Dear Supporters,
First of all, we hope that you have been able to make it through the chilly winter period with a smile on your face knowing that the Scotland Rugby team have regained the Calcutta Cup for the third year in a row! The boy's aren't playing half bad!
Now, with the same momentum as our national team, I would like to update you with some news regarding our progress with manufacturing prototypes and finalising our materials for production. It is hard to put into words how much we value your support and therefore we want to be as transparent as possible regarding our production process. Especially the production of our hand painted enamel dials and hand painted aventurine dials.
As you know, parts of our watches are produced in Shenzhen, China. One of our partners, Robert Reid-Kay is on site to manage the production process and to ensure the quality of the final product.
After a troublesome period with our prototype production, being delayed by nearly 6 months due to Covid regulations in China locking down entire cities for weeks, we are happy to say that we finally have them in our posession.
The prototypes are not exactly how we wanted them to turn out, but this is what prototypes are for! We invested time and money in order to be sure that designs and quality of manufacturing of the final line are top notch.
We understand that every start-up company faces a teething hindrance, but at Scotland Watch Company our attitude is: WE DON’T HAVE PROBLEMS, WE ONLY HAVE SOLUTIONS.
The long road to prototype success
We have been fighting battles of all shapes and sizes in order to get this far. These battles included but were by no means limited to; smoothening out difficulties with the depiction of the thistle as a zero marker on the sapphire bezel insert; guiding our artist who hand-painted the elements of the dials; and adjusting the colour palettes of the dials and bezel inserts to best depict the original design.
The search for a steady hand painted enamel dials
One of the biggest hurdles that we overcame was the difficulty of dial production. After months of searching in Both Scotland and China, Robert managed to find a very talented young Chinese artist 欧国昊 – Ōu Guó Hào.
Try, try and try again
With lots of guidance, Ou and Robert have been able to master the delicate operation of hand-painting the elements on the dials. After many failed attempts, do-overs and countless hours in the studio, we arrived at a style which both looks fantastic and is identical to the original design.
As the old Chinese proverb goes...
Haste will not get you anywhere. We were trying our best to move the production of the dials along as quickly as possible, but the complexity needed for the creation of the dials was nothing to take lightly.
Off to the finishing line
Once Ou had completed his hand-painting, Robert took the dials immediately back to the dial lab for finishing. This started with a layer of clear top-coat to ensure the longevity of the paint job. Following this was the machine sprayed Super Luminova arabic numeral hour markers, followed by the machine-sprayed lettering and logo design.
We are keen to share with you our excitement of receiving the prototypes of Saltire collection (and the challenges that lie ahead in achieving the exact design that we have envisioned). We shall do this in another email following this one, after we have touched up and processed the photos.
We would like to ask for your thoughts, as these are prototypes, and we will be improving them and making adjustments for final production.
Once again, thank you very much for your support and please hit REPLY to this email and ask us any questions that you may have. We would be more than happy to answer them.
Best wishes,
The team at SWC,
Robert Reid-Kay and Tomek Borkowy
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