Building EONIQ, DIY Watch Club, and a Made-in-Hong Kong Movement

Welcome to The Micro Collector, a podcast where I talk with the founders and operators behind some of the most exciting microbrands and independent watch companies. I'm your host, Justin Dorfman, and in today's episode I'm joined by Quinn Lai, founder of EONIQ and DIY Watch Club. Quinn has built one of the most interesting and multifaceted modern watch businesses I've come across.

EONIQ began as a platform for custom and personalized mechanical watches and has grown into a broader expression of craftsmanship and Hong Kong watchmaking, while DIY Watch Club gives collectors the tools, components, and guidance to assemble their own watches at home. In this conversation, we talk about Quinn's journey from building EONIQ to launching DIY Watch Club, how the two businesses connect, and why helping people develop a more personal connection to watches has become such an important part of his work.

If you enjoy the episode, be sure to subscribe for more conversations with the people behind these incredible watch brands. And with that, please enjoy my conversation with Quinn Lai of EONIQ and DIY Watch Club.

All right, Quinn. Welcome to The Micro Collector Podcast. I'm super excited to have you on today. I'm also excited to be in your studio. I know we met at your workshop and I had been there before. Always impressive to see everything that you have going on there. But this is where the magic is made in terms of all the videos and content that helps with the do-it-yourself kits. So very cool to be here and very cool to learn the story today behind both EONIQ and DIY.

Yeah, happy to be on the podcast as well.

Awesome, awesome. Well, I guess to start, you know, for those that aren't familiar with you and your story, maybe tell us a little bit about your background. And I always like asking to start off: how did you first get into watches? Sort of what drew you into the passion that led to then starting your own brand, but also building your own company around assembling your own watches.

I guess like most people, you start to enjoy something or treasure something after you've lost something. So my dad gave me a watch. It was a very old Seiko Kinetic back then. I think the whole thing is discontinued now, unfortunately. I wore it to a basketball court. I was smart enough to put it down on the side and then it was gone like ten minutes later, literally, like a very short time. And then afterwards I've been trying to find that again. And that's when I found that even when you have the same watch, if the watch has a certain human story behind it, it becomes different. Like even the scratches on that watch become different. It becomes meaningful. So that's how I first started liking or loving watches.

And then afterwards in college, like all stupid kids, I would take apart stuff.

Or engineer. More engineers than stupid kids.

Okay. Taking apart stuff, but the stupid part is that I couldn't put together most of them. So that's when I decided, okay, back then I would be buying some parts from some small workshops and then ask their technical support. I would ask them for help in completing the assembly. So that's kind of like the second part of my journey in starting to know more about watches, trying different things.

Yeah. I think what's unique about that story, I know you went to Stanford, so I think there was probably a lot of people taking stuff apart, but probably more people taking apart electronics and computers. And you chose watches, sort of a different passion, a different sort of journey. Was that just because, like you said, you were interested in watches at that time, or was there specifically something about watches that taking apart drew you in?

I think I always enjoyed the human but not so practical aspect of mechanical watches. You know how when you look at watches, you know that it's a nice piece of art, some sort of a statement of who you are, but it's not so much about down-to-the-second accurate of what the time is, right? So that's what always drew me in. Like in my classes I would be working on car stuff. Actually, that's my focus. I was on design thinking, so design methodology. I was working with Audi on car infotainment systems, on how people can be productive without themselves getting killed while driving to work. So that was my job. And then I did some very, very real engineer stuff, like literally a tank bullet that turns.

Wow.

A tank ammunition that would fire some sort of propulsion, basically, to a certain kind of frequency. So that's how it can turn. So it's like movies. But those kind of stuff, it's like high tech. I enjoy them as well. I really like the science, but once it gets to the weekend, it's when you really want to work on something that just looks beautiful. I just like this. I don't need to explain it, but I just like it. So that's kind of where it all went.

Interesting. And the way that I understand it is you started with EONIQ before DIY.

Yeah.

So what was sort of the original inspiration for EONIQ? And maybe walk us through how it's evolved over the years and sort of where it is today.

