Reviving the American Watchmaking Legacy with RT Custer of Vortic and Colorado Watch Company

Step into the workshop of innovation with RT Custer of Vortic and Colorado Watch Company, and discover how he's redefining American watchmaking. Our chat unravels the transformation of vintage American pocket watches into modern wristwear marvels and RT's ambitious leap with Colorado Watch Company towards larger-scale production of quality timepieces. From a golf course brainstorm to legal tussles that tested the company's mettle, RT shares a story of resilience and a love for horology that'll inspire enthusiasts and entrepreneurs alike.

Witness the convergence of past and present as we discuss the meticulous art of restoring century-old watches and the utilization of the AmeriCron movement, highlighting RT's mission for transparency in sourcing. The narrative takes us through the fascinating process from estate auction finds to wristwatch rebirths, and the industry's pressing skill gap that threatens the future of this intricate craft. RT's commitment shines through in his efforts to educate, from inviting customers into the production world to nurturing the next generation of watchmakers through initiatives like the Veterans Watchmaker Initiative.

Peek into the future with RT's vision for Vortic, a challenge to luxury conglomerates and an ode to Americana with the 'Journeyman Series.' But it's not just about the watches—it's the stories they tell; like when Kevin O'Leary's unexpected endorsement catapulted Vortic into the limelight. We close with RT's dream of an American-made luxury landscape, teasing upcoming releases that promise to weave historical significance into the very fabric of time. Join us for an episode that's a ticking testament to passion, precision, and the pursuit of the American watchmaking dream.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, what's up everybody. Welcome to another episode of Lonely Wrist. Today we have my buddy RT from Vortick and Koa Koa. Koa Koa is what we are calling your second watch brand, Colorado Watch Company. So this is going to be a very special one because we're getting the two for one special.

Speaker 2: 0:22

So introduce yourself Love it. Well, yeah, thanks for having me guys. I appreciate it and always excited to do another podcast. I do a bunch of these, but the story comes out differently every time and the story changes every month at this point and now we have two brands. So, yeah, my name is RT Kuster.

Speaker 2: 0:40

I run and have run Vortick Watch Company here in Fort Collins, colorado, for 10 years. At this point, we started in 2014 with a simple idea of can we make a watch in America like truly American made? And we stumbled on the history of the great American watch companies who manufactured pocket watches way back in the day about 100 years ago and decided to upcycle those, turn them into wristwatches and make one of a kind wristwatches out of antique American pocket watches and a truly American made wristwatch on the process. So we've been doing that for about 10 years and the good and maybe bad thing about that whole business concept is that we can't make very many, and so about a year ago, we decided that we wanted to run a bigger business than just a few hundred pocket watch conversions every year, and my business partner, tyler and I started Colorado Watch Company, or Co is it? Did you say Co, waco, co?

Speaker 1: 1:35

Waco is it? We can't use CWC.

Speaker 2: 1:38

That's a thing already. But but, yeah, colorado Watch Company and we launched that on Kickstarter in October of 23. And it took off right away and we're manufacturing all of those watches right now. And, yeah, we're about to run two watch companies. So it's it's a wild ride and it's it's been a fun journey, so I'm excited to get into it.

Speaker 1: 1:58

So it's safe to say that your your life revolves around watches.

Speaker 2: 2:03

It's safe to say that I think about work and business all the time, but to me, you know, they say, if you love what you do, you don't work them in your life. And I love what I do. So you know, this is this doesn't feel like work for me and I get to do this. I don't have to do this, and so, like I said, I'm just excited to be here and very grateful that you know I'm sitting in 8000 square feet building that we own and we're making watches here in this building and that's pretty dope.

Speaker 1: 2:33

Amazing. Yeah, that's awesome. We're gonna have to come down to Colorado. I'm in Vegas. I know you were just here Like a few weeks ago and for whatever reason we didn't get a chance to meet.

Speaker 2: 2:45

But yeah, sorry about that, I was. I was. I was there meeting with Abingdon and she told you you know who I know you know well and and yeah, we, I mean, I was. I was there for less than 24 hours, which is probably the right way to do Vegas. I you know, I've been told.

Speaker 3: 3:02

I was serious.

Speaker 2: 3:03

Yeah, I had like one drink. You know, I spent maybe 45 minutes at the at like the poker tables, and yeah, I was just there having a meeting with with her. We're talking about all kinds of fun stuff that I can't talk about yet, but we'll be really cool when we can.

Speaker 1: 3:20

Did you leave Vegas with, with, with money in your pocket, or is it safe to say you came out a winner, or did Vegas take, take it, take you to the cleaners.

Speaker 2: 3:30

No, yeah, I. The last time I was in Vegas last year I came out a winner. For the first time. I I left with over $1000 more than I came with, which is pretty cool. Wow, nice, I hid it on roulette big one time, so that was cool, um, but uh, yeah, this time I lost. I probably lost $300 in in 30 minutes and then I was just like you know what? Um, this isn't fun, I'm going to do something.

Speaker 3: 3:59

You have an extreme amount of fun and then you have not fun at all and you're like I don't know if I'm built for this.

Speaker 2: 4:03

Yeah, yeah, but hey, the house always wins.

Speaker 1: 4:05

So I'm well. Whatever you and Abington are working on, I'm sure we'll hit it big, and then you can just chalk it up in the L of the P and L.

Speaker 2: 4:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah, If we can, if we can have a line item for gambling. You know that I don't know if my investors would appreciate that, but, um, probably not, you know. But meals and entertainment, you know, I think is is probably where I'd put some gambling money.

Speaker 1: 4:30

Tell us, um, tell us briefly, obviously, about the concept of Vortick. Like where was the light bulb moment where you guys were like, hey, we're just going to repurpose old watches, you know cause not a lot of people are doing that?

Speaker 2: 4:45

Totally so. Um, we had Tyler. Tyler Wolfe is my business partner. He and I started Vortick and had the idea on a golf course at Penn State, technically in like 2011. Um, the idea, the initial idea, was very different than what we do now. We basically were trying to make.

Speaker 2: 5:06

We had a bunch of ideas surrounding the concept of making a watch that was more comfortable to wear while you played golf, cause he wears a watch all the time. He doesn't want to take his watch off when you place golf. I always took my watch off before I started playing golf or really any activity. Honestly, I just felt like it was easier to to swing my arms around, whether it's golf or tennis or whatever. Um, pickleball at this point, you know, would be the thing I would take my watch off to do. And, um, and so it just started a really interesting conversation on the golf course that day about, like, I just asked him a ton of questions about, like, how can you wear a watch when you play golf? How do you make it tight enough but not too tight? And you know, we had all these really interesting ideas about just making a more comfortable watch.

Speaker 2: 5:53

And um, then we hit the drawing board, like you know, a week or two later and said like, okay, if we're going to try to make a watch, you know, and we started a watch company. What? What are the values we want to have? What are the things we want to accomplish? How do we want to make it? And one of the biggest things is we wanted to make it in America. That was right around the time that Shynola was getting started. They were obviously really popular from the beginning and and we said like, let's, let's make whatever we, whatever watch we make, let's, let's make it in the USA. You know, and um quickly realized that that's nearly impossible and still, 10 years later, almost still impossible. Um, and pretty much everyone was like, yeah, if you want to start a watch company, you go to China or Switzerland, like those are your two things and you can. You can get movements there.

Speaker 2: 6:40

And, and that's really the hardest part, is no one makes a movement or even movement components in America, especially at scale. You know, because whatever we did, we wanted to make at least hundreds, but ideally thousands of watches that were going to run a big company and be fun. And one of the people we asked for advice was someone at a pawn shop who basically told us that, um, america used to be the Switzerland of the world from about 1850 to 1950 and over 150 million pocket watches were manufactured in the USA. Back then we had no idea, and most people have absolutely no idea, that pocket watches were made in America, um, or that America made some of the best timekeeping components in the entire world, especially in the early 1900s. And uh, fast forward today, you know, and this guy ran a pawn shop. He said there's, you know, pawn shops especially are scrapping pocket watches for the gold and silver of the case and the movement, which is the part that we needed, was literally trash, like worth $0 to most of the world.

