Young entrepreneurs hoping time is right for watch startup
IT analysts plan to eliminate middleman and peddle their wares directly to buyers
Andriy Marchyshyn and Rudy Alami lead double lives.
By day, they are working as IT analysts for the University of Alberta; by night, they are busy building a luxury watch brand.
Marchyshyn, 27, and Alami, 24, launched their first company, MAD Watches, this week.
The startup uses the same premise behind disruptive, e-commerce companies like Warby Parker: beat the big brands’ prices by cutting out the middleman and selling directly to consumers online.
High-end mechanical watches — from brands like Rolex, Omega and Cartier — can cost thousands of dollars.
The Edmonton entrepreneurs want to sell their watches for less than $1,000.
They hope one model will be priced in the $250 to $300 range.
“I can’t see an average Joe spend- ing three or four months’ salary on a watch,” Marchyshyn said.
The pair, who met at NAIT, had a passion for watches but next to no experience actually designing them.
To find suppliers, they obtained a database of businesses attending Baselworld, a watch and jewelry trade show held in Switzerland. They contacted them from Edmonton and received more than 80 responses to their inquiries. From there, they whittled down their list to a handful of companies.
For the past six months, they have been sacrificing sleep in the middle of the night to make FaceTime calls across time zones and send emails in the early morning hours.
They plan to release two models of mechanical, automatic watches: a basic model and a sportier, more expensive one. Both have faces made of domed sapphire crystal and Italian leather straps with butterfly clasps. The basic version will have men’s and women’s styles.
They estimate they’ll need to raise around $35,000 through a crowdfunding campaign to get enough watches made.
That might seem like a tall order, but similar startups have seen success with this model. The watch company Filippo Loreti broke Kickstarter records by raising more than 900,000 euros in its first campaign; wool + suede, a local startup, raised nearly $50,000 on Kickstarter last year to produce men’s winter gloves.
Once a half-dozen watch samples arrive later this month, Marchyshyn and Alami will share them with friends and gather feedback on the designs and functionality before launching a fall crowdfunding campaign.
After many months of working on the project secretly, they said they’re launching now to show people how their business has grown from scratch and give future customers the chance to weigh in on the watch designs.
“We want to be a brand that resonates with people in Edmonton,” Marchyshyn said.