The production of this short run of the Saltire collection is on the finishing line. Which is why we would like to share with you the story of Scotland Watch Company journey from the first idea to this moment. This is the first part about the beginning of our Scottish Microbrand Journey. We will be posting the subsequent parts over the following weeks to come.
Part 1 -The Beginnings
Tomek Borkowy
For most of my professional life I was a film and theatre actor, director and producer. I was lucky to work with stars like Daniel Day-Lewis, Juliet Binoche, Brian Cox and Sylvester McCoy among many others. But I was always interested in watches and antiques. In the 1990s I started to collect pocket watches and soon realised that there were a lot of very good pocket watch mechanisms that had lost their gold or silver cases that had been scraped. During a visit to my native Poland, I discovered a fitted watch (pasówka) a pocket watch movement placed in a specially made wristwatch case. Unknown in the UK, these watches are popular in the USA and known as marriage watches. I had a number of very good movements like beautiful Hebdomas, or chronographs like Le Phare, and J. Sewill, but I couldn’t find a thick enough case to house them. I decided to design my own wristwatch cases for pocket watch movements, I went to ShenZhen, China and found a manufacturer.
In 2017 I was invited to become an ambassador for the Polish Clock and Watch Festival “It’s all About Watches” and in 2019 I invited the British Horological Institute to take part. I also invited my friend, Scottish horologist Colin Graham. We noticed that new Polish watch microbrands are mushrooming, and I decided to create a Scottish equivalent. Colin and I formulated the idea for a new Scottish watch company. But being two old codgers, we decided to invite a young partner to join us. The son of great Scottish friends and budding e-commerce entrepreneur, Robert Reid-Kay was the ideal person for us, and Scotland Watch Company (SWC) was born. Unfortunately, due to health problems Colin Graham has had to leave the company and we wish him well.
Robert Reid-Kay
When Tomek first approached me to create Scotland Watch Company, I thought he was bonkers. My professional background is in digital marketing, digital transformations, and branding. Apart from owning a non significant and rather cheap watch collection that I could fit on a family of six. I knew nothing about the world of watches.
I am a Hong Kong born Scot and throughout my upbringing my parents would take me and my brothers to ShenZhen and we would run around the computer markets picking up fake DVDs and chunky G-Shock Casio watches. As you get what you pay for, our stash would not last very long. Things have changed a lot in the last 15 years. Now, the ShenZhen area is home to some of the world’s state of the art manufacturing facilities, with a strong emphasis on quality.
When Tomek invited me to join the creation of a watch company producing Scottish themed watches, my big concern was that I lived half-way across the world from Scotland. Living geographically so far away from the core identity of the brand bothered me. This was before I realised that ShenZhen, in volume terms, has one of the largest manufacturers of watches in the world. I agreed to join up and in addition to my digital marketing and branding tasks, I became the manufacturing and sourcing director.
As you see, Tomek threw me into deep murky water, and I had to learn quickly about timekeepers and the watch industry. I was encouraged by Tomek to apply for an associate membership of the British Horological Institute and begin reading the BHI Horological Journal. I discovered many very interesting articles written by horologists from around the world and I have fallen in love with the art, science, creativity, technicality and people of the horological world.
All of this has changed my life in ways that I never would have thought.
PART 2 of Scottish Microbrand "SWC"to follow next week
Sláinte
Robert and Tomek
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