Ticking Along Nicely

This morning I was in fear of being caught attending a local Business Link seminar on ‘Making your business sustainable and lowering your carbon footprint’.  It started well but descended rapidly into a cringeworthy scene from a Mike Leigh play.  Like a local AA meeting, we were all forced to gather in small groups and confront our sins, “Hello, my name’s Robin Armstrong and I’ve harmed the environment”. 

The problem is I despise ’Green’ policy, not because I don’t believe that we should all think more about the impact we having on the planet, but because it’s been hijacked by every marketing guru, politician and local council as an opportunity to sell us something we don’t need or want, raise taxes or in the case of the council, provide a licence for legalised extortion.   I wonder, at what point during the formative years of climate change experts developing their theories of world doom, did someone realise that they were about to witness the birth of the biggest growth industry that the world has ever seen.  Of course the issue now is that so many jobs, companies, politicians careers and half of the world’s finances are staked on the belief that the world is doomed unless we change our behaviour, that even if someone could categorically prove it’s all nonsense (which is highly likely), the rollercoaster could no longer be stopped. 

Well, who am I to buck the trend.?  It seems despite my resistance to be swayed by ‘Green’ loony rhetoric , I’m actually more green than I thought.  Not only am I currently employed as a Director of a Water Engineering consultancy, concerned with saving water and energy for water utilities, I also find myself as a watch dealer of mechanical timepieces, devices with a seemingly negligible carbon footprint.

Some 45 and often many more years ago, while the rest of the world was busy carving up forests, building 9 lane carriageways across continents, powerstations, and oil refineries the size of small towns, white coated Swiss Technicians were building the watches I now sell, mechanical marvels fashioned by small machines, hand tools and a very keen eye.  The minimal carbon impact of their production has been written off over many years service. They require no batteries with hazardous material which will end up in landfill, and emit no gases that will heat the earth up.

I just hope that whilst our attention has been diverted to saving the planet from ourselves, there are sufficient industry professionals left, keeping a look out for those more relevant issues like, ensuring the world has enough food and energy, and keeping a look out for that mass extinction comet heading our way.

That would be a strange irony.  

I was recently reminded of the occasion, 2 years ago,  when we had our wrists metaphorically slapped for inadvertently abusing one of Cartier’s trademarks.  Contrary to my own, and popular belief, it appears the published use of the most innocuous of words can render copyright lawyers into a frenzy of litigious fervour.

On this occasion the offending noun was ‘tank’, in most people’s eyes a large green metal box with a large gun sticking it out of it, running on caterpillar tracks.  Cartier’s use of the word originates from the same source, namely, Louis Cartier’s inspiration on seeing the tough new war machine the Americans introduced to the fighting in Europe during the First World War.  The ‘Tank’ wristwatch was introduced in 1917, and became Cartier’s most famous model, a rugged yet beautiful watch that became a classic. Somewhere in the distant past they managed to persuade whatever trademark body was in force, that only they, had rights to use the word in connection with watches.

Unfortunately, due in part to my ignorance on such legal matters, it appeared we had inadvertently applied the same moniker to other rectangular shaped watches from other watch marques.  We were informed of this by a rather stiffly worded letter from Cartier’s lawyers, and instructed to desist use of the word ‘Tank’ in any other watch related context, unless we were describing Cartier’s own watches, obviously. 

We duly complied of course.

Back in 1996 Jeremy Clarkson wrote an amusing article in ‘Clarkson on Cars’ comparing the vagaries of Breitling ownership, with a modern Casio.   In his Sunday Times column more recently, he also announced that he was ‘calling time on silly watches’, although this assertion seems to have fallen by the wayside, if the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean seen on his wrist during recent episodes of Top Gear, is anything to go by.  For 90% of the population, a modern quartz watch is a perfectly acceptable tool. Its reliable, stunningly accurate, and operates by stealth, quietly functioning in all manner of environmental conditions until the battery finally runs out after 5 years or so.

For me, and the remaining 10% of the population, owning a single reliable modern quartz watch is rather like holidaying every year in Dorset, in the same week in June.  The experience eventually becomes so innocuous, that the prospect of staying at home and not going on holiday at all becomes a prospect of seemingly dangerous excitement.   Unfortunately, as Clarkson intimated, there is no doubt that Quality and Reliability make uncomfortable bed fellows.   

