When the TAG Heuer Limited Edition Carrera Skipper for Hodinkee was announced last week — and sold out within the first hour of its announcement — Revolution reached out to the New York based team to ask what it takes to create these limited-edition watches of theirs that have proven to be hit, after hit. We also asked about how much of this success can be attributed to the power to e-retail and their own shop.hodinkee.com.
Taking on these questions was Hodinkee’s own Vintage Watch Specialist, Louis Westphalen better known to you and I as, louis.vintage.
You guys have worked with some great watch brands over the years, to create amazing special edition timepieces that are a lot of the times — if not all the time — exactly what collectors desire. What goes towards identifying watches for these collaborations?
The process is quite simple. It usually starts with a watch that one of us will bring to the team’s attention and gauge the sort of response the watch garners within the Hodinkee office. When everyone is on board, we then approach the brand in question. Once we have the brand’s agreement, the collaboration can finally begin.
You have to keep in mind, though, that the idea we usually start off with on paper is hardly what we end up with once the watch is produced. Between those two stages, months, if not an entire year, can go by before the watch can be finalized.
There is a lot of back and forth on the design, prototyping of dials and sometimes certain technicalities have to be reconfigured when a special run watch is being made versus how the brand typically produces their production pieces.
The project may stem from us, and press as much as we may to make our dream watch happen, at the same time we have to make sure we work closely with the brand so that we understand and operate within what can and cannot be done in accordance to the watchmaking that is of their DNA.