This week got off to a strangely amusing start, as I bore witness to a conversation among secondary school children recently liberated from their mid-year exams and 10-year series papers – a term that actually gets me reminiscing about how I seldom gunned for good grades, and instead spent much of my teenage years gunning terrorists down in Counter-Strike. The dialogue saw Boy A stating that he was sure his A Maths answer to a certain question was correct, with Boy B challenging him “You know how to do meh?” At this point, Boy A whipped out his notepad and proceeded to demonstrate, in a moment of nerdy inspiration, how he arrived at his answer, and promptly left his friend grunting out a begrudging “Chey, big deal.”
The incident reminded me of another conversation at the recent Baselworld 2016, one of the most prestigious watch fairs worldwide, where our Marketing Director was accosted by the European boss of a competing watch brand. Walking past the Aries Gold booth, the European gentleman sneered at us, asking rather audibly if we know what automatic watches are, and what it takes to produce them. Taken aback at his arrogance, especially with the knowledge that we had not contributed in any part to his receding hairline, we stood there for a second before whipping out our own notepad to sketch a watch casing with a mechanical self-winding movement (to be fair, our illustration skills are more suited for stick figure drawing). We then explained as politely as possible that we do sell automatic watches, and briefly elaborated, in our own moment of nerdy inspiration, about mainsprings and ratchets powering automatic movements.
Dumbfounded with nothing constructive to add, the man took his leave, just like the boy who’d muttered “Chey, big deal.” Because damn right, we know our stuff, from blueprint to production. Are we kind of a big deal yet? Not quite. Can we offer a big deal though? Sure we can. So here’s a little treat for our dear readers: flash this blog post at your nearest H2 Hub outlet for $20 off your next automatic movement Aries Gold timepiece purchase, and make your day automatically better.
-The Watchman