Speaker 2: 7:42

Wow, um, and and so that's when the light bulb went off is just like, okay, well, if we can upcycle or use these old, 100 year old pocket watches, they were made in America back then. So we checked that box. We have an American made movement. We just they need some love, um, and and then we can make the bigger stuff. You know the, the, the cases.

Speaker 2: 8:01

I studied engineering at Penn State and um had some connections in like the 3d printing department, especially metal 3d printing, and so we were like, okay, you know we can we can 3d print at least but we can probably manufacture the case and the crown and these bigger components on the outside, and if the movement's American and we can make them modern parts on the outside in America, that's an American made watch.

Speaker 2: 8:24

And so we, uh, we put that idea on Kickstarter in 2014, when, when we moved to Colorado and the rest is history, guys I mean, we've sold every watch we made since, like, we, we got really lucky.

Speaker 2: 8:35

We had a really cool idea, um, and we certainly were not the first people to take a pocket watch and make it a wrist watch, but I think we were the first company to like build an entire brand and basically an entire company around that concept, um, and go all in on on that concept. And you know, yeah, now I mean, it's one of the things we didn't think about was people sending us family heirloom pocket watches, um, but now that's a huge part of our business, um, if you Google anything about American pocket watches, or what do I do with grandpa's pocket watch, or how do I open a pocket watch You're going to see everything about Vortec, because we're really the only company that, like, went all in on. We can take grandpa's pocket watch and make it a wristwatch, and we do that all the time for families all around the world, and, um, it's just an honor to be part of that process. Plus, we obviously make our own and sell them direct. So, um, yeah, just a fun business to run.

Speaker 3: 9:30

Yeah, that's that's super unique. I love how personal that is as well, and that not only have you guys taken your love for it and created you know your own products per day, but you're also helping people kind of rekindle that love for their timepieces, which is a fantastic thing. Um, I'm curious, uh RT. Um, let's talk about you know, your newest venture with the uh Kawako. As Blake talked about it, you guys said that y'all started that back up in uh late 2020, uh 2023, but, uh, how's everything going? And you said you're in the manufacturing process of everything. Um, how's that going for you guys?

Speaker 2: 10:05

Yeah, I think so, um, taking two steps back. Basically, the the problem with Vortick is that we can make about 300 watches a year, um, and we call them the American artisan series and, of you know, within that, 300 or so includes us taking people's you know, grandparents pocket watches and making them wristwatches. So we're not really making and selling very many wristwatches in a year and there are thousands of dollars, but still, like you know, it's, it's not a very big business. And in order to get to where we've gotten to and in order to manufacture those products the right way, um, I mean, taking a pocket watch is a hundred years old and turning your wristwatches really hard. It's one of the hardest things in the world and I do not recommend doing it. But we've we've done it for 10 years and we figured it out right. And the reason we figured it out is because we are a manufacturing company, we are not a watch company. So in this building is millions of dollars of CNC machines, which are huge machines that take a chunk of metal and cut it out and turn it into wristwatch components. We've had to do all that ourselves and bring that in house, using our own engineers, our own designers, our own watchmakers that sit right through this wind or right right through this wall.

Speaker 2: 11:15

For me, we do almost everything right here in this building for Vortick watch company, and that's out of pure necessity, because when you only make a couple hundred of something a year, no manufacturing company on earth is going to be like yeah sure, we'll make just a hundred of those, you know, little tiny parts that have to be perfect every time. You know, it's just not a thing. We've tried so many different ways to honestly just just delegate some of this work and outsource it to to great manufacturing companies and there's a lot of them, um, even in the US. But you know, if I, for my military edition, for instance, you know I only need 50 of these crowns every year and we change the design a little bit every year. And to ask somebody who runs a big manufacturing company with a machine you know the Swiss turning center is hundreds of thousands of dollars they're not going to say, yeah, we'll just make you 50 of those. You know, real quick, that's not a thing. So we have all that here now and it's taken us 10 years to mask all that equipment and all that knowledge and engineering and the ability to manufacture all those parts, but we can only make a few hundred watches a year.

Speaker 2: 12:25

So we said, well, instead of trying to put a square peg in the round hole and trying to get Vortick to 500, a thousand watches a year, um, because that's just it's really hard, we've kind of tried why don't we keep Vortick where it is, keep it really special, keep, you know quality way over quantity and just just make the coolest damn pocket watches, turn into wristwatches in the entire world, um, and make only a couple hundred a year and then start another brand and use all our manufacturing, you know capabilities that we've learned and and all the the, the team and the equipment that we have here to make a fully modern watch and basically pose a new question and that's what we did on Kickstarter is we posed a slightly different question instead of with Vortick, how do we make a hundred percent of the watch in America? No matter what the question that we posed on Kickstarter in late 2023 was, how do we make as much of the watch in America as possible but keep the price, like around a thousand dollars, at least the starting price for one of the products you know, um, and in order to do that and keep the price down, but keep the quality high and and you know, do what we wanted to do, especially in a mechanical watch. We wanted to make something that was automatic. We needed scale and we had the ability to scale here. But it's kind of a chicken and egg thing.

Speaker 2: 13:49

You know, you either need a bunch of capital and to get to where we are, or you know you needed to, you need to take pre-order or something like that. And so that's why we use Kickstarter again to just kind of say hey world, you know, do you want an American made watch at scale for for a really good price and really good value? And we set our goal at 250,000, which was a risk, because you know to make 250,000 dollars in 30 days is Is a challenge, you know that's. That's a big goal, especially for any new company. But we're pretty confident because we've been doing Vortick for a while. That like just our customer base. Maybe you can make up half of that. And yeah, we made 350,000 dollars in 30 days. That equates to about 300 watches, because some of the watches are a little more than a thousand and some of them are about a thousand.

Speaker 2: 14:40

And that's our Kickstarter only prices, where our prices are gonna have to go up, because as you might imagine it, it's gonna cost more to make these than we thought Now that we're getting into it, but, yeah, that was the concept and that's what we're doing now. We decided after Kickstarter was over. So when we ended Kickstarter in November of I guess, late October of last year we we had all these other ideas to make the product even better and we wanted to make some changes to it. And so the the products that the people are gonna get when they back to us on Kickstarter Exponentially better and more, just way cooler than they even bought. So we're just gonna blow these people's minds. We're really, really excited about it and for that reason, we're not selling.

Speaker 2: 15:22

We're not taking any other pre-orders or pre-sales or anything like that for Colorado watch company until we start shipping the, the orders to Kickstarter backers. And we're doing that for two reasons. One is because we want to make sure everyone knows what they're buying, and we made some changes to the product since Kickstarter and I want to. I want to have Final product images and stuff like that if this is exactly what you're buying when you're, when you're pre-ordering them or ordering them in the future. And two is just in an integrity.

Speaker 2: 15:47

You know we we want to do what we said we're gonna do and we said we're gonna make watches for all these people that that pre-ordered. You know, at this, at this point, it'd be six months until they get their watch, and so I want to make sure they feel really Really good about it. And you know, honestly, I want, like, of those 300 watches I want, I want 305 star reviews and people just saying like this is the coolest watch ever and buying another one. You know, like you can't buy that kind of marketing, and so I Want 300 super happy customers and I think we're gonna get it. It's just gonna take a couple more months to to build all of them.

Speaker 1: 16:19

That's what I'm. I'm looking here at the, the Colorado watch company, like tab and what. What movement are you using? It looks a little interesting but it doesn't say so. It says American assembled automatic movement. But did you guys have like a base movement that you're You've re-tweaked, or is it something that you guys have felt like you needed to design?

Speaker 2: 16:43

or no? It's a great question. So we use a company down in Arizona called fine timepiece solutions and yeah, and fine timepiece solutions is we call them FT s but they Assemble movements and watches there. They're basically an assembly Organization so they specialize in the assembly of very small and precise things like watches. But they do other things too and and they assemble that movement in Arizona and that movement is something that they worked with a huge company in India called Titan Titan watch company to design. So that movement is designed in the US for that company Manufactured overseas, mostly in India.

