of thing. It would also mean that we would have to seed control. Exactly. And then at that point there is this Schrdingen question of if I cede control to you to get the capital so that I can do the projects I believe in, you may then say you're not allowed to do those projects because we don't like them. And then if the whole thing doesn't work, whose fault is it? Right. That should be a game show. Whose fault is it anyway? |
| Pranith Raj Singh | Aaron Powell And the last bit uh the last reason why this really works for me is traditional debt is a problem for businesses like ours, especially in industries that have long lead times, huge working capital commitments and requirements, because if every quarter I have to send out an interest payment, or if I'm on the hook for a big bullet payment on the principle at some random time in the future, you have timing mismatches because a product may be like two weeks delayed, but today is when you owe sort of principal payment. Yes. And it creates weird mismatches which are they can be navigated, but they create unnecessary friction when we want to be running the business. Yeah, we know how on time the Swiss industry. Yes. |
| Ming Thein | It always amazes me that for an industry that makes things that measure time, everything is delayed |
| Pranith Raj Singh | . But with project financing, it's it's linked to the sale of the product. Uh so what helps me as a business is you're not, you know, sitting on fixed costs, fixed leverage. But it's like when we sell a watch, everyone gets paid out. Uh and this is interesting though. I mean yeah, d it's This is born out of financial necessity more than anything. I I I've learned in the eighties in this business. I I I used to think I was I wasn't a creative. I've learned in the eighties in this business you can be very creative with finances |
| Ming Thein | . Well the y y you need to be creative uh with finances in many ways. Trevor Burrus This is the perpetual entrepreneurship problem as well, right? If you're conservative, you may not take the risk you need to be successful. And if you have undeployed capital, that's not efficient either. But if you deploy your capital fully, you know you're you're very close to running into a you're running off the cliff. If you run out of money suddenly, something happens. |
| Andy Hoffman | Yeah. No, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And that's uh not a position that uh risk that one wants to take. You know, we talked a couple of years ago. I mean obviously you had your great boom and uh huge run-up twenty twenty-one, twenty twenty two to twenty-three because of uh you know some supply chain production uh issues, these kinds of things. You know, you had a tough year, I think, you know, where revenue came off quite a bit. Where are we now? What does it look like in terms of, you know, revenue and and the top line as well. And and what kind of volumes I mean, you know, I don't know how comfortable you are but talking about what kind of volumes we should think that are coming out of Ming |
| Ming Thein | now. Aaron Powell Twenty four was tough, I think for everybody. Twenty-four was tough because basically the world restarted in full. The hype train was going a little bit too fast and had a minor derailment. 25 looked like 25 looked like it picked it was going to pick up again. So Q1 was good. And then Trump happened. And then you know basically we landed up in uncharted territory |
| Andy Hoffman | . And rem Yeah. So how does that look then? You know, yeah, for the business. I mean |
| Ming Thein | obviously yeah. I mean changes happen the changes happen. How to work around how best to work around this. And I I think in the course of that we've we've learnt a lot about international tax and customs law. A lot of companies have now entities in the US or We've made strategic partnerships with retailers, which I think were was in hindsight a very timely decision. Whether the fifteen percent thing actually happens in I understand it hasn't been ratified yet. It has not been ratified. Right. So maybe it's not gonna happen. We have to plan for a situation where things continue to be where they are. You know, whether that means we need to change the business structurally or whether it means we need to put prices up to absorb some of the tariff, I don't know. At the moment we're absorbing the tariff. It's not it's not great. And so and that has an impact. Has a huge impact. Either you sell something and you absorb the tariff, or you don't sell anything. It's like uh at this point cash flow wins up. |
