Confirmation e-mails for those orders will go out over the weekend.

The final samples of the LRRP have arrived and are currently being reviewed. I will post pics and send out an update to pre-order customers as soon as we complete our review and get some decent photos taken.

E-mails and phone calls are now up to date. Please note that receiving an auto-reply will be very important as confirmation that your e-mail wasn’t marked as SPAM. We are now filtering our e-mails and so far its catching a few legitimate e-mails each day as SPAM. So far as I know I am catching all of those messages.

Order confirmations up to date as of August 13th. I should be current on e-mail confirmations by Wednesday of this week. (Please note for orders that shipped on August 19th invoices will have to be e-mailed out. We couldn’t print hard copies of the invoices because the new computer wasn’t ready at that time. Watch orders scheduled for August 16th and 19th will ship Friday.)

As always thanks for your patience.

Also due to the enormous amount SPAM that we receive each day we are forced to filter all of our mail. In the past I used to clean out the SPAM manually so that we minimize the chance that we will miss an e-mail from a customer. Unfortunately the SPAM problem has gotten so bad that we must use a filter. A case in point is that no e-mails have gone out yet because of the time required to go through all of our mail. I was just able to download our e-mail received during vacation earlier today.

For the next 30 minutes or so our e-mail servers will be down so that I can install the filter for our accounts. Filter installation completed as of 3.00 pm EST 8/9/2008. Everything should be back to normal now.

The price increase and new web site update have been postponed until after I return. The site updates have been completed but still need to be reviewed and polished a bit before publication.

The first of a series of PVD coated test cases have arrived and I am just thrilled with the first set. I am still waiting on two other companies to return some test batches. Hopefully at that time we can make a determination as to whether this will be a finish that we can offer with our Mk II brand watches. So far though the news is very promising.

The LRRP watch is moving along. The revised samples will be here around the end of August.

I want to thank all of our customers and fans for their patience and continued support!

Online ordering will be suspended between Monday July 14th through July 25th so as to minimize any communication problems. You will still be able to access the site but you will not be able to login to your account and as a result will not be able to submit any orders during this period. Please note that I return to the US on August 4th so orders received after July 25th will be processed after August 4th.

In case of emergency you may contact me at 484-683-1875. Please note that international calling charges may apply after the 18th of July since I will be out of the country.

Order status e-mails are current up to a day or two ago.

Info e-mails are now current up to the beginning of last week.

Watch shipments:

If you have an estimated ship date of June 21st or earlier your watch is expected to ship before I leave on vacation on July 18th. I will try to re-schedule everyone before then to give you better clarity as to when to expect completion but if time does not permit we may have to opt to keep working on watches rather than update the schedule. However I wanted to let everyone know that I am sensitive to the need to know but may have to choose between spending the time to rework the schedule and working on watches.

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.