Speaker 2: 17:29

But we say some of the components come from Asia, because we just don't know and you know Most people don't know some of the components are probably coming from Switzerland and Germany as well. Like Switzerland and Germany kind of have a Lockdown on on springs and jewels and some of that kind of stuff. But anyway, globally sourced components Assembled in Arizona. The movement is not based on a Swiss movement or a Japanese movement of any kind, it's it's its own thing. They call it the AmeriCron and it is the most American movement at scale.

Speaker 2: 18:03

You have to say at scale because you know obviously RGM and JN, shapiro and and Weiss and some of these other guys. They're making movements in America, which is awesome, but not at scale. We need someone who can make thousands of movements, because the only way to get to what we want to do with Colorado watch company Is to sell thousands of watches a year. I want to take on Shinola. You know, plain and simple, like there's a, there's a hole in that market for a truly American made watch, as American as possible, in that like one to two thousand dollar price point, and that's what Colorado watch companies all about and that's what we're trying to get.

Speaker 1: 18:46

I Wouldn't say and it sounds like you're coming out on record, so I'm gonna come on a record I wouldn't say watch enthusiasts, like go after a brand like Shinola, you know, because it seems like it's a watch brand for people that aren't into watches. You know I could be wrong and especially considering their the way that they're trying to target new customers, you know. The same way you are like going to these, these wind-up events and everything trying to get their name out there in front of the micro brand space. But I mean, I could be wrong, but I personally don't. I don't think about Shinola as like a Micro brand and I certainly don't think of them as an enthusiast brand as well.

Speaker 2: 19:32

You know, sure, and then when I, when I say take on Shinola, I mean from a business standpoint, yeah, selling, selling tens of thousands of watches that are, you know, at least built in America and in in their price point. You know like they live in that eight hundred to two thousand dollar price point and and to me that's the sweet spot from a business standpoint, you're absolutely right from like an enthusiast standpoint. The other thing that I always like, without, without talking about any other companies, the biggest thing that we want to accomplish with Colorado watch company is transparency and integrity, because the consumer, whether you're a wristwatch enthusiast or Customer that just wants to buy a nice watch. You're doing a lot more research now than ever before and there's a lot more information out there Than ever before, especially on how and where watches are made. So there's a lot of people that know that to be Swiss made Only 60% of that watch, the cost needs to come from Switzerland and a lot of times that's basically the assembly, and so there's there's a lot of Swiss made watches out there that that say made in Switzerland, that basically are just built or assembled, you know, in Switzerland, and there are there are a fair amount, a big number, unfortunately, of American companies who have gotten slapped on the wrist from the federal trade Commission for saying stuff about made in USA and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 20:59

So in Colorado watch company, we say built in the USA, because we can't technically say made in America, but we are extremely Transparent about everything that we do. So 87% of the cost of a Colorado watch is American and no one is going to tell you that number. Almost no company is going to tell you that number, even if you ask. And that number is going to be all over our website. It's all over the Kickstarter. We even have a layout on Kickstarter where we say we have little arrows that say like this case is made in Colorado, this gasket is coming from Asia. This movement is assembled in Arizona using foreign components.

Speaker 2: 21:38

You know like we are ridiculously transparent, because all of that should be a conversation like that's fun. That's a really fun conversation that I want my customers to have with their friends and say like, did you know this was? This was built in the USA. Like this is almost entirely made in America. And then they're gonna as like, well, which parts are made here and which parts are? And Most of the time you can't answer that question as a consumer.

Speaker 2: 22:02

If you buy a Colorado watch, you will most certainly can. You can pull up a diagram, if you want at the dinner table and show your friends where all this stuff is made. And we just think that's the right thing to do. And we're backing it up by saying hey, if you don't believe us, come to Colorado, we'll show you. And we do tours of this facility here in Fort Collins, colorado, all the time. And we're gonna do videos and YouTube videos all the time with, like, here's how we're making the case, here's how we're making the crown, here's how we're making the dials. We just got a pad printer so we can make our own dials here in Colorado. It's, it's cool. And we just went back to the basics of just like, hey, we do cool stuff, so let's just hit record and share it with everybody, why not?

Speaker 1: 22:42

Yeah, sounds like we're gonna have to take a trip to Fort Collins to do a factory tour video because we have a pretty new ish YouTube channel, and so I recently just got back from Switzerland last week and I was filming content with with Zenith and a buffet.

Speaker 3: 23:01

And panorai. Yeah, we're both filmmakers and photographers. Yeah cool.

Speaker 1: 23:06

Yeah, I come from filmmaking and Justin comes from photography.

Speaker 2: 23:09

Yeah, but I have a whole TV studio up here, so you guys are welcome. Anytime you can hang out, we can. We can talk about making some cool content. Did you get to see how they make panorai cases? I did.

Speaker 3: 23:21

Yeah, I did.

Speaker 2: 23:23

Yeah that's that's. That's where we want to. They have some machines that are like, like the machines that we have are kind of like yeah, well, exactly like the machines that we have are like Mercedes, maybe level, like they have like Ferrari and Lamborghini machines. You know they're super. Yeah, we're, we're on our way there.

Speaker 1: 23:43

But it's gonna be the. The only thing that they don't produce in-house, for my understanding, is gold tech because of the the value of the raw material. So like they were showing like the titanium, steel, e steel and carbatec and I mean it was crazy to see like the different machining processes and you know they show you the raw materials right and they show you like what the case looks like before. Does it even a case? And you know how the CNC machine like Like cuts it all out. I mean it was super cool.

Speaker 2: 24:20

Yeah, sadly, and we do that all the time.

Speaker 1: 24:24

Sadly they didn't let me do like a factory video Like I did for Zenith and bove, because I think that they were running some watches for watches and wonders so like. So yeah, I was going through and then, like I went to the like they were doing like some of the pressure testing and then, like you know, they pulled like maybe like 90 watches out of the pressure tester and I was like I have never seen these watches before.

Speaker 1: 24:49

Oh yeah you know these are on embargo and you know they're they're they're not yet produced, so so, yeah, it just kind of it could be the reason, but but no, no, panerai is very open for stuff like that. So if you're ever in not sure it's all I mean I'm sure they'd be happy to welcome you. I don't know if it's just Panerai customers or what, or whatever, but also I got the opportunity to sit down with the chief operating officer, um so so his name is Jerome, super, super, super nice, and they're very open and and for me, like I see a lot of people hate on Panerai because they're like, oh, panerai is not a real watchmaker, you know, and that's kind of the word that's been going around.

Speaker 1: 25:38

But yeah if you walk through the tour in between, like they have like the high Heralogy watchmaking benches and then they have the normal watchmaking benches, they have something called the Jupiter Jupiter terium or something. So essentially it's an awesome to your picture of it, but essentially it's got a mechanical movement at the bottom and then it's got a Panerai movement. It's a 40-day power reserve and it tracks all the stars in the sky made by that school.

Speaker 2: 26:03

That's like well, yeah To say they're not a real watchmaker like silly.

Speaker 2: 26:11

Yeah, I don't, you, I want to get into, like you can't even I know it's that's like some some you know Comments on Instagram posts. It's just like okay, I'm just I'm gonna delete that comment. Like I, there's no, there's no way to have a logical conversation with with an argument like that, and that's that's why. That's why I say whenever I talk about Vortick, especially like Tyler and I are Hardly engineers. You know, like I'm an industrial engineer, which my friends always called an imaginary engineer, because a lot of my friends went to Disney and you know we did most like imaginary Imagineers at Disney, right, like I did logistics and supply chain stuff and, and he studied mathematics in college but he taught himself how to use all these CNC machines on YouTube.

Speaker 2: 26:54

And I do all of our marketing and and my, my expertise is email marketing and you know email marketing at last year with 70% of our revenue, and so, like we are really good at what we do and we are not neither one of us as a watchmaker, but we run a watch company and we have expert watchmakers that work with us and for us. But like, yeah, to say that Vortick is in a watch company, it's like okay, just just come to Colorado, let me let me show you and, like, when we finish the tour, just let me ask you that question again. Well, and anyone that would say that about Panerai, they just need to take that tour you did, and then it'll be like, okay, yep, I, I'm so sorry. I'm sorry you make cool shit. I love Panerai to you, like I, if I have to buy a Panerai to take a tour, I'm, I'm in, I'll do it, yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:45

I, I really like this. There's this new, modern, vintage looking Radiomir that just came out and it's got like the, the tropical dial and it's only 300 pieces and it's like it's like $5,400. I'm like, I'm like shit.