When it first started, remember what I said about the watches themselves, even the scratches, it becomes meaningful. But it's when you have a human story behind a watch. So that's kind of what I was thinking. And when I was in college, after a couple of years of tinkering with watches, I started to build some nicer ones. Bought stuff not from China workshops, but from Switzerland, and eventually I ended up creating things that are like thirty to fifty thousand US dollars in worth. So that was pretty expensive stuff for myself. I was selling them, I was making one-off design watches for different customers. So as I was building them, I realized a lot of them didn't even appreciate the, what should I say, the quality of the components. Like they can't tell why that 7750 movement is special after it's been hand engraved by a German engraving master. So they would be like, this is interesting. And the key value to them is that it was a one-off, one piece made by someone as a gift for them, right?

So then part of me was thinking, can I also do this for people who can't pay that much? That's kind of when the whole Silicon Valley stuff also came in, you know, like everyone and their cat has a business idea. Then I was thinking, okay, can I combine tech to it? Because the most difficult part actually in the whole process, it's not so much buying the components and assembling into a watch or even ordering custom components. The difficult part is the iteration between the person who wants a custom design and the designer. That communication could easily, it took months. One watch took half a year just to align on the design. So okay, I get a friend, wrote a software, an app, a web app, so that people can design their own watches online, and then I start to make those custom watches. That's EONIQ. So I built that, tested it out, worked really well for quite a while until pre-COVID, actually. For non-obvious reasons, a lot of it went to Southeast Asia. We were shipping, for example, Malaysia alone would be 14 to 17 watches per day.

Wow.

Yeah. So that was pre-COVID. So that's EONIQ. We were doing very, very customized, affordable mechanical watches. That's basically what it was.

Yeah. And fast forward, I guess, to today. I noticed you still have the custom offering, but you also have your own line of watches, the Signature line and then also the Atelier. Maybe tell us a little bit about how that sort of came to be and some of the models that are in that. I know last time I visited you, I got one, the Braemar, with the Caliber 852 Hong Kong movement. So a lot of really interesting stuff going on there. So maybe walk us through some of that.

Yeah. I think it's a little bit on how I evolve as a watch collector as well. I think initially it's like when you were at school and then you get your first good job outside, and then you kind of want a nice watch on your wrist, you want a talking point, and then a custom watch back then is a very interesting thing. And then when I was doing it for quite a few more people, I realized that it's a very good entry point, affordable entry point. But a lot of them, after they got my custom watches, they started looking into watches and they started collecting their own watches and they would come back to me and let me know, I bought this one. Some go off the vintage route, some go off the other slightly more expensive route. But part of me is starting to think, okay, so there are a lot more values. Like different people value different things in their watches. So I'm starting to look into that.

And for me, making, because we do custom watches, so each of the dials we actually do in-house. And after doing that for so many years, then I realized we have the craftsmanship capability to actually build something that people want to collect even when they don't necessarily want a customized watch. So that's how we kind of start shifting into the craftsmanship side of things. As I bought more and more microbrand watches myself as well, I realized once you go into microbrand plus craftsmanship, it can actually get quite expensive. So that's where I'm kind of starting to see, okay, where is some of that experience, like my experience, can contribute to the circle.

Pad printing, for example. Most, I would say 99.999, or even everyone else, maybe with the exception of a few Japanese workshops that I know, but everyone set up pad printing in the whole process with calibration to make hundreds, if not thousands, of dials afterwards. But we have done ours so that we can do it one-off. And it's still reasonable in cost. So every single cliché plate, from the creation of the cliché plate to the prepping of the plate to tuning of the ink, the dwelling time, the transfer time, all those, to printing into a custom dial, we can do one piece at a time. So that gives us quite a bit of advantage in doing a slightly personalized design. So that's where the Malbec comes in. Because we know hand bluing as well. I sell the bluing kits with the DIY Watch Club. Actually, my watchmakers now use the DIY Watch Club tools.

That's cool.

Because he was like, hey, this is even more convenient than my traditional tools. But okay, that aside. You can kind of see where I'm trying to now do the craftsmanship mixed into the personalization side of things, because not everyone knows how to or wants to design completely their own watch. Not everyone necessarily wants to add their names to their watch. So with this, they still have a very, very meaningful, and this time around, very high craftsmanship level for this price point. Like a nice watch to keep. I would say the Malbec is definitely something. I mean, with the 9 series movement, we tune it and also skeletonize the rotor with the blue screws and everything. Highly serviceable. If you take care of it, hundreds of years, no problem. So that would become something that people can keep for a very, very long time.

