Status report
General:
After a bumpy week last week things are back on track or will be by the weekend. Last week’s return to the office was made very exciting by my little daughter getting sick for the better part of the week, my jet lag, and later on my developing a nasty cold to boot. To top it all off we had a nice power failure on Tuesday (see below) 
Finally everyone is feeling nearly themselves now and we’ve able to build up a nice batch of prepared parts and cases to resume normal operation. E-mails will be replied to over the weekend as we try to complete as many watch orders as possible ahead of the Saturday shipping deadline. If you have an urgent matter please call.
Custom watch orders/deliveries:
At the moment we are running about 2 weeks behind schedule. The good news is that ahead of my July 18th vacation no custom watch orders have been scheduled for delivery after June 21st. This leaves time to for us work down the backlog of orders. By next week we should have most if not all of the cases for the custom orders prepped. While we won’t be able to ship everything next week it will mean that we will be able to ship as soon as we finish setting the dials, hands, and regulation.
One of the results from my business trip to Switzerland at the beginning of the month is that I have made contacts at several PVD/CVD coating firms that serve the watch industry. In the following weeks we will be having several trials performed on our parts in order to review the coatings as well as flesh out the practicality of the process.
Site update:
The site revision/price increase will be delayed for several more days as we try to tie up final details for the LRRP, other projects, and work down the e-mail backlog. The site will be taking on a much needed spit and polish and simplification. The pre-built watch section and the custom watch section are being combined into one section that will be labeled “The Collection” or something to that affect. Hopefully this will make navigation easier and also more clearly illustrate the custom versus pre-built options.
New equipment:
In our continual focus on quality and in response to expected future service requirements we have added a Pressmatic 36 watch programmable winder to our equipment list. As the number of our watches sold increases I expect that the types of issues we will be dealing with down the road will be vary more widely. This machine will enable us to review repair work done and thoroughly test the ETA 2824 movements that we received earlier this year.
These movements that will begin going into watches in August have already been checked by a Rolex certified service center and also double checked by us. However the one function we couldn’t verify 100% was the auto wind mechanism and the resulting power reserve. This piece of equipment will enable us to verify this last detail. Should it prove practical for us to do so we may use this piece of equipment in the future to “run-in” our movements to further improve accuracy over a longer period.
Status Update
I hope that everyone is having a pleasant holiday season. I scaled back my holiday plans in order to continue working on watch orders, which are currently behind schedule. In order to focus on watches orders placed this week will be scheduled and e-mail notifications sent out next week after the 1st.
I am replying to e-mails but those that I don’t get to by the evening of the 29th will be take care of after the 1st of January.
Vantage customers:
* The Swiss Made Vantages have been delivered. Half of the bracelets have been completed and I am currently waiting on a shipment date for the first half. I won’t hear from the manufacturer until after the 1st of January. In the mean time the watches are being checked. I still expect at this point to begin shipments of the pre-built and custom Vantages in January. The exact date will be determined by the delivery date of the bracelets which the large majority of the pre-orders requested.
Sea Fighter customers:
* The cases at last word were undergoing their final quality assurance review. All of the dials, movements, and other related components are in stock and being checked so that they can be sent to Switzerland for assembly as soon as the cases arrive. The 2836 movements were delivered at the end of November (almost 3 months late) but at least they are here. At this point I expect be able to begin shipments of custom Sea Fighters and to ship the components for the pre-built Sea Fighters to Switzerland for assembly by the beginning of February. An e-mail summary to the same effect will go out shortly.
Custom watch orders with delivery dates before December 31st
* I am currently working on these orders as well as a number of orders scheduled for January 5th. I expect to be able to ship most if not all of the watches scheduled for delivery prior to December 31st by this Saturday.
Please note that our office will not be closed from December 30th through January 1st. If there is anything urgent please call me at 484-683-1875
Custom Stingray ordering to be suspended Dec 1st
Due to strong demand for custom Stingrays I have to temporarily suspend ordering for custom Stingrays beginning Dec 1st. The Swiss Made pre-built Stingrays are currently in stock and will remain available for ordering. This announcement only affects the custom Stingrays. At this point I am concerned that if I continue to take orders after Dec. 1st that we will have more orders than we can fill. In addition, since the Stingray shares the same movement as the upcoming Vantage and date only version of the Sea Fighter I have to make sure that there are a reasonable number of movements available for those watches when they launch. If there are enough movements remaining I will re-open ordering for custom Stingrays sometime in the first quarter of 2008.