Speaker 2: 28:00

That's a like, come see. That's the thing about Panerai is that their prices are really reasonable, I think, for what they, what they make sometimes you know. Well, you know, I mean any generality for that one yeah in trouble. But like some they've done some stuff like that where I'm just like me and like I sell watches for more than that and then you know like these, it's just different.

Speaker 1: 28:23

So To get a 300 piece limited edition that they'll never make again. That is a 45 milliradamere that you know has a chocolate patina, like tropical style dial, like it just seems like to me. It's going to be a future collectible, for sure, but let's bring it back to you. We could talk about a million other brands. This is your podcast, this is your space. How do you modernize vintage watches? So obviously you probably get your vintage watch in and then you probably get something that's maybe not working. And then you know you're like oh, this part doesn't work. Like then what? Like how do you approach that problem?

Speaker 2: 29:08

Yeah. So first of all because they made so many pocket watches back then, we can cherry pick the best of the best pocket watches ever made. And so when I go out and I buy pocket watches which most of the time I'm buying from estate auctions, and you know a lot of people are mildly familiar with the estate industry you know somebody passes away jewelry store, pawn shop, goes out of business, and you know somebody comes in, writes them a check for the whole store, the whole thing, and says, hey, I'm just going to take everything. Here's a good amount of money, you don't have to touch it. You know the grieving family or whatever doesn't have to worry about going through all their grandparents stuff. And these people come in and they find what's valuable and then they sell the Rolex to somebody, they sell the diamonds to somebody else, they sell the precious metal, gold, silver and all that stuff to somebody else. And then afterwards, at the end of that estate process, when they're going through everything, it's like, OK, we have a box of old pocket watches, the heck are we going to do with this? You know nobody wants pocket watches anymore. So estate buyers either take those to pawn shops or take those to, you know golden silver stores and melt down the cases and basically throw away the movements, which sucks. It just happens all the time because a lot of people still don't know that we do what we do and they just throw them away. It's crazy. Or they work with one of my friends which is an estate auctioneer, and so these estate auction companies one of them's in Manchester, new Hampshire and they basically go to these estate buyers and they take everything that they couldn't sell or they need a new outlet for, and they buy like 100 different estates worth of things, take them all into this big warehouse and then auction them off. So they'll find they'll still find like a really rare pocket watch or really rare Rolex or something like that, and they'll auction it off on their website. And then again they are too left with all these pocket watches and they don't know what to do with a lot of loose movements, a lot of pocket watches that are cool but they're not collectible. And all of those people have my business card and they're like hey, rt, we got like two 300, how many do you want to buy? I put a few aside for Vortick. I know what you're looking for and so I go to Boston, new Hampshire, chicago a couple times a year and buy a few hundred pocket watches at a time, and I'm cherry picking from what they have, and then my team, our watchmakers, cherry pick from what I buy, and so we're already getting the best of the best movement.

Speaker 2: 31:51

And then we start the restoration process and, to your point, we always have something that's missing. You know they're missing it. A lot of them, almost all of them. We need to replace the springs, hairspring, mainspring. I mean, it's 100 years old, the spring isn't meant to last that long. So there's some parts like that that we have to replace with either new, old stock or like a replica part. And so we we do our best to keep them all original as much as possible and keep the movements, dials and hands at least all the same, and then use an authentic component like an authentic new, old stock mainspring or a, you know, a remake of a mainspring that's exactly the same as the the Waltham Watch Company mainspring from 100 years ago. And we restore them. We don't just clean and oil and adjust them, it's a full restoration process on these old pocket watches. We make them tick and work until time just as well as they did 100 years ago, and then we put them in our cases that were designed to preserve them for another 100 years.

Speaker 1: 32:48

I can already Go ahead.

Speaker 3: 32:50

Blake.

Speaker 1: 32:51

Oh, I can just already imagine the headache, because I just got a Speedmaster Mark II service and it took them like three or four weeks to find like a gasket or some shit.

Speaker 3: 33:05

Yep.

Speaker 1: 33:05

It's like, like, like, something that's stupid, like a little rubber gasket, you know, yep, so I actually Well, and you know well, and then you think about so.

Speaker 2: 33:14

So a lot of I mean a lot of people say that with with any, I mean, I don't care what watchmaker you go to If you have a vintage watch and vintage is like 20, 30, 50 years old, maybe that's hard, you know, and Rolex made so many. Rolex and Omega are typically the brands people are talking about when they're restoring a vintage watch and they're willing to spend whatever costs to do it because they're so valuable. They only made so many watches, but they made a bunch of different skews and they didn't. They made extra spare parts, but like not that many. You know, and I don't care how big your company is, you're not making like 100 years worth of spare parts into the future Like you're. You're just doing whatever you have to to keep the lights on and you're not really thinking that far out. And so now we go back to.

Speaker 2: 34:04

Everything I deal with is antique. So we're talking 19,. I mean the military watches that we make from like the early 1940s, that's, the youngest or newest watches that we make. Most of them are from the 1910s and 1920s, and so it's literally 100 years ago. And these watchmakers are these watch manufacturing companies like LGN, WALF and Hamilton you know I call them the great American watch companies. They manufactured a bunch of extra parts, but again not 100 years worth of extra parts, and so we get our spare parts from the same process. You know auctioneers and estates. If you're a watchmaker and you've you've fixed old pocket watches for you know 30 years and you pass away or you retire, you probably have a box of 10, 12 size Hamilton pocket watch mainsprings just sitting in a box somewhere and I want them, I need them, you know. So that's that's how we, that's how we do it and, yes, it is handstaking very difficult and that's honestly not even the hard part. The hardest part of everything that we do is finding the people to do the work.

Speaker 3: 35:14

Dude, you guys are creating and you're taking Frankenstein parts I mean essentially and you're making them work inside of a completely redesigned case and a completely new watch. And I just do like I can't wrap my head around, like how difficult that actually must be, because everything you know, every movement, is essentially laid out differently. You're not just working with one blueprint, there's many different blueprints and of course you know you guys, employees are having to adapt to that and learn that stuff as they go. It's really impressive New challenges every day, I'm sure.

Speaker 2: 35:52

Yeah, and that's, and that's why that's part of why it's so hard to find people to do the work, because I mean, you have to love it. You know if, if, if you're a watchmaker, you can make more money going to work in for Rolex and you know, servicing the same model or same five models of Rolex for the rest of your life. You can make a great living doing that and it's still fun. You still face new challenges every day. They're all going to be a little different, but it's basically the same thing versus you.

Speaker 2: 36:18

Come to me, I can't pay as much as Rolex. I don't have any like of the, the healthcare benefits of a big company, but every single watch you touch is a piece of American history that you're giving me life to, and if you think that's cool, then you want to come and work for us here in Colorado. And so I just need people and thankfully there are some out there who are skilled watchmakers that are passionate about American made, passionate about, you know, antique stuff, pocket watches, history nerds like us, like there's. They're far and few between, but they are out there and I've found at least barely enough of them to keep this business going and I think we can. We can still find more of us.

Speaker 2: 37:02

And that's honestly why I do podcasts like this is to just share the good news. Like you don't have to go work for the big companies Like there's some. There's some startups like us that do really cool stuff. If you're a watchmaker, a machinist or you know, want to do something cool.

Speaker 3: 37:15

Dude, I'll come work with you if you, if you split some of that closet as all with me.

Speaker 2: 37:21

That one's empty.

Speaker 3: 37:22

But yeah, that one's empty.

Speaker 2: 37:26

But I I got some good stuff here. So some of these are, some of these are full and yeah, if that's, if, if you want a few hundred dollar bottle of tequila for your, your signing bonus, I'm down, that's, that's very fair.