So you can kind of see I'm still going at the same thing. I'm not necessarily just selling watches. I'm trying to give people something that they can put in their own stories, they can value, they can treasure for a longer time to remember an interaction with someone or some relationships. That's what I've tried to go at.

Yeah. And then tell me a little bit about the movement, Caliber 852, for the Signature series. What sort of inspired that? That's the undertaking. And I think last time we talked, you even shared that it was even harder than I thought, you know, to get that done. So what sort of inspired that, and what's sort of the meaning behind it for you, showing, you know, or bringing Hong Kong to the scene in terms of not just a player in the sourcing and the manufacturing and the history that Hong Kong has, but also in more the branding side and specifically the movement, having our own Hong Kong made, first Hong Kong made, truly Hong Kong made movement.

Yeah. I would say, let's get it out of the way first. It's very similar to an ETA 2824. I'm not inventing something brand new. The difficult part, my objective, it's not to create something that's a super interesting in-house movement with its own innovation in like hairsprings or something. My purpose was to give people who care about Hong Kong, who have some sort of connection with Hong Kong, a movement that they can collect. Like a watch with a movement that they can collect. Because once you collect watches, you know that the movement says a lot about the watch. Like, yes, the stories of the design, everything adds to it. But yeah, while my other watches have a Miyota in it, I would still say the same thing. Like if that watch has a generic movement in there, you're buying the story a little bit more than that craftsmanship behind the whole mechanical watch. And a little bit of that romance is a little bit gone, I feel like.

So that's why. And also during the process of doing all those iterations, like pad printing, bluing, sourcing, getting all the good components, I realized Hong Kong actually played a very key role in creating a lot of the best watches in the world. Quality, expensive stuff. Luxury watches. You'd be surprised how many of those components, like watch case, watch dial, sometimes even some, let's say, inserts that some brand claims would be their own thing, is actually managed by Hong Kong people, done in China. So I kept just looking at dialogues, I mean, like in my chat group, and also like proposal documents, and then they would be like, I recognize this component. But then they were like, I can't technically show you this. Please look at that. I'm gonna delete the image. It's like I keep seeing these stuff. And then it's like, hey, no one knows. It's done in Hong Kong. No one knows, right? Literally no one.

And then even if you take away luxury stuff, let's say Daniel Wellington. Okay, there's that brand. I know, I'm not, but anyhow, that design that supposedly millions of people wear, it's probably done by someone in Kwai Chung getting like minimum wage. Like quite literally. And he probably just lost his job, right? No one knows. So Hong Kong has been doing things like this, like quietly contributing to the scene, where it's just a screwdriver that basically gets tossed away once it's no longer useful. So part of me wanted to honor the craftsmen in this circle, give them something to collect and to keep. And that's where I just kind of talked to a bunch of those uncles, knocked on doors of people who I haven't talked to, talked to even the government, tried to find the connections to see if it's viable to create something for Hong Kong.

So that's where I found out that even the first chronometer certified, I think, if I'm not wrong, this one you may have to fact check it. But last time I checked, this is true. The first chronometer watch from China, it's because of Hong Kong. The hairspring is Hong Kong made. I'm 90-something percent certain on this. So I'm like, what the heck? We have this kind of skill set. So that's why I decided that I had to build a Hong Kong made movement. So to group together the capabilities, people who literally looked at, he told me nano indentation, nano indentations of hairsprings. He was telling me things that I couldn't hear anywhere else on hairspring design and manufacturing alone. And then there is the main plate, everything else put together. Yes, it is very similar to an ETA 2824 or 2802, I think that's a manual one. But just making this itself, I feel like it's a hugely rewarding journey and very meaningful for people who care about Hong Kong.

I mean, I can speak from personal experience. When I visited you last time, that's the watch I walked away with because of that reason. I'm somebody who grew up in Hong Kong. My family's been in Hong Kong for generations. We come from the watch industry. So I know the history of Hong Kong in the watch industry, but most people that I talk to don't, right?

Yeah.

And to have something that is truly Hong Kong made that's on my wrist that I can talk to people about and share that story, not just of the watch, but also of the history that Hong Kong has played in this industry, is really something. So kudos to you. I mean, I know it wasn't easy, but you know, you're really doing something special for us Hong Kong people that really cherish that history and our role in it.

