If the demand is there, why aren’t we building more watches? The answer to this question is not that simple, but hopefully it can provide insight into our overall approach to the analog watch market.

We want to keep pushing watch design forward, stay hyper-focused on quality and deliver unique experiences for our customers. This means when we design and develop new products, we aren’t just focused on hitting numbers and we spend more time iterating to get all the details right. In general, we feel that there are too many watch companies pushing way too many products into the market every year, mostly without purpose or meaning. This leads to poor-quality watches, disappointing customer experiences, meaningless brands, and products that end up in landfills. On top of that, you get a bunch of people running around wearing watches that all kind of look the same. In the last decade or so, we’ve seen an acceleration of the trend to maximize volumes, leading to a deterioration of product quality and the lowering of consumer expectations. 

MINUS-8 takes a longer term approach when it comes to creating new watch lines. We aren’t worried about selling massive volumes, but we are worried about how we can provide the best-possible product and experience for the MINUS-8 watch owner. We want MINUS-8 watch customers to feel special and wear a watch that has a story to tell. We don’t quite understand the mentality around wanting to wear the same watch that everyone else already owns and we also don’t get excited about very minor iterations to classic timepieces. To us, watch ownership is all about individuality and storytelling. We want people who own our watches to feel like they are a part of a special community, one that appreciates good design, great quality and one that cares deeply about the products/brands that they use and wear.

Building a sustainable brand that will be here for generations starts with making very intentional decisions around what we build for our audience and even more importantly, how we go about building it. For us, this means consistently talking to our community, taking as much time as we need during the design and development phase, paying a higher price for premium materials, selecting the right partners to ensure exceptional manufacturing quality, and limiting our builds to small quantities. 

Over the last 10+ years, we’ve intentionally built in small batches and don’t have plans on changing anytime soon. Unfortunately this approach leads us to sometimes sell out of products quickly and lose out on sales volumes, but MINUS-8 does not exist to sell as many watches as possible. For us it is about building products our customers are proud to own and delivering experiences that cannot be replicated elsewhere in the market.

As always, reach out to us anytime at care@minus8watch.com with questions or comments. We answer every email and love chatting with our community.

-Mike