Speaker 1: 37:40

Something that I think about and what is super cool and I feel like is super unique is, of course, just echoing all that you said, but recently I acquired a 1969 Rolex Datejust from my buddy and when I got it I was like, you know, I want to do this, right. You know, I want this thing to be restored, right, you know. So, of course, what did I do? I sent it to Rolex. You know, I didn't want to send it to a local watchmaker. You know, I wanted Rolex to get their hands on it. I thought there was value, you know, by the by the money that I would pay to service at a local watchmaker. I would pay the same money at Rolex and get the Rolex service card, which of course, increases the value of the watch you have. But but Rolex sent it back to me, claiming that they wouldn't touch it. And so they sell you on this idea of like having a watch that, like you know, you can pass through generations and generations and generations.

Speaker 1: 38:41

But this was a 50, you know, you know a 50 year old watch, and they wouldn't service it. And I was like, to me that seems like Bullshit for one. You know, it was like a 1601 Datejust, which you know arguably was Probably the most popular Datejust like. You can find Thousands of them on the market right now. There's a lot of inventory out there. But to me it really kind of struck me in a weird bad sense that, hey, there's a possibility that this, this watch that I have, now that you know whether it's my new watch, I've got two new Rolexes like less than a year old. Yeah, you know, my children, or my children children, are gonna face the exact same thing that I just had in the future. But and that's why I was like man, this is so cool, such cool brand, and it really resonated with me because you know you are legitimately breathing life into you know watches that it's unlikely. Even you know Hamilton or Elgin like that they would even want to get hands-on with these things, you know.

Speaker 2: 39:52

Well, those companies don't exist. I mean the, the original Hamilton watch company, went out of business in 1969 and the trademarks were purchased by the swatch group in 1972, 71 or 72. And they were the. They were the company that lasted the longest. Elgin went under in the late 50s, I think they were second longest alive. But none of those great American watch companies still operate in any way.

Speaker 2: 40:15

And you know you definitely can't take a Hamilton railroad pocket watch made in 1920 and send it to Switzerland today, to the swatch group. That's not a thing. So the problem that you're talking about is a huge problem that we have in the entire world, not just America, but in America we call it the skilled trade gap, and it's way bigger than just watches. It's. It's people don't realize, or people don't want to be plumber's electricians, you know they don't want to work with their hands. They don't know that you, you don't have to go to, you know, penn State and study engineering to make, you know, 60, 80, a hundred thousand dollars a year. You can make better money than that. Run in a little electrician company in your hometown and you can crush it and make six figures out of a van. And and when you talk about watches in the watchmaking industry it's even worse. The average age of a watchmaker in the United States is over 68 at this point and it is literally a dying profession. And there are maybe a couple of schools I mean, you can count the schools that we have in America on one hand and our children, and Definitely our grandchildren, are screwed. They're gonna be shit out of luck if they want to service a Rolex in 20, 30, 50 years Unless we fix that problem. And so that's I mean our give back, our charity is the veterans watchmaker initiative, which is the only. It was one of the larger American watchmaking schools and they teach US military vets how to be watchmakers and it's based on the boulevard, the Joseph full book program. So like we're doing what we can, but even them I mean Sam there at that school he can teach maybe 15 people at a time in one class and the class is like almost two years long. So unless we scale that stuff up, we're out of luck.

Speaker 2: 42:06

So that's that's the other reason I liked doing podcasts like this is just, yeah, awareness of, like you know, if you love watches and especially if you're a young person, you like watches and you're technically inclined Gosh, there's so much opportunity, not just even in watchmaking, but in in building watches and running the the CNC machines that they have. You know, cut and metal and turn them into watch parts. But if you want to dedicate your life and become watchmaker, you can make way more than people like me that that were just an engineer. You know, I've got a four-year engineering degree. Honestly, you'll make just as much as I did right out of school when it's only a two-year school, and people like me will pay for your school. Rolex will pay for your school, for sure. So so, yeah, it's, I Could. I could talk about that all day, so I'll stop, but you know.

Speaker 1: 42:56

To me is obviously, you know you brought up Hamilton and Hamilton not being the same entity that it was. You know back in the 20s and you know the early 18th century. But you know when meet, when we met originally the first time in person in Chicago, you were talking about a lot about, like the lawsuit that happened with Hamilton and specifically swatch groups, ari, and so I'm curious maybe to to get your spin on that, your side, your perspective. You told it. You told it really well and it was a really great story and I don't have the privilege of repacking that. But a lot of people may not know About what happened to you in your early days, because you know it seemed like it happened to you very quickly into your new you know, your, your new brand, like it seemed to be happening at the same time you were starting up a company, so It'd be interesting for you to fill the viewers in with what happened totally.

Speaker 2: 43:55

I'll give you the a short of a story as I can. For the whole story you can Google Hamilton v Vortick. This is a federal lawsuit. All the federal documents are public. It's all public knowledge. And then you can also go to vortick watches, comm slash victory, and we're producing a little series of videos and I'm actually gonna write a book about it. I don't know when I'm way too busy to write a book, but I want to and I will.

Speaker 2: 44:21

But the the long story is or the long story tried to make short Is that you know we take antique American pocket watches and turn them into wrist watches. Hamilton was one of the great American watch companies and we leave the original dials on these pocket watches and so none of the watches that vortick watch company makes save vortick on the front and center of the watch. They say Elgin, illinois, waltham or, in this case, hamilton, right dead center on the front of the watch. And then we engrave vortick on the back, on some of the components that we make on the case, and we did not think that was a problem. We didn't know a whole lot about trademarks or Intellectual property or the law at all. I mean we were in our early 20s when we started this company and we just assumed that we were upcycling something that was used a hundred years ago. And we're actually changing the use case, which we're changing it from a pocket watch to wrist watch and we honestly I don't at that point I don't know if I knew if Hamilton was part of swatch group, like I had no idea. You know I was. I was a kid. Like I said, we weren't watchmakers, we didn't grow up around watches, we were just trying to make a watch in America. That was it. So we put that idea on Kickstarter and then, after Kickstarter was successful, I used some of the money that we made on Kickstarter to buy our first magazine ad, like our first print advertisement, basically announcing the idea of our company, and it was the May June advertisement or May June issue of watch time magazine in 2015. So we launched the company technically on Kickstarter in November of 2014.

Speaker 2: 45:54

Roughly six months later, I ran this ad In watch time magazine. I was super stoked about it. Watch time, you know, was at that time and still is, you know, the biggest magazine in the US for watches. So at the bottom I said you know, here's a picture of a. We used a Hamilton railroad pocket watch. We turned into a wristwatch using Photoshop because we saw it. At this point we still in a manufacturer to single watch, we were still trying to figure it out from Kickstarter. And and we said, you know, contact a watchmaker at Vortick today to design your own custom pocket watch made into a wrist watch. Vortick watch it on whatever.

Speaker 2: 46:30

I thought it was a pretty cool ad. It was different, you know, really stood out. You know the the watch time advertising team was like, oh cool, somebody's making making pocket watch conversions like the right way, you know in America, like everyone's stoked about it. And Then I got a official letter from Switzerland With with a cease and desist. We got that cease and desist about two months prior to shipping a single product in our company. We still have not made a single thing. And they said you know, you're not allowed to use our name to make money and that's what it's all about. So they they ended up we, we, we had started what I refer to you as a difficult conversation between me and a couple C level executives at this watch group.

Speaker 2: 47:14

That lasted six years. I Wish I could go back and somehow find a way to talk to those people early on and say you know, let's just sit down and have a cup of coffee and like, let me just put my watches in your hand and say this I'm listening, I'm just a kid from America trying to do some interesting. You know, I grew up in southeastern Pennsylvania. My dad lives in Lancaster, pennsylvania, where Hamilton was. He can walk to the Hamilton factory. I have a ton of respect for Hamilton brand and it's part of my DNA, but they sued us nonetheless.

Speaker 2: 47:45

So about two years into the conversation, so in 2017, we were served with the official lawsuit and Then I sat in federal court in February of 2020 and defended us in the southern district of New York, with a federal judge sitting right next to me, and that's why it's all public knowledge is, you know, there's a lot of US government resources when we're deployed to defend us and I'm very grateful for that. I and I'm very grateful for my attorney, rob Lance. Shout out to Lance Lance law firm, who now does a ton of wristwatch industry stuff, because he's been kind of made famous. If you ever get in trouble in the watch industry, he's you converted them, yeah, yeah, and he loves. He loves a lot. He's one of our best customers now and and one of my best friends.

