You may remember Minuteman Watches from when I previously mentioned them here. Since they were mentioned, they have made great strides toward their goals of making great watches and supporting veterans. Thomas Carey, head honcho at The CGA Company and Minuteman Watches, recently sent over an update.
Currently many of the needed parts for the watches are here in house. We are now awaiting shipment of our watch cases. We are going to start mating up the dials, hands, and movements on the 2nd week of December. This will allow us to get more watches completed than we would otherwise be able to complete in December had we waited for the cases to arrive.
To date we have pre-sold about 150 watches which is much better than we had hoped. We will start shipping completed watches in December and hope to have all of the pre-orders filled by the end of January 2014.
Originally we had planned to have our watches built by Lum-Tec in Ohio. For several reasons along the way this has changed. At this time we are going to have the watches built by some top notch watchmakers that have their own shops. The watchmakers we have selected actually conduct certification testing for the AWCI. The work will be performed in multiple shops at multiple locations. So this is very much a cottage industry you could say.
We will be testing each of our MM01, MM03, and MM04 to a water resistance of 300 meters. This despite the fact our current Minuteman watch models are rated for 200 meters. Dry tests, wet tests, and humidity tests will be conducted on each watch. We are testing to the sort of standards Rolex for example requires on their dive watch models. We do want to point out our watches are not dive watches. Rather they are what we call tactical watches, or what some call “Tool Type” watches.
As part of our on-going effort here at Minuteman we plan to increase our American content by sourcing more and more components from here in the U.S. At this point the 1st thing that will change is that starting the 1st part of next year our PVD coatings will be done here in the U.S. by one of the best companies in the world. Next on our list is to find a source for dials here in the U.S. We have also learned others in our business are working on producing watch cases in the U.S. Due to the higher cost of producing watches here in the U.S. We may opt to offer a higher end model in the future in order to offer Minuteman watches with U.S. sourced watch case.
For each watch we sell 25% of the profit will be going to charities that help veterans who need a helping hand. In fact the reason we created the brand is to raise funds for veterans. If any of your readers know of a source for watch components made here in the U.S. We would greatly appreciate it if they would be so kind as to contact us.
Finally we currently plan to halt our pre-sale pricing and switch to our regular retail pricing Jan 1 2014. For those who are wondering where the money we raise will go here is the break down.
- 25% to charities that support veterans.
- 25% to pay for our employee’s.
- 50% will go back into the brand for future growth.
We hope to be able to eventually build watches in house, and print our dials in house. With changes in technology and our growth we may be able to produce watch cases in house at some point.
We would like to thank all of the people out there who have supported our effort for believing in our brand and its effort.
Check out Minuteman Watches.
