Highest quality watches brands

We’ve grown accustomed to see watches sold on the market for thousands and often even tens of thousands of dollars. But the truth is, high quality watches can still be manufactured and sold for reasonable, affordable prices, of around $300-$800 (though not much less). In fact, except for the name of the brand and the sums it spends on marketing and advertisements, there will often be no substantial difference between one high-quality watch manufacturer to another, regarding the features themselves of the watches. In this post we will go over on what makes a watch “good” and how one produces and distribute high-end watch at affordable prices.

Concept

Every product starts with a concept. Different brands draw their inspiration from different sources, such as modern, minimalist Bauhaus art in Xetum‘s case. In our example, we wanted to create an affordable, easy to read ergonomically time piece, inspired by the boldness of a cockpit instruments, such as the altimeter. To achieve this, we need to take some strategic decisions before we start designing the piece itself, such as determining its general size. Aviation watches tend to be relatively large, hence the 44 to 46 millimeters diameter that characterizes most Torgoen watches.

Design

Once you establish your concept you can then move to the design phase. Some designs start with a free hand sketch. Here you can see the free-hand sketch that gave rise t the T7 series layed before you. In Figure 4 you can note three drawings of our T10 before they were produced and two which never came to be. You may notice that at the end of this phase we pretty much know what are the materials, sizes, colors as well as which movement we will be using. We go through a long cycle of elimination until we decide on a certain look and feel, as well as color variations which we believe, based on our experience and research, will be most popular among our target audience.

Prototyping

After prices are established we require prototyping of all components. This requires technical drawings that look like this:

The prototypes are made usually by CNC (Computer Numeric Control) milling and lathing machines that are very good at producing components in small series. Watches made in mass production have a completely different method of manufacturing. We will come to that later. The prototyping phase takes about 30 to 45 days. After we receive the samples we normally notice things that were difficult to visualize in the renderings. This is the time to fine tune the look and feel of the watch, sometimes slightly changing the shape of the lugs, the hue in the color of the dial, the position and size of the indexes, or the length and shape of the hands. Sometimes the changes require a new set of drawings both technical and visual and sometimes they are so minor that we go from this phase straight to production.

Cases and Bracelets

The first step to make a case and bracelets is to make a molds to stamp case blanks and bracelet links. This is an example of a case blank as it comes out from a 50 to 100 ton stamping machine. As you may notice, there are many things missing here. There are no holes for the pins to attach a bracelet into the case and no hole for the stem going from the movement to the crown as well as the tube covering the stem. Many times cases have more than one piece and a top ring is required. Most Torgoen cases have two pieces even though they can be manufactured with one piece but the look is quite different.