What's Behind The Things You Love?
Think about the things you love. The beloved possessions in your life that bring you joy. Do you take the time to imagine how they came into being?
We do. We're craftspeople and we eat, sleep and breathe the process of creating watch straps to lust after. Every one of our products is entirely handcrafted from start to finish by us in our Sydney workshop. We've been making straps for watch lovers all around the world for more than eight years and we still spend days and weeks working on tiny improvements to our techniques.
A Labor Of Love
Ever wondered how much labor is involved in the making of our products? Our two piece straps, in particular are made bespoke to fit your wrist and your watch. In this way, each one is its own unique intricate little work of art. Some of our watch straps can take several hours to handcraft and more than fifty individual steps to complete. The process involves meticulous precision, patience and a great deal of attention and can't be rushed even if we wanted to. It takes longer to make our straps now than ever before because we're always discovering new ways to refine. We’ve added padding to some straps, ultra fine edge finishing to others, lining and other improvements. It adds a lot of time to the process, but it means our straps are the best they can be. It's hard not to appreciate such tiny and intricately crafted items.
Every single step in the construction of a strap is as significant and important as the last. With an item as small as a watch strap, any imperfection can stand out as the tiniest mistake at any step of the way can render the strap worthless - we have very exacting quality standards. We expect a lot out of the products we create for our customers as we design them to last a long time. They're all entirely hand cut, hand assembled, hand sewn and hand finished.
Leather - The Essential Ingredient
Watch straps to lust after are a manifestation of number of important factors coming together. A critical eye and conscious decision making is essential in every step of the process and one of the essential ingredients for crafting the perfect strap begins with the sourcing and careful selection of the leather. The quest for the perfect leather for upcoming collections is a very exciting part of the whole process. We comb the globe in search of the perfect hide. Our leather is sourced from tanneries in countries like Italy, Germany, Japan, New Zealand and the United States. Many of these tanneries are family run and are six or seven generations old and have refined their craft for perfect leather for over a century.
For us, the perfect leather is a culmination of a number of things. It’s the perfect color, feel, tannage, smell and of course, exemplary quality. Many of of the leathers we choose undergo special tanning and finishing processes and have strict standards of quality and production and available in very limited quantities because of purposefully small sustainable production. We purchase leather hides in relatively small quantities as we like to refresh our collections regularly with new styles to keep things interesting. Also we purposely prefer to craft our collections in small quantities to ensure our customers receive products that are rare and never mass produced. We’re always on the quest for exquisite leathers that not only look handsome, but that will age beautifully and are comfortable to wear as a watch strap. Every strap we make is a limited collection. Once the hides run out, the strap is retired from the collection and replaced by something new and better.
Quality Thread - The Perfect Compliment
Another essential ingredient is the use of high quality linen and nylon threads sourced from some of the world's best thread makers in France, Germany and Ireland. Their handsome colors are chosen to compliment or contrast any given strap and truly set it off. All thread is primarily chosen for their incredible performance and durability.
The Tools
We use beautifully constructed vintage and modern tools that make crafting our products a pleasure. Some of our vintage tools are over fifty years old, sourced from different parts of the world, that we've been collecting over the years. We love that each of these tools have their own history and were once proudly used by other craftspeople to make goods for their customers back before many of us were even born. It brings US pride to continue on using these tools and adding our own bit of history to them as we bring products to life for our own customers.
More Than Just A Watch Strap
As watch aficionados, we know that a beautifully made strap is part of what can make a timepiece even more special. It can completely transform it and give a single watch a range of different looks. It can also breathe new life into an old forgotten watch you once loved. For us, handcrafting watch straps is about helping our clients transform their prized watch from something ordinary to and exceptional timepiece that’s enhanced by a brilliantly tailored watch strap.
As Albert Einstein said: "I wish to do something great and wonderful, but I must start by doing the little things like they were great and wonderful". We take the time and inject the energy to ensure all of the little steps in creating our watch straps are great and wonderful. We hope that the result when you look down at your watch is a great feeling of wonder.
