Funding A New Watch Brand With

So you wanna build a watch? It is a common dream of enterprising watch lovers to simply posit "I just want to start my own watch brand." It actually isn't as hard as you might think. There is a universe of services, companies, and resources to help you when starting from scratch. In fact, contributing writer Paul Hubbard wrote a post on this very topic here. There you'll find information on actually making the watch, but more importantly is funding your project.Whether you are interested in starting a new brand or just building a one or two models, you'll need money upfront for the design and prototyping. Then you'll need more money for the industrialization and actual production. In between are costs for marketing, customer service, and a series of other little money-eaters.The potential pay-off is real. If you build a nice looking watch you can made a handsome profit given a reasonable margin on your production and design costs. Though funding a large scale production of watches without an existing marketing is a very risky move. So how do you proceed?One typical practice when money is tight is to build a prototype or just a computer mock-up design, and then solicit people for pre-order money. These people pay a fraction of the retail amount (usually at a discount because they are pro-ordering), and then the rest when the watches are actually delivered. Such small production runs are usually limited, which is a good thing as people place additional value on limited edition watches. So on the one hand you get the peace-of-mind knowing "model X" will only have 200 pieces, and the consumer feels that they are getting something exclusive as "model X" will only be available as 200 pieces.After you have collected enough pre-order money you fund production of the watches. The safety here is that aside from initial design and possible prototyping, you aren't going to be out production money unless something awful happens and you need to pay back all the pre-order customers. Again, I am simplifying the process here to give you an overall picture of how a small watch production goes.The big question goes back to "where do I find these pre-order customers?" The traditional answer has been on the dedicated watch forums where such customers tend to hang out. Sometimes these watches will be discussed on blogs such as mine, but for the most part these watch projects live within smaller communities. So how do you take the same business plan but get more people interested? A great resource is a great tool for people with an idea looking for money. It is a type of "crowd-funding" service that allows people to pitch their products or ideas and have people become project "backers." Backers dedicate a certain sum of money that is only taken out of their bank accounts when an overall monetary goal as been reached.Let me give you an example. Say I want to build the model X watch as a limited edition of 100 pieces to start. I know that I need $40,000 to produce the first 100 pieces and I want the retail price to be $1,000. I go to and post the project with a full description of the watch including video of me talking about how cool model X will be. I create a goal amount of "$50,000" and tell people that if they pledge $500, they will get the watch that will later retail for $1,000 when the second production starts. I tell them that the first run watches are special limited editions with unique casebacks, colors, etc... Project times vary but are usually about 45 days. This is a protection to backers to ensure that projects don't just sit around forever until they are fully funded.If I get 100 backers at $500 each, then the project will produce $50,000. $40,000 of which will go to producing the first 100 watches, and $10,000 of which is profit. That is how you fund an initial watch production. The good news is that after initial production has started and you've made 100 pieces. The machining for the watches is still intact. This means you can produce the next 100 (or however many) pieces at a cheaper cost. You also know that because the first 100 pieces sold,?? perhaps you can sell more. not only can provide you with the necessary eyes to fund the project, but was also the monetary conduit (but they take a modest cut of course).So how does all this translate into real world experiences? To find out I talked to a few people that are actually in (or just finished) the process of funding watch projects. I spoke to Zach Raven whose project is here, and Thomas Young whose project is here. There are more added to Kickstarter all the time.What they have in common is that they are new to the watch game or not serious industry insiders and are offering backers a range of things that they can pledge on. For each of them was a great place to fund their project for a few reasons - but the process is not without some limited drawbacks.The best part of Kickstarter seems to be the instant access to a large audience of people - who are actually interested in dedicating money to back projects. Not only that, but using is a bit like free advertising given all the eyes.