| Pranith Raj Singh | Well there's a facts. There's a very obvious profit loss impact. But part of the reason why we haven't passed on the tariffs is because like we said, we we don't know what the reality of the situation is. And the last thing I want to do is say, Hey guys tariffs of you know, thirty nine percent, we're going to pass on uh half of it or whatever 'cause we absorb the other half. And then a month later find out that tariffs go down and then you have to like and rolling it back is fine because from the outside perspective, like, okay, you guys follow the market. The problem is the people who supported you in that in interstitial space. Yeah, they're not feeling great. They're not feeling great. I don't blame them. But as a business, I also can't go back and be like, oh, here's a refund because we're not going to get the refund from No, there won't be a refund. Things cost more. Right. Which I suppose you can say that's fair, but it's also flippant and uh not the smartest way to treat your largest No, it's not. Supporter base and community base. So we may made the decision at least until thirty first of December to absorb the tariffs. Yeah. Beyond that we will have to make adjustments if things don't get ratified and and adjusted downwards. You're gonna have to make a decision one way or the other on price Will you treat the US with the tariffs as a separate market? Or unfortunately, yeah. Well well because we do for everyone else. If you go on our website now, it's pricing excluding VAT duties and tariffs. Right. Right. So if you're buying in and you live in Geneva, I mean well, you live in Geneva. So if you buy a wash from us, you would pay the eight point one percent VAT. If somebody in Germany were to buy a wash from us, they would pay the twenty to twenty-one percent VAT on top of the listed price on the website. Yeah.. |
| Ming Thein | Right So it's in that sense it's consistent. Customs is not something we can control because if it was, we wouldn't be in the business of making watches. To be blood. Sure. Right. And and to price a product where everybody pays the same internationally. So some brands. No, no. It's possible if your margins are so high that you have that padding. It's |
| Andy Hoffman | not possible for us. About you know margins for for for a business of your scale and size and all the innovation and RD that you're doing in in in terms of the product as compared to you know traditional watchmaking brand? Aaron Powell Less than half, I |
| Ming Thein | would say. Maybe even less than that. I don't know what the traditional watchmaking breds are because a lot of it's very opaque. True. But from what we've been able to discern, just knowing where components come from and knowing what our components cost and what our suppliers tell us, vis-a-vis cost of components and difficulty manufacturing all that, I would say we're less than half. Aaron Powell H |
| Andy Hoffman | ow are you feeling? I mean, obviously you started the alliance and you know that was in part the intention of that was to um through scale, have better access to components and suppliers. How is that going? I've heard from a number of CEOs as we come, you know, and we know that the component suppliers, these are the people who are really suffering at this moment. How is that for you right now? |
| Pranith Raj Singh | Is that an issue? Aaron Powell It's a tricky balance because most of the component suppliers we work with, they've been at least post-pandemic and with the new structure and everything else we're we're quite happy with and my conversation o as always, especially when times are tough, I know brands are especially some of the larger brands I've stories like cancel orders or they're like, hey, exactly. We're gonna pay you in 180 days, not thirty days, deal with it. And suppliers basically have to carry that brunt. Twenty four, twenty five, I've definitely had to have those conversations, right? Where because previously when things were growing great, I'm like invoice comes in, you're paid in seven days. But I've gone back and said, hey, like, you know, this is summer, for instance, is a very lean period for the industry because everything's shut, you're not really selling watches. So over summer I went to summer suppliers and I said, hey, like this is what and what the industry does and this is what makes it tricky is they'll deliver stuff in advance in summer and everyone's trying to collect cash. Or this year with the market going down, I was placing orders with an anticipation of a certain lead time. We had some of our partners cut that lead time in half. Yeah. And components would show up three months earlier. And I think my approach is always calling people I'm saying, Hey, I can't pay you for something three months before schedule. That's not how cash flow works. Right. You know that, I know that. Right. So like this isn't going to happen. But also in instances where a lot of odd orders came in a certain month, I would go to them and say, Hey, here's what I propose. Like in thirty days I'll pay down two thirds of what you've delivered. And the rest will be pay down in forty five days. And I was going in being like, I feel bad doing this because they've sort of delivered on the commitment. And the feedback I would get is, you're one of the only brands who does this. Yeah. Most brands go, you know, if you don't like it, take a hike. Yeah. Uh and I think this is part of what hurts the industry because the industry is famous for when things are great, things are delayed. Yeah. When the industry is in a bad shape, things are delayed. Yeah. Because brands and suppliers are always against each other. Yes. And and it's adversarial. It was ad adversarial. Well, I'm going and in saying like, Hey, I'm not a big enough brand to have like five suppliers for the same component. You're the only person I work with. Yeah. Right. And you can track this because we tell you for most of our models you make exactly how many we make and you're delivering the components. Like this isn't there isn't any you know uh |