Just to reiterate this suspension only affects custom Stingrays. The pre-built Stingrays currently in stock will remain available for sale.
Status: Oct. 21st
Due to being hampered by a bad cold no orders were shipped last week. Orders will resume shipping this week and I will be re-scheduling orders on Monday as required.
I spent most of last week resting and taking care of some overdue site maintenance and paperwork. I also worked on prepping Vantage parts so that they can go off to Switzerland for assembly. This was about what I could handle given some pretty bad vertigo. There was little work done on watch orders currently outstanding.
At this point I am about 1 1/2 weeks behind schedule on custom watch orders. Before catching this bad cold I had reached a point where I was operating back on-schedule. Unfortunately I had pushed myself too hard to catch up and basically I am back where I started about 2 months ago when it comes to the current delay. So going forward I will take a less aggressive approach to making up time on the schedule so one can expect that this 1 1/2 delay will be gradually worked down over the next 3 months rather than weeks.
Pre-built Stingray ordering open
The Swiss Made Stingrays are due in stock at the end of the month and I finally finished the ordering page for them. The price will be $460 until the end of the month. Starting November 1st the Pre-built and Custom Stingray watches prices will be going up to $565 and $599 respectively.
On the Pre-built watch page there is a link to a new page detaling the differences between the 50, 60, and 70. The information icon to the right of the navigation between the three versions will open a pop-up. The same information will be posted on the custom watch pages once they are revised for the new prices.
Under the weather
I have caught a cold and spent the last three days essentially sleeping. Unfortunately I am not 100% at the moment but can’t afford to spend any more time on the sidelines so its back to work today.
* For those of you that have placed an order in the last week or so kindly note that I will be processing those orders in the next two days.
* E-mails I will begin responding today but might not get back to those in earnest until mid-week.
Thanks in advance for your understanding.
Status
I will be replying to e-mails later today. In an effort to catch up on watch orders I haven’t been as responsive to e-mails as I normally am.
Stingray orders…I should be almost back on schedule by the end of the week. The one exception will be for customers that have ordered an acrylic insert. There is a small bottleneck because of the number of customers that added this option after the orders were scheduled.
Sea Fighter: The ordering pages are undergoing final testing and tweaking but I want to get back on schedule with shipments before putting up the new page. I should have the new page up during the weekend.
Vantage: The mass production of the dials will be near completion in the next two weeks or so. The first look at this model with its actual handset should be available sometime next week.
Stingray: Shipment updates
The order status portal is now up to date. Revised sales orders haven’t been e-mailed yet but will start going out tonight. Crystals and the final components required to resume Stingray deliveries will be in hand next week.
The only potential issue at this point is that the movements we have been waiting for from ETA are now scheduled to ship at the end of this month (i.e. nearly 10 weeks late). We have enough movements to deliver every watch scheduled through the end of July but for those down the line its cutting it close. Hopefully this will be the final revsion of the shipment date from ETA and I can start breathing again.
Stingray et al: Standby for updates
I have the revised schedule completed and will be e-mailing updates to customers over the next few days.
Unfortunately for non-Stingray customers some ship dates had to be pushed back. I apologize for having to do this.
Stingray Production Update
We have identified some crystals with cosmetic issues from our production batch. To ensure that we ship the best and most consistent possible product I am sending the crystals that we have on hand back to the factory for review. The issues are cosmetic and will not affect important issues such as water resistance. Checking crystals is best left up to the factory as it is time consuming and quite difficult work (i.e. one is inspecting something that is for all intents and purposes supposed to be clear). I should know by the end of next week if there will be an appreciable delay (since the inserts that I need won’t arrive until next week) and if so how long.
I have a handful of crystals that checked out okay before I decided to send the batch back for review so a trickle of watches will begin shipping this month. In the interim I am pushing up the delivery dates of all other watch orders in order to minimize shipping delays for the Stingray once the issue with the crystals has been resolved.
We are getting down to our last few handfuls of ETA movements. We have enough to keep us going at this point through the middle of July. Our latest order is due to ship any day now from Switzerland baring any unforseen production delays on their end. I mention this because given how busy the factory is (and I mean crazy busy) there is a remote chance we may be twiddling our thumbs for a week or so if there are any delays in shipping our order.
Thanks in advance for everyone’s patience. I will continue to stay on top of these issues and report back when I have more info.