Although I’ve probably had the privilege more than most, introducing a watch I had a hand in bringing to market never gets old. In my previous roles in global sales for NOMOS Glashütte and as Partnerships Manager for Fratello and, subsequently in my capacity as the co-founder and co-host of The Real Time Show podcast, I’ve had the honour to work with several dynamic brands on the design and presentation of several limited or special editions.
I’ve worked with Czapek, Louis Moinet, Nivada Grenchen, Straum, Sherpa, Minase (twice), and NOMOS (four times) on watch projects that were all high points in my career, and now it’s the turn of our next model, the Circula ProTrail TRTS SE — a collaboration between German brand Circula and The Real Time Show .
Behind this endeavour (as was the case with all previous releases) was a strong personal relationship between me and my co-host Alon Ben Joseph of Ace Jewelers, and Circula owner Cornelius Huber. The longer you spend in the watch industry, which outputs a huge number of products despite the small number of people that comprise it, the more you realise how much such relationships matter.
To meet with success, a watch should, at the very least, be an excellent product. With so much choice available today, especially at more accessible price points, there’s simply no excuse for putting out something that is materially sub-standard. But beyond that, the more emotional reasons for a watch’s being — its origin story, if you will — and how it fits into and enriches the brand’s collection en masse are important. It isn’t so much that marketers expect a good storyline or a well-justified raison d'être to be enough to sell a watch on its own, but it should be competent enough to not dissuade you from buying, at least.
That’s the product-focused watchmaker in me talking. I’ve gone toe-to-toe with more than one PR professional on this subject, with my closing argument always coming out something along the lines of, “Even if your branding and communication gets you the first sale, it will be the watch itself and its quality (or lack thereof) that will dictate whether or not you get the second sale.”
Simply put, the product is a brand’s best ambassador. This could not be truer for Circula. We started discussing working on a special (not limited) edition almost as soon as we met in person, and I’d had a chance to handle Cornelius’s latest ProTrail in the metal.
I was amazed by the tangible quality he’d achieved at a sub-1K price point. In my hands, I held a rugged, precisely machined watch of character that looked equally at home on the standard fabric strap or the nigh-on indestructible bracelet option (which, like the 40 mm case, has been treated with an ultra-hard coating making it especially scratch resistant).
When you throw into the mix a Swiss-made Sellita SW200-1b, it’s hard to find a weak spot in the value proposition. Of course, no watch can satisfy all tastes, but I was immediately confident that we could take the existing ProTrail model and, with Cornelius’s blessing, create a transitional model that would connect the current collection with what is to come in the future.
And what is to come in the future has something to do with the reason Cornelius decided to work with The Real Time Show. While many podcasts do most of their work in the industry on the content creation side of things, both Alon and I, in our separate roles as consultants for brands in the areas of product design, brand building, retail strategy, and business development, work intensely behind the scenes connecting hitherto isolated areas of the industry with one another. We’re close with many of the finest watch designers, most charismatic CEOs, and legendarily intuitive communicators the industry has to offer, and we love nothing more than bringing these talents together to see what they can do.
The network that we’re fortunate enough to operate within has been born of almost half a century of shared experience in the world of watches, buoyed mostly by Alon’s long career running a brick-and-mortar retail store in Amsterdam, and my background as a journalist for some of the most-read watchmaking publications around the world.
On one of our most listened-to episodes of The Real Time Show, we interviewed Guy Bove, a revered designer who has worked with brands such as TAG Heuer, Breitling, Chopard, and Ferdinand Berthoud in the past. Soon after, we started talking to Cornelius about the future of Circula and what direction in which he hoped to take the brand. He mentioned that he was on the lookout for an experienced watch designer with whom he could collaborate on a soft rebranding process and the establishment of a new, more modern aesthetic for his brand.
The relationship between Guy and Cornelius got off to a fruitful beginning, with the redesigned typeface being ready for deployment within weeks of their first conversation. While the plan initially was to apply it to the Flieger line and the new upcoming family only, Alon and I saw the potential to create a transitional model with an “Explorer” dial layout using the Field ProTrail as the canvas.
A quick mock-up started a much longer tweaking process that saw us increase the size of the numerals incrementally until we felt exactly the right balance had been achieved that offered maximum legibility without disrupting the necessary negative space. A flash of neon orange (a typical signature I apply to many of the watches I work on) was added to the seconds hand in the form of an elongated tip (another personal preference, I hope you enjoy), and once the subtle TRTS branding had been laser engraved on the caseback, we were ready to show the model to the world.
Every project we’re working on for The Real Time Show has its own character. This watch is a testament to the people behind the scenes in watchmaking, their talent and humility, and, above all, their shared passion for horology. At just under a thousand euros, the Circula ProTrail TRTS SE is built for action with a 40 by 12 mm case that stretches 46 mm from lug to lug, 150 m water resistance, the ability to withstand magnetic fields of up to 80,000 A/m, a case hardening treatment increasing the scratch-resistance of the steel to 1,200 Vickers, and highly legible, high-contrast numerals and indices treated with Swiss Super-LumiNova®.
Learn more at the official Circula website.