Speaker 2: 48:35

But but yeah, we found someone to fight with us and they sued us over trademark infringement and counterfeiting. Trademark infringement was basically accusing us of using the Hamilton brand to make money and and not properly educating our consumers of what it was. You know it is a Hamilton, but it's not. You know, it's 100 years old all that stuff. And then counterfeiting they basically accused us of altering those products and Printing the Hamilton brand on the product in order to make money. You guys know, because you've seen the watches and we've had this conversation, that we don't do any of that stuff and we do it the right way.

Speaker 2: 49:14

I knew that from the very beginning. My attorneys knew that from the very beginning. Everyone involved, including the federal judge, knew that this was basically just kind of bullying. But One thing I've learned about intellectual property in the law is that a trademark, a patent, any piece of intellectual properties, only worth the money you have to defend it, and if you don't defend it, other people are going to use it and they're going to take advantage of it. And so I don't hold any Hard feelings against swatch or Hamilton, like they were doing their corporate Diligence and they were doing this lawsuit because it's just part of their SOPs. You know, say, somebody's using the Hamilton brand to make money, sue them. That's it, and, and it doesn't matter who you are and what you're doing, what. What is frustrating is that it took six years and hundreds of thousands of dollars, and some of my hair and probably it looks good though right now it's still.

Speaker 2: 50:10

Yeah, I think I'm going to start receding right up in here. It hasn't started yet. I'm right there. Yeah, it's, it's going to happen eventually and it's probably because of of that six years, but I'm it's frustrating that it took six years to figure it out. But the reason I want to write a book about it is because we won so fast forward so 20, late 2020. We won in federal court. They appealed. We won again in Appellate court, which is basically a panel of federal judges that reviews the first ruling. Again, tons of federal resources. Five Federal judges read a 40 page document that the first judge wrote about how we weren't doing anything wrong. This was all okay and here's why and used a lot of arguments to prove that we're.

Speaker 2: 50:59

Upcycling is legal. You know, and that's what it was all about is it's much bigger than watches and pocket watches and all that stuff it was. It became more about recycling and reusing and and sustainability and just like if, if this is wrong, then like what else could be wrong, kind of thing. Yeah, and so I just think it's rare that in a David and Goliath story line, I think that in Goliath story like this, the David wins and Doesn't have a muzzle. So a lot of times stuff like this is settled out of court with NDAs and all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 2: 51:35

So, like I couldn't say anything, that I just said and I do have to be a little careful about what I said because I don't like you know, there's some of the stuff that I can't share sure but, like most of it, I can share, and if I can document this stuff on podcasts and videos, like I put on our website and then hopefully a book, you know, if I can prevent one other person that's in their 20s, starting a company, from getting sued by a huge company in the industry, that's you're raising the awareness. Yeah, it's just, that's just it. Plus, I think, and I talked about, like, a lot of our customers are small business owners and entrepreneurs and I hear all the time they're like man, I heard about the lawsuit, like that must have been crazy. Like you know, I got sued about five years ago and here's my story and all that stuff.

Speaker 2: 52:21

Like so many people have some kind of legal issue in their life, as an entrepreneur especially, and they don't talk about it, nobody knows. They, they totally bottle it up inside and I am not afraid to say that I've done a lot of therapy, I've done a lot of talking. You know, like I, it about ruined my life, it about took away my relationship, um, you know, with my partner. It was definitely a strain on on my relationship with my kids and my family. Um, my mom died about halfway through the the lawsuit and I did not get to spend very much time with her, you know, in her final months.

Speaker 2: 52:56

So, like you know, if I just think talking about all these hard things that most people don't talk about Is a really healthy thing, um, and and when you, when you go through something like that, especially as an entrepreneur, there are lots of other people that have gone through similar things, and the biggest mistake I made was not asking for help soon enough when I start asking for help. People came out of the woodwork and they helped and I'm super grateful for those people. But if I kept it to myself the whole time, I would have either like really hurt myself, like physically or mentally, or I would have potentially lost the lost dude or given up because it was all on me. So I'm very grateful that it wasn't all on me.

Speaker 3: 53:39

Well, we're, we're glad to have you here, man, and you know sorry about your, uh, your mother's loss halfway through that. I know that must have been probably one of the toughest times in your life. Um, then everybody goes through hardships, and you know it's. It's a beautiful thing, uh, how humans can interact and communicate and really, you know, like you mentioned, come out of the woodwork and help each other. Um, I've always kind of been the same way, you know, just let's try and stay humble, don't really ask for much, and I know that, uh, ultimately, a lot of people have that same, you know, backbone and support system. Uh, so it's a good thing that you had that.

Speaker 3: 54:14

Um, I'll switch to a little bit rt, if that's okay. Um, so, talking about you know Taking, you know hamilton specifically, and things like that and vintage watches, have you guys ever considered creating you know a new watch from the ground up with the vintage flare that vortick is known for, but also having it Under the vortick brand? So I know that you guys do the the colorado watch company and you know that's kind of your own take on like a you know a new watch spin, but have you guys ever considered that under vortick's name?

Speaker 2: 54:48

Yeah, so we we are Now that we have two brands, all the like, or most of the fully modern stuff and all of our new ideas. Most of it is going to be under colorado watch company or or a future brand like um. I want, I want to build vortick into a little Little swatch group of sorts, you know, and have several brands that we run. That's that's kind of the the goal, all focused on american made. That that's really the business plan in nutshell, um, but we do. To answer your question, we do have one idea that we've been toying with to basically position vortick as not just pocket watch conversions but High end, really well made custom watches designed and built in colorado.

Speaker 2: 55:34

Um, and we, we got our hands on some really cool swiss movements, um, that look like the old pocket watch movements. They're like really really highly decorated Nice um, and they were decorated just for us, and we dreamed of being able to make um, make our own dials. And now that we started making our own dials and we got a pad printer, um, for colorado watch company, my business partner, tyler, has been working on Some really interesting dials and and for this you know one thing that we've learned, especially by, you know, taking old pocket watches and making wristwatches is the dial is what sells the watch. I mean people just Love like. I mean it's like a little canvas, it's a little work of art that's on your wrist and there's so many things you can do with it. They're all different. So um tyler's got some really cool ideas with um, either grand few enamel, which hasn't really been done recently, or Um, all kinds of really vibrant, different colors, that that you can do on our machines and with our processes that we use now. That don't really fit the aesthetic of um, you know, a pocket watch turned into wristwatch.

Speaker 2: 56:41

Um, and, and because we use the old dials, you know we're um, we, we kind of get what we get, but um, we, we call that that concept.

Speaker 2: 56:51

The journeyman series, um play on words with the word journeyman as far as like, literally like learning as you go and like trying new things to see what works, and like hopefully something pans out, um, and then literally on on a journey to like, let's make as much of this stuff in america as we can, um, and let's learn as much as we can along the way to, again, you know, try to create more cool jobs for for people that want to work with their hands and make stuff um, um, like we do so. So we call that the journeyman series and we're hoping to come out with a few like. They'll be like five piece limited edition runs, if that makes sense um, in a very similar style to a vortick watch, like we call it industrial americana, like our design style the cases, um, and, and a little smaller and then obviously modern movements, so we can, like you know, focus more on the dials and cases and stuff like that.

Speaker 2: 57:47

So we've um, we've been thinking about that for a long time and I'm hoping that comes out late summer, early fall, from from vortick and I'm still trying to figure out I hope everything I just said makes sense. I'm still trying to figure out where that fits in our brand portfolio and how we still call it a vortick, because a lot of people is now associate vortick with pocket watch conversion. So, uh, trying to make sure we do that right, um, but honestly, most of it's just gonna be sold to our current customers who follow us and there's me like support the brand yes it's a little different.

Speaker 1: 58:19

So during um, you know, obviously, whenever you're coming on the podcast, you know we were spending some time doing some research, you know. So that way we can have a valid conversation, right, that's a part of our process as being a podcast or understanding our guests, and I saw some um, some articles or some videos or something that, um you know, obviously mr Wonderful is huge in the watch industry and he he was kind of like plastering your brand and he was a fan and um, I'm curious as to how that that relationship started.