| Ming Thein | but we we also believe fundamentally that in in every in every one of our relationships there's there's a win-win scenario. We want to work as partners with our suppliers. We're not you're not a supplier in that sense, right? Without you, we can't do it. And we like to think that even though we're a pain in the ass when it comes to the level of demandingness on components and and and processes and everything else, you know, we like to think that A, we push you to the point that you can expand your capabilities, B, we give you a chance to show off what you can do. And we're happy to tell people where the components come from. You know, we're happy for you to tell people that that you make components for us. Even though we can't give you a larger order at, least we can help you in other ways, right? Hopefully that hopefully su |
| Pranith Raj Singh | re we find partners who can't be a different relationship. 50% of the partners we work with end up in that camp. So over the years, we've got these this cohort of people that we worked with and we just continue working with them because it's consistent, right? When thing things go up or things go down, they're like, hey, you guys are reliable. So you we will also make sure that we sort of take care of you. Um, and of course, there's always partners you try and do this with and I guess they're they're too used to a certain system and they they can't they're like oh this is too good to be true. Yeah. And and that's uh that that is what it is. But that's how it's been for us. Yeah. And last thing, I mean, you |
| Andy Hoffman | know, but so much of the focus of the industry later are the concerns and worries about the industry is, you know, sort of at entry level, you know, Swiss made watches or high quality watches, and that the demand and and that business proposition for that kind of product is suffering and everybody's simply premiumizing and moving upscale. You have a huge range in terms of your your prices for your products. But I would I would argue I would |
| Ming Thein | actually not agree with that. Tell me. Because if you say go to Omega, for example, right, you can you can buy everything from two thousand bucks quartz to you know the what was that Speedmaster chiming repeater thing? That's like half I mean that's an extra. That's a much bigger that's a much bigger spread than we have. Sure. That's a much bigger spread. And I think from a product standpoint, I want I want to have an upgrade path for customers. So I wanna have a a l a growing path where you come in, you see something you like, you understand why you like it, you come back to us because we've got something above that and above that and above that, right? Rather than losing a customer to somebody else because we don't provide that product, I'd rather give you that option. And ye |
| Andy Hoffman | ah, I mean I guess at this point do you know this was the thirty seven oh two would be your entry level around three thousand francs. Are you interested in and do you see it as a challenge to to go below that price point. Tell me what do you think is on that side |
| Ming Thein | ? The first watches that we made, we sold at nine hundred dollars and it was far too low because we didn't. We don't understand how the economics of this industry work, right? When we when we ran the math at the end of this back in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, uh when the dust settled, we paid thirteen hundred dollars for components because we had to remake stuff. Yeah. Right? And that doesn't cost count the cost of running the business. At that point, you know, even even just transaction costs, PayPal for fees and FX. Nine percent. Right? But and and that's not counting So you're losing man. Personnel time. Honestly, if we'd price that properly, according to industry margin, it should have been a four to five thousand dollar watch. And we have been trying to price correctly and sustainably ever since. And arguably I, would say that what we price at our entry level now represents much better value than the early stuff because there's a lot more technology and a lot more refinement that goes into it. We didn't have a full sapphire ceramic dial back in the day. Right? We didn't have decorated movement. Yeah. You know, the case finishing