The co-founders of the educational Watch It Made programme are to launch their first commercial retail collection on Kickstarter this week.
Watch It Made was established by Florian Caroff and Armand Didier, who at the time were Cranfield University Masters students, as an educational programme designed to create an interest in engineering amongst school children, by allowing groups of school children to design and assemble their own bespoke watches.
Caroff said: “The most rewarding part of our work is seeing the children smile. I believe we can now take the happiness this brings and spread it to our customers. Armand and I are very passionate about developing the idea of ‘Look good. Do good’. This is our understanding of a fair business.”
Caroff and Didier are now looking to launch a commercial venture around the same principle of customisable watches to support the programme financially.
For their first collection, the two founders have decided to launch a design your own watch concept using 13 different dials, five cases, 10 straps and four sets of hands, which represent a total of 2,600 different watch combinations.
Caseback engraving will also further personalise the watches on offer.
Didier explained: “We developed the watch ourselves with a vision of creating a high quality product made in the UK and, after several months working alone, we shared it with our friends, family and associates. We discovered that people not only loved our watches but also our vision, which is why we’ve decided to go further and start a crowd funding campaign.”
The collection will be launched via a Kickstarter campaign this Friday.