Speaker 2: 58:55

Um, yeah, so so the the video. There's really one main video I think he's. He's worn the watch a couple other times but, um, he did a video with producer michael and I think if you google Kevin O'Leary watch collection, vortick pocket watch or something, you'll probably get there. Um, it's a youtube video with with producer michael and they sat down and went through like the current state of of of Kevin O'Leary's collection and somewhere around I think it's 17 minutes or so into that video. Um, he, he got to his vortick watch that he was just recently given and and worn on. He wore it on the first two or three episodes of season 13 of shark tank and he just gushed about the watch and he read the letter like we wrote him a handwritten letter, send him a sticker and stuff like that and and all this other stuff in the box, and he's gushed about how how much he loved the watch, how it works so well on tv. Um, I mean you, you cannot pay someone like that to advertise the way he did and it was all organic and that just happened. Um, all by accident and that video has like two point some million views now I think maybe approaching three million is nuts. Um, and we get we probably get a hundred unique website visitors a day from that youtube video, just just from that little blurb I mean, it was maybe a minute, you know, in the middle of this 30 minute video um, but to your point, he, he loves watches, he's a watch collector and he loves. He, specifically, is a dial guy. You know, he wants unique dials and one of a kind things that really stand out and um, the way we got to him was we uh, one of my friends I did actually a podcast with this this guy, um, and he was on shark tank, um, his company is called mc squared, or, I'm sorry, mc squares, and he makes his name is anthony. He makes um really cool, um, sustainable and reusable whiteboards and sticky notes. So it's kind of like, imagine a sticky note sized whiteboard, like he does that kind of stuff. It's really cool little company. You know, at that point little now it's huge Um, that like, he went and he pitched that idea on Kickstarter, um, or not, in case you're, I'm sorry, on shark tank, yeah, so he pitched on shark tank.

Speaker 2: 1:01:24

Kevin oliri gave him a deal, um, live on air, super cool um, and and this guy, anthony, you know, emailed me and he said, hey, I want to, I want to buy kevin. I know kevin's a watch guy. I want to buy kevin a watch To say thank you for investing in my company. And he did that just because he and I had a connection and we thought our each other's products were cool. He's in denver so, like he was just like, yeah, let me support vortex watch coming, it's a cool thing. Um, and I was like I'm not gonna take your money, that's the coolest thing ever. Where do I send the watch? You know, and we went, we found the coolest watch.

Speaker 2: 1:01:57

The problem is, um, kevin only wears watches with red straps and all of our leather is american made and, like we, we don't have a whole lot that's like red. We had one that was like it was almost like a mistake. We had an orange strap that got made like a. We had a short run of orange made and one of them was a little more red than orange and For some reason I set it aside and I was like, yes, perfect. So we grabbed that one. We put it on one of the coolest watches we had it was a waltham pocket watch and overnighted it to the venetian.

Speaker 2: 1:02:32

Um, because he said, if you get it there by tomorrow, he might wear it on shark tank. It's really like, all right, let's do it. Um, and then, yeah, all of a sudden, we, we, we saw that video and then we saw a couple episodes of shark tank. So I have screenshots of Kevin O'Leary wearing the watch and then we have a couple like red carpet appearances where he's where you can tell it's, it's a vortex, is the crowns at 12 o'clock and it really stands out on his wrist.

Speaker 2: 1:02:55

So he has worn it a couple times and I wouldn't say it's in his rotation, because his rotation is next level, but it's, it's in his active collection, you know. And and, yeah, I got to meet him at the watch time event you in in October and I went up and introduced myself and he knew exactly what I was talking about. He was like, oh yeah, the pocket watch, you cool, that's awesome, like nice to meet you, and he was so kind and so nice and so thankful and I was just like you don't know what, but you've, you've helped me more than you can possibly know and I'm just so, so grateful for you. And, yeah, he was, he was stoked but he was about to go look at an MB and F watch, so I can't really compete.

Speaker 1: 1:03:46

As a watch brand. I mean you dream to get your watches in the cases of collectors right, even if it's not like the daily rotation or the top three of the top five, but just the fact that you're in that in that same case.

Speaker 3: 1:03:58

You know, yeah, is is epic and especially to be such a prominent public figure as well. I mean, that's you know, that's like you said, that's free marketing for you and it's genuine marketing, which is really cool. And I'm personally one of those guys. I watch TV shows or films or anything at any time. Somebody has a watch. I'm pausing it. My wife's like dude, why are you pausing this?

Speaker 1: 1:04:19

I'm like yeah, I mean they're wearing.

Speaker 3: 1:04:22

Yeah yeah, so like I'm curious how many people are actually doing that and thinking you know, wow, that crowns at 12 o'clock, they could. Such an interesting watch. What is that?

Speaker 2: 1:04:31

Yeah, yeah, probably the best story of that is Jack Ryan. So John Krasinski was wearing a military edition, watch on season four of Jack Ryan and Michael Kelly, who's his co-star War of Ortec, watch in season three and season four of Jack Ryan. But if you Google John Krasinski's watch Jack Ryan season four or something like that, you're gonna get to a gear patrol article. That's all about the Vortech military edition that he wore in season four and Now that we've we've had all this conversation, you'll get a kick out of this. John Krasinski was wearing a Hamilton watch in season one, two and three, took that Hamilton off and put on a Vortech military edition for season four, which is also still a Hamilton. It was a Hamilton pocket watch made in for World War two, turned into wristwatch and I see it and we're we're doing some cool stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:05:28

I don't know if I can share what we're gonna do with that watch, but I have the watch that John Krasinski wore on TV in our safe here and we're gonna do something really special with it this year.

Speaker 3: 1:05:37

So that's awesome how the turns have tabled exactly.

Speaker 1: 1:05:44

I'm curious for me oh.

Speaker 3: 1:05:46

What's your, what's your favorite restoration that you've done today? I know that you've got to have a favorite. I'm sure Tyler does, sure everybody does, but how about you personally?

Speaker 2: 1:05:55

So I I'm a huge fan of our military edition. Every year we find pocket watches that were flown on B 17s and B 29s in World War two is called the master navigators watch. Hamilton made a hundred and twenty thousand of them for the US Army Air Corps during the Second World War and we tell that story at. We call it the military edition, but it's for tick watches calm slash military. We give a portion of those proceeds to that. That school in Delaware, the veterans watchmaker initiative. That whole project Is really close to my heart. We release it at 12 noon Mountain Time on Veterans Day. It's the only time you can buy that watch. We usually sell out really quickly.

Speaker 2: 1:06:33

We do Basically, I spend all year trying to find as many of them as I can and then we release as many as we could make by that day. So last year we only did 30. This year I think we can get to 40 and we do a, let's say, a 40 piece limited edition. In every year they look different. I am wearing, I think, one of the most special ones and I'll try to hold it up to the camera so you guys can see it.

Speaker 2: 1:07:01

Hamilton made most of them. This was our 2022 special edition, I think. But every year we use the same Hamilton movement and dial, so it's a black dial on a Hamilton pocket watch and then we change the case and strap and we make it look really cool and different every year. Some years about three of the last five years We've done a special edition of like 10 or 15 pieces on top of that that are a little different. And this one was an Elgin. So Elgin didn't make very many of these military pocket watches, but this was a very special white dial version. They're all true 24 hour dials.

Speaker 2: 1:07:41

And then this one we we changed the all the second hands on these were blue, like the Hands. We hand painted the red second hand on it to go full red, white and blue. We did a solid bronze case which you can tell is very patina at this point. And then the movement's the best part. It's a fully gold plated. They called it guilt movement and this was. This was a railroad grade pocket watch movement made by Elgin Back. They were making them mostly in the 1930s. They called it the bw Raymond and then they added this extra bridge and gear on the back to create the sweeping central second hand and the hacking feature. So they were all hacking second hands and we made 15 of these and sold them for $12,000 a piece and they sold out in, I think, seven minutes and we made one extra for spare parts just in case and I get to wear it Until we, until we need it.

Speaker 1: 1:08:42

I love that dial because it's like. It's like the American version of the tight beef leager dial and of course, it's a 24 hour. Hour indicator, which I mean it's just awesome. Yeah, and there, there were not. I mean still today.