was nowhere as nice. But all of these little things that we need to learn along the way and figure out how we can make it efficient so we can offer that product at a at a lower price point. Also, I think there's an intangible value of curation. Now that's gonna sound a little bit fluffy, but to me as a designer, it's what can I take away from the piece So earlier on you mentioned that when somebody sees you wearing a minimalist, they know straight away that it's one of ours. But why is that? It's because everything that is a nice to have and a sort of, you know, I I want to I want to make it better and more special and everything else. Every one of those elements, you know, we have to carefully consider is it necessary for the identity of the watch or not? Right. And that is why it's the minimalist, because that's the bare minimum that we can get away with. And you look at it and go, that's one of yours. Do you |
| Andy Hoffman | think you can make a product below that price, right? I mean at the true ent |
| Pranith Raj Singh | ry level in this watch. There's a couple of trade-offs with that. Without getting into the branding marketing side is also with Ming for instance now, we we're talking about how many events we've been we've been doing this year. You know, I won't get into the full economics of it, but between we were at Time to Watches, which is the adjacent thing to watches and wonders, and the by watch week, just between these two fairs or events where we didn't have very big booths, like we had the like the second to smallest, like just one level above the smallest booth you could have. It cost us both exercises including travel, everything else for the team, cost me one hundred and thirty thousand Swiss francs. Wow. And so and and and that's just these two events, two weeks of the year. Yeah. Right. And we've been at Watchtime New York, we've been at the Milan Watch Week, we've done private events, I was in uh Open House LA. It's a huge cost. And I understand and I agree that part of what makes independent watchmaking enjoyable for a lot of supporters is the ability to meet the brand for the offline experience, but the offline experience has a very tangible cost. Right? And you have to be able to pay that somehow. And we need a team now that needs to travel, that needs to payroll. Inflation is a very real thing. We get paid? Well no we just the team gets paid. We don't get paid. Oh damn it. We get found as equity. Yay. Right. Um so that's sort of what determines where the entry level is um and and what's sustainable. In terms of coming in lower, anything's possible. The question then becomes, what are you trying to achieve? What are we doing here? Um and why are we doing it? |
| Ming Thein | But what is that product meant to be? I think that's a that's a bigger question. Because I if if you're talking about keeping all of the things that make the main brand what it is, there are some things which you just can't do. Right? Right. There's some components which are just too expensive. No matter how many you make, they're just too expensive, right? There's no way, for example, we're gonna do entry-level polymesh. It's it is what it is. Does it mean we haven't considered doing a subsidiary brand? We have |
| Andy Hoffman | . Why do you find that interesting and and what do you think you can bring because we' |
| Ming Thein | ve seen others do it, huh? What we would do if we were to do is take a very different approach to the main brand. The main brand is very serious. Everything we do is very serious. And I think maybe along the way we have put ourselves down a path where we can't be fun. Right. And this whole exercise should be fun. And that I think is the bit that's missing. I think I think a lot of the industry takes itself far too seriously. Far, far, far too seriously. Ourselves included. Yeah, yeah. But I would like to I would also like to have another outlet where we can try new things when it comes to market, we can try new things when it comes to product, we can try new things when it comes to just doing really |
| Pranith Raj Singh | silly sh and not not to sound flippant about this, but also not care if it bombs. Because now with Ming, we built something like I said, larger than us right? We we it's not just thinking about what we want, it's thinking about we have a team to take care of. We have a long term customers to take care of the team. Eighteen thousand watchership. We have a very real responsibility and because these are watching we need to pay sixty thousand francs, you know, 90,000 francs of even 3,000 francs, there is an expectation. And we have to consider that with every decision we make. So I think for us as well, it's nice to have something to do where it's like we just like |