Some of you may know that I own a 1992 Mercedes 500SL, a car not only of ridiculous complication but probably one of the finest expressions of automotive build quality.  It’s original price tag of £75,000 is testament to the sheer time and effort taken by disciplined, white coated Germans in it’s production.  Despite it’s obvious pedigree, it is the singularly most unreliable car I’ve owned.   A short trip, undertaken without one of the myriad of dashboard warning lights blinking at you is considered a success of Olympic medal proportions, to be congratulated by a pat on the bonnet or perhaps a celebratory wash and polish at the weekend.  The ignition system has developed its own water production plant which I plan to patent and market to arrid Arab states. This results in a distributor cap clean every 1000 miles, to dry out the electrics and restore some semblance of teutonic efficiency to its unfeasibly refined 5.0l V8. 

The folding roof mechanism is a work of engineering genius, combining motors, solenoids, hydraulic rams and accompanying electronic wizardry to make it all work in perfect sequence.  The problem is everytime I press the button to lower the roof I wince, just like when you visit the dentist and you await the verdict on the state of your teeth.  It’s this expectation of failure that somehow makes the experience, when all is working, so much more memorable. 

In short, I won’t be trading the Mercedes for a Ford Mondeo, nor will I be trading the Omega for a Casio…

We’ve been asked this on a few occasions and I sense some deep frustration in some of the emails.  I do have some sympathy, you log onto the site and see rows and rows of gorgeous watches but the one you want is sold. Whats occuring?

Well, bear with me, there are a few reasons for this.

- If we take our Rolex page as an example. What you see here represents around 5 years trading.  Much as we’d like to have 40 Rolexes in stock at any one time, we can barely keep more than a handful in stock simultaneously. This brings us on to the second reason,

- We often find that Rolex’s and Omegas in particular will sell extremely quickly , within days of being listed on the site.  This means that they inevitably spend more time as SOLD than for sale.

- The last reason is that listing watches previously sold significantly improves our presence around the internet search engines but also provides potential customers with a very clear idea of what budget they will need to acquire a similar watch.  

Back in 1998, I’d developed a passing interest in the internet.  At the time possibilities were far from endless not to mention expensive, so time online was restricted to the odd hour here and there, twice a week. These days I am permanently connected the internet, either at a desk with PC, laptop on the sofa, watching TV, or even via 3G mobile. The latter has been a source of much frustration and there is much work to do there to get things to what I term, seamless.   Anyway, during these early forays into the web, the thought crossed my mind that selling stuff online was surely the best idea in the world.  Your shop is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. It doesn’t need anyone to open up at some ungodly hour, or close it at the end of the day.  Customers can browse at their leisure without feeling pressurised and come and go as they please.  

A few years later, I felt the urge to treat myself to a posh watch.  My budget was £500, which stretched nicely to a secondhand Omega Speedmaster Reduced found at Watches of Distinction based in Lymington.  This satisfied the craving to own a quality object for all of a few days until which time, the urges began again.  This pattern of craving and fulfilment was to repeat itself time and time again and unfortunately the devasting effects of ‘acquiring stuff’ began to surface in the aquisition of other chattels such as guitars, cars and various electronic gadgetry.  I once heard it termed ‘Gear Acquisition Syndrome’ (GAS) and it seems to stem from some primeval urge to furnish the neanderthal cave with all sorts of useless paraphanalia which would ulltimately be as useful as a ‘chocolate spear’ in the fight for survival against a sabre toothed foe. 

I can’t actually remember what the second watch I bought was (another symptom of the disease) but it became clear, very quickly that I wouldn’t be able to financially sustain this habit.  Many hours later, the first embryonic beginnings of www.Madaboutwatches.co.uk was born, and following a serious personal education into the ways and means of web based databases and scripting languages, I had after many hundered of man hours effort, managed to produce my first custom designed online shop for selling watches.   Running parallel to my own horological interest my father Rod was also battling his own ‘addiction’ to mechanical timepieces.  Together, we spent days in the search for watches, at fairs, browsing the web, safe in the knowledge that we could sell the surplus from our vast collections to finance yet more watches. 

The plan was working.  Within a couple of years we had traded enough to be concerned about turning our hobby into a part time business.  In 2004, I sold my interest in Madaboutwatches to Rod and decided to setup another site, PoshTime.  The formula was very much the same, although our aspirations had moved more to dealers rather than collectors.  As a result, many of the beautiful pieces we originally owned have been sold around the world, several have returned though and gone again, rather like old friends.   The difficulties of juggling a part time business with a full time position as a Director of a Water Engineerng consultancy have inevitably caused problems, but with my wfe Linda, joining the watch business as a partner in 2006, the burden has been lessened.   

The rest, as they say is history.