Speaker 2: 1:08:58

I mean, if you want a true 24 hour mechanical watch, there are very few options, very few brands that that make one. So we're so. That's one of the watches with Colorado watch company is called the gct, and all of these say gct on the dial, which is the precursor to gmt. It's called Greenwich central time or, I'm sorry, greenwich civil time, and gct was. It's the same as gmt. It's the london observatory, it's the. It was the same as the gmt, the london observatory. It's the. It was the central time zone for the allied forces during world war two. So they all say gct on the dial. We have learned our lesson From a trademark standpoint and I went out and trademarked gct now for modern watches and we have a watch in colorado watch company called the gct.

Speaker 2: 1:09:45

I saw that super cool, basically a replica of this watch that I'm wearing and we're gonna do we're gonna basically make replicas of every single military edition that we do. So all the different case colors, the dial colors, all this kind of stuff will do a. I'm sure we'll do a gold back you know gold movement at some point to to replicate this one. So, um, that's gonna be a really fun project because every year will come out with a new military edition and then all the time we can come out with new gct watches, with colorado, and have have a 10, 12 000 version that we only make a few of for vortick, and then have a 1800 dollar version that we make for, uh, for colorado watch company, and there's there's an endless ideas in that world. Um, so you're exciting.

Speaker 1: 1:10:32

We. We have our two final questions here for people that make it to the end of the podcast. We always like to give them some juice, right, you know? So you um, I know right, it's you. It's like you deserve a prize. Um yeah. So so where do you expect vortick or colorado watch company to be In the next decade? And then this, the second question I will leave, from my brother here, justin.

Speaker 2: 1:11:00

So I want to build the lvmh of american made, and when I say that, you know, if you know louis vatanmaway, hennessey, you know that um, they own I don't know 30, 40 brands that are all in the luxury space. Um, and that is a foreign company not focused on american stuff in the slightest, and that's okay. That's what they do. Um, I want to run a small group Of companies, not just watch companies, but companies that make really cool physical products in the luxury space that are as american made as possible, and so that's some of the stuff I've been talking about with abingdon and some other people in the watch industry.

Speaker 2: 1:11:47

There are a lot of people in the watch industry that Want to make more things in america, but it's really freaking hard to make even cases in the united states. Um, I I won't say who, but several companies that you are very familiar with have toured our facility here in colorado once we put out our colorado watch company stuff, and are basically begging us to figure out how to make cases for them, because they want to make more stuff in america. Um, and so the demand is there, the consumers want it. You know, like it's very evident from just our kickstarter, um, that, like people want to invest in american made stuff and um, and I don't think it should be just one brand that does it like I. I firmly believe, after all this stuff that I've been through. As the tide rises, all ships rise, and so I have. I have a couple boats, but like what if I had 10 boats?

Speaker 2: 1:12:44

you know, at the tide, the tide could probably rise even faster. So that's, when you ask especially about 10 years from now, I mean vortical, be doing what it's doing, you know we're it's. It's a really cool business because we can just Every day we make a new watch. So I don't have to Constantly, you know I don't have to constantly come out with new products, vortick and just be vortick and make really cool pocket watches and wristwatches. Colorado watch company will probably be pretty big in 10 years but um still be making really cool stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:13:12

And you know um made in america is our focus there. Hopefully more than 87 percent made in usa by then. That's that's the goal is to get as close to 100 as we can. Um and then massive scale from that and um, the third company we've been working on for a long time, or third brand. I guess I should say that would be part of that portfolio of companies. When we get there. It's called mechanical products and the idea of that is to make things for other people in the usa. So if you come to me and you want to start a watch company and you want it to be american made, um, we can make stuff for you. And we're not there yet. It's going to take a while, but, like right now, we can make most of a watch in america and, um, we could absolutely put somebody else's brand on it and ship it somewhere else. So that private label and corporate gift industry is huge, and so we want to tap into that next and kind of help, help other people do what we've done.

Speaker 2: 1:14:14

Um, that's our that's our third brand, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3: 1:14:17

That would be great, man. I mean essentially pioneering that space to to make way for other people and helping them. Um, that's, that's really cool, honestly. It's nice of you guys to do that as well. Um, last question for you, rt, if that's okay and we'll hopefully wrap things up after this um, are there any Any upcoming releases that you are willing to give us a taste about? I know that this will be public facing, of course, and you don't have to. Just, you know, give away all your easter eggs and stuff, but, uh, anything neat that you're working on that you can uh give to the people. Well, um.

Speaker 2: 1:14:52

So our, our military edition for vortick is is always the thing that we're like. We're constantly iterating and making new stuff. Um, the one thing I don't know when it's going to come out. I want to do it at a time Like that like makes sense from like celebrating an anniversary or of something military or something like that. Um.

Speaker 2: 1:15:15

But if you look on the military edition website, which is vortickwatchcom slash military, you'll see last summer we did a we called it the comparing watch and we found just six pocket watches that were used by the us navy and we're off the coast of norma d on d-day Um. We called it internally the d-day watch, but those pocket watches were used on on navy vessels to compare to the main um clock on the on the warship Um, and there was an officer of the watch that would carry that pocket watch around to make sure that every time keeping component on the on the vessel was was accurate with the main main clock and um and we. It was literally called the comparing watch, and so we made six of them. They sold out really quickly as, as you might imagine, really cool piece of naval history. Um, it's a beautiful looking watch and they're gorgeous. Yeah, so another thing made by hamilton. Hamilton made a lot of those military pocket watches.

Speaker 2: 1:16:16

Um, there's another version of that that. It's a very similar looking pocket watch, but it was made for the royal air force during world war two and it has the broad arrow from the royal air force, or the british broad arrow on it, and it's really cool, and I have a few of them. I'm trying to find more of them, and so I I'm going to the oshkosh air show, the largest air show in the world, in oshkosh, wisconsin, which is in july, and I'm hoping I can have at least one of those pocket watches that was flown by the, the royal air force, in world war two. Um, turned into a wristwatch at that point, so that'd be, amazing.

Speaker 2: 1:16:58

That's one of my current projects. The other project I found is, um, I have a business card on my desk from from another one of the estate buyers, someone who's collecting pocket watches. But, um, the us core of engineers Made a railroad style pocket watch for world war one and they made a thousand of them and the serial numbers were printed on the dial. So each one says the serial number of that pocket watch right on the dial, like 20201 of a thousand. Um, one of the coolest things I've ever seen. And they were mostly used in canada, so they're canadian dials. So they have the 24 markers in the inside ring.

Speaker 2: 1:17:35

Um, so that's a huge project. Those are really expensive, even when I can find them. Um, but you know something with Canada Day or um, I'm going to the the toronto timepiece show, which is the first of its kind, I think, in september, so if I can have just one of those you know for that show. Those are the two fun projects I'm working on for vortic and at this point I'm just trying to find and collect as many of those types of pocket watches as I can. Um, because those special editions are just I mean, they're just so fun like we get to tell so many cool stories about world war two and, in this case, world war one, and like the railroads in world war one and watch gosh, it's just, it's a history lesson every time I make a watch. So, um, that's the kind of stuff I work on amazing.

Speaker 1: 1:18:23

Yeah, yeah, I, uh, I think we're gonna wrap this Thing up. Is there anything that we didn't touch on that that maybe you'd like to To talk about before we close this and say goodbyes?

Speaker 2: 1:18:35

Um, I would just say you know the, if you want to learn more about vortic and like, follow along the. You know, like I said earlier, my, my passion and the thing that I'm really good at is is marketing, specifically email marketing. I I still send a weekly email newsletter and that's that's me and and my team putting together all the cool watches we made this week. So go to vorticwatchescom slash newsletter and hop on that list and that's the best way to learn about all this cool Stuff they're working on. Other than that, that's it. I appreciate the opportunity to be here and go deep on some of these stories. Um, I appreciate the time you guys let me to to expand on all that. So, thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:19:12

That's what we're here for. We'll make sure to plug all the socials and the and the podcast description and uh. Until then, we'll see you guys on the next one.

Speaker 3: 1:19:22

Thanks guys, again everybody, bye, bye.