How it started:

It was by chance, surfing the internet that I discovered the existence of a wooden watch made by an Ukrainian craftsman Valeri Danevitch. Then I decided to develop this idea in order to produce wooden watches for everyone. After an assessment of the competition, I realized that the concept was already marketed in the U.S. by an Italian company, but the European market seems to set aside. Thus an opportunity was born from an idea ...

First sketches and prototyping:

The market was targeted, it only remained to produce the watches!

Thanks to my engineering studies, I had all the knowledge and skills necessary to design watches.

Plan

Looking for suppliers :

Once the watches were designed, I had to find a supplier able to produce them. It was so far the most difficult step of the project. I wanted to base the production in France, I had solicited for almost six months over one hundred local suppliers without success. After this first failure, overtaken by economic realities, two options were available to me, the first and easiest would have been to abandon the project, or to expand the range of research.

The choice was not easy but I was so motivated by this project that I could not give up. So I selected an Asian company to machine the wooden pieces and the first samples have been assembled and tested by myself.

Our two first models, made out of bamboo :

Model Bamboo for Men

Model Bamboo for Woman

The watch movement is Japanese (Hattori, Seiko). The strap and case are machined in China and assembled by myself.

Latelier

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How are the watches sold :

Thereafter the first watches were produced I had to implement a distribution system. The E-shop seemed like the perfect solution, for several reasons: it is simple, it is low not too expanse to set up and it gives you an acces to a vast market that can touch (40 million people in France).

Montres en Bois - L'Atelier Des Montres