Tourbillon Recap

September was quite a month at Horage. Tourbillon 1 pre-orders came to an end, Tourbillon $1 winners were drawn and Supersede our next micro-rotor project was presented to the watch community.

Those that have been with us for the majority of the Tourbillon 1 journey understand that we invest first in movement and watch development and what is left over goes into marketing. As a very open and transparent company myself along with founders Andi and Tzuyu strive to bring our community a little closer to how we work and what we do rather than invest in over zealous marketing campaigns that present phantasmal situations with no direct reference to reality.

Longevity as a movement developer and watchmaker is our primary goal and the hard reality is that this strategy takes time. Many have asked us to do more in the way of marketing and behind the scenes there has been a day in and day out effort to do just that. First and foremost is to support our community and second to support our concierge and retail location and finally to reach out and forge long lasting relationships with a select group of watch media. After over 2 years of tourbillon development redemption for these efforts arrived at what seemed like the final hour. In the last month of the pre-order we were able to create a new wave of discovery through a few small events and media exposure to the Tourbillon 1 and the Tourbillon $1 giveaway. Additionally media also received a sneak peek of Supersede so they could prepare for the announcement in early September. This culmination of things helped spark new discovery in Horage and ultimately helped us achieve our target pre-order goals.

So just how many Tourbillon 1's are in existence?

If you recall on July 30th, 2021 I had written a forum post relaying we had sold at that time just over 100 tourbillons. We had hoped for around 200 pieces but realized we would fall short of this target as well we had many still waiting to take part in events and therefore asked the community for an extension. The response from everyone was a resounding yes with many wonderful emails and comments encouraging us to keep pushing forward. We pressed on in that final month and moved above and beyond what we thought was possible.

Limited editions are different for each company as each brand has a different value proposition and market positioning. One brand might offer 100 pieces for $30,000 a pop, another 1000 pieces at $3500 and smaller micro-brand doing 300-500 pieces at $500 each. For us we felt that keeping things open and allowing a growing community to participate was the right thing to do, rather than estimating and capping a number that was either too short sighted or completely unreachable. Our strategy has meant we are producing only what is on order which means we could offer the best possible price as we would not need to cover any loss of sales.

The most accessible, single edition, Swiss Made touribllon caught a stroke of luck. The community that had been with us through thick and thin would also be a part of this story in not only gaining an exclusive tourbillon, but also being the early believers and the glue that has kept our team focused on bringing this and the next projects to the greater watch community.

In total we reached 260 Tourbillon 1 sold.

Case Numbers

• 244 Stainless Steel

• 16 Solid Gold

Movement Colours

• 27 Blue

• 18 Gold plated

• 39 Grey

• 156 Grey/Blue

• 20 Silver

COSC Certified

• 134

What about Tourbillon $1?

On September 12th, myself and Andi presented the live draw via Facebook. Luckily the platform was operational that day 😅.

The stats are as follows for those that participated in the draw.

• 74 countries/territories

• 1,131 participants (this is updated from the original as we had some with declined credit cards)

• 26,497 $1 tickets sold
  

With respect to our communities privacy the three lucky winners were announced by their first name, last four digits of their order number and territory of residence.

Jeremy was one of the winners from the USA. He was traveling when I tried to share the news with him, but the next day via email he responded and said he was in Switzerland and would come by to pick up the watch. In doing so he got to spend an hour with Silvan, Andi and the rest of the team diving into the details of tourbillon development and ultimately take home the watch he won. It was wonderful to here how much fun he had at the facility and just how happy he was to win the prototype Tourbillon 1.

For those that missed the live stream draw you can view it here. https://fb.watch/8t3j5Vzc9w/

What about the donations?

Today Simon Studer a teacher at ZeitZentrum in Grenchen stopped by the Horage office. Together Andi, Simon and myself started working on just how to best allocate the funds raised for their school. Simon was completely overwhelmed by the support and the amount raised and it took quite some effort to find out how to best use the funds to support the school. In our meeting Simon relayed a need for modern tools and equipment to better train future watchmakers. Better optical analysis, laser technologies or 3D modelling equipment is required. Next week we plan to meet again to carve out a direction and what equipment is best for the school at this time.

In addition to providing some new innovative watchmaking equipment to the school we are still welcoming two watchmakers or engineers to submit their CV's for a chance to spend a week in Biel at our facility. We have already received a number of CV's and will follow up with each one later this month. Feel free to send along to lostintime@horage.com

Playing a little catch up and planning for the future have kept us running at full capacity. Much more is going on behind the scenes and I can't wait to share those developments with you in future posts.

Until next time...

Landon Stirling