Hoptroff London is pushing into the UK wholesale market, debuting its sport-orientated Hotblack collection to retailers at today’s CMJ Spring Trade event in Birmingham.
Innovative electromechanical watchmaker Richard Hoptroff is onsite at the two-day event at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole hotel as a guest supplier to explain the features of his Bluetooth-connected watches to retailers.
Hoptroff London’s watches use traditional, George Daniels-inspired dial designs, electronic movements and a Bluetooth link to the internet to display all manner of data.
The eponymous brand is best known for its luxury, precious metal timepieces, including the outrageous No. 16 double-dialed atomic clock wristwatch, and had previously only been available to buy direct from the brand’s website. The Hotblack collection sees the brand offer a more accessible, rugged and sporty watch.
Hoptroff explained: “Hotblack watches are smart but sleek, intended for energetic, passionate people. Each model is crafted for a select audience – one has live football results, another has real-time financial data. Having secured retail distribution in London’s West End and Paris’ Rive Droite, we are now looking for one or two further retailers in the UK who feel they can reach out to our avante garde customer base.”
The Hotblack collection was inspired by Henry Ford’s vision of making the latest innovations accessible beyond the elite few and follows Ford’s famous mantra of “you can have any colour you like so long as it’s black”.
The five-model Hotblack collection includes the Hotblack Gravitas, offering perpetual calendar, automatic daylight saving time and 15 seconds/year accuracy; the Hotblack Sports, allowing for live tracking of a football match; the Hotblack Stock Market with dial displaying up-to-the-minute stock, index or exchange rate; the Hotblack Salah indicates the direction of Mecca for daily prayers and the Hotblack Pharos, with an illuminated alert for a pre-determined event.
Models within the Hotblack Collection have a flat retail price of £1,199 and require an iPhone4S or higher to operate with support for Android devices following in 2015.