| Ming Thein | Done baking. Actually, we are done baking. It's like cooling off now. Yeah. They're too hot to touch. But sitting in the window, so icing left to left to put on. Yep. Excellent. Well that's something to look forward to. There's a lot to look forward to next year. I think it's just that. I mean we have have you seen that? It's not a video. So this is not this is not a Ming. So this is what you're wearing. It's not branded a Ming. Looks like a Ming to me. Which is interesting you should say that because we've never done anything like this before. It took me four years to design this because certain elements of it had to be gotten right. Firstly, there's the way it flows, right? If you have a small wrist, most of the time it doesn't work. If you have a large wrist, I mean you can't have the same design work for both. So Integrated Bracelet. Back to the kinematics of this. It's something that, you know, just the ergonomics were already complicated. But then there's the whole problem of how do you make it not look like anything else that already exists? How do you make it look like one of yours? We have very strong design codes. I mean, how would you put a flared lug into an integrated bracelet? It's integrated. Well it seems you've managed. Kind of done it. Exactly. Exactly. Which this makes no sense to anybody listening, but you're looking at it and it it is, right? And I think we've gotten to the point where I cannot put branding on the dial. We've slowly disappeared in that. You wanted to you wanted to get and you think. No, I wanted to get to the point where where the design code is recognizable enough that whether there's branding or not on the dial, you know what it is. Like all of the new stuff, we hide it. We do our best to hide it like in little elements in various places. To the point that now we don't need it. Well, that's an |
| Andy Hoffman | achievement. When will we see uh what what are you calling this? Starfield. Starfield. When will we see this? |
| Pranith Raj Singh | Oh wow. We want to call it windows. We want to call it Windows ninety five, but apparently that's IP protected. Oh this |
| Andy Hoffman | is uh quite something. I'm looking at the case back here and I'm still gonna |
| Ming Thein | see it in more detail later. Yes, you're seeing something. You're seeing some uh you're seeing some things happening. Yes, exactly. And I mean and there's this. Uh yeah, you just took off one of the uh links. I mean this I think we can describe, but like micro adjusting one millimeter increments times four on both sides. Tooless adjustment, patents pending, positive engagement. So once it's in, it's in, it doesn't come off. Wow. You are |
| Pranith Raj Singh | indeed focusing on the engineering um side of things lightly. And and that is why he's allowed to expense the next Apple Watch. This is gonna be great. When are we gonna see this? Uh in the next two to four months. Yeah. Q one. Call it Q one. Yeah. Q one fantastic. But try not to. What's the material? Steel for the first one. So the first one will be our launch edition. Uh we're only doing twenty of them. Okay. Um and then we'll of course have a production version. Yeah, production version and other other special editions of it. But can I ask what am I seeing here on |
| Ming Thein | the uh You can ask, I'm not gonna tell you on on air. Yeah. But I look the magic is honestly in the way worse. Aaron Powell But did you see this as |
| Andy Hoffman | you know you felt you had to also tick off the integrated bracelet. No. We would only do it if we could do it right. How long have you been working on this or the idea of an integrated bracelet? It's with flaring blocks. Oh wow |
| Ming Thein | . Whereas It's symmetric, so left or right first, it doesn't really matter. Um too big, too small? No, it's perfect. That wears quite nicely. And I see it's easy if you take it off to do that. You can expand it. You can expand it without opening it, but it's easier to um it's easier to take it off to to close it. So yeah, I mean I should think |
| Andy Hoffman | of Ming not only as a watchmaker, but um as a bracelet uh expert and and and and designer |
| Ming Thein | . You know, it's a lot harder to make a bracelet than a watch because there's so many more pieces and they have to move. If your watch case moves, you usually have a problem with that |
| Andy Hoffman | . You do have a problem. And so yeah, no, that from uh you know what little I've learned about about the industry. One of the pressure points has been, you know, um quality made bracelets from Switzerland or wherever. And there hasn't been a lot of innovation on the bracelet side. So I think we're all looking forward to that. Ming and Pranit, thank you very much for uh welcoming us here and we appreciate it. No, thank you for the chat. Thanks for having us. Great. Have a great one. And that's the business of watches for this episode. We hope you enjoyed. Please head on over to hodinky.com where you can join the discussion and leave any comments or questions about this episode or the business of watches in general. Who knows? We might even answer your question on a future episode. Thanks for listening and see you next time. |