I want to shift gears to DIY, because that's actually how I learned, I actually learned about DIY Watch Club before EONIQ. I don't know if that's the usual journey.

Probably. DIY Watch Club is quite a bit more, it reaches the world quite a bit more than EONIQ.

And I've said this to you several times. You do an amazing job, first of all, marketing the club, right? And the kits. You know, once I started looking for a kit that I can assemble my own watch, you started showing up everywhere, and your content, it was really drawing me in. But also the kits themselves, the watches that you're able to assemble, the quality of those watches, the design of those watches, and all the instructions, everything that goes with it is just amazing. I mean, the amount of work that must go into that is unbelievable. So I wanted to unpack that, but maybe taking a step back, where did that idea come from? You talked about, you know, your early journey and assembling watches and figuring it out yourself, but then you went into the EONIQ journey. How did you circle back to this idea of, you know, maybe other people out there are interested in assembling their own watches? When did that sort of spring up?

You know, like in the workshop that you saw just now, that's kind of where it started. So because we started doing a lot of the manual hand printing, the custom printing of the dial in-house anyways. And while we were working on it, we realized a lot of people walk by and they would stand there and watch, like in our retail shop. So we thought, okay, why don't we let them do a little bit of that printing? And then after a while they wanted to try. Once they see that workshop of printing watch dials, they would be like, can I assemble my own watch? So we see that demand. Originally we thought impossible, right? You're gonna break things. And once you break a movement, then what? Right? I don't want to replace that. But after thinking it for a while, evaluating the idea for a while, I thought maybe we can take a stab at this problem. It seems daunting initially. I feel like it's usually some people who don't give it too much thought that would request to assemble a watch, because most of the other people, when you talk to them, it's like they didn't even think it's possible and then they feel intimidated, which is normal. I think that's the normal path. But we had people asking, so we would try. And then we started running some workshops.

One turned into two, two turned into like a full week of booking, and then we started taking corporate workshops. Before we knew it, we started doing workshops for major brands. Like large brands that used to be in jewelry, and then they started selling watches, and then their sales would be intimidated by the watch part of the business. So they won't be selling their watches. KPI-wise, they need to do something about it. So they came to us. We run workshops for them, they assemble their watches so they become more confident in their mechanical watch knowledge and then they can sell their watches better. So we started doing that and we were surprised. We were seeing a lot of tier one brands like that actually come to us to do watchmaking workshops.

And after a while we thought, okay, we do these workshops and now I have to be there every single week. Is there some way I can kind of lower the price a little bit? Because if I have to be there personally, one to four people running the workshop, that's very difficult. So I thought of this idea. I'm gonna do some really, really good videos. Good not as in production quality, good as in instruction quality. And one of the key things is I feel like a lot of other brands won't be doing this, because if you get a production agency to do this, it's gonna kill your bank account within two weeks. But what I did was I shot a version, a very, very rough version with a phone, and then I watch people assemble watches following that video. And every time they raise their hands to ask questions, I would edit the cut afterwards. Basically, I'm going to anticipate their questions and then answer it before they ask them. And then sometimes I would notice things. Let's say I put a certain content a little bit too late, and then people lose their attention span, they miss that important information. Then I would swap the sequence. Iteratively. So for each of the, let's say our second hand installation video, there are 60-plus versions of that one.

Wow.

That's how we do our video teaching materials. That's how we iterate. And that's why we have the experimental project right now on that chronograph. It's because we actually need to iterate. There are hundreds of feedback on that one already. We are iterating.

Wow.

But that's already the ready-to-see public part of things. So before the public part, we would actually send people, and we sit there and we would look at them assemble it and we see what mistakes they make. So yeah, it's a highly iterative process while trying to create a slightly more affordable in-store experience. And then COVID came. Everyone was bored out of their mind. Then I decided to do that riskiest step, which is I removed myself personally from the picture, where I send the tools and the teaching materials and the components to people across the globe and see if that works. And turns out it did.

Yeah.

So that's the biggest leap of faith.

Yeah. And it's amazing again, the production for it and how straightforward it actually is once you have all those materials, all the components, and the quality of the tools as well is amazing. What are some of the most popular kits that you find people ordering? I know there's obviously the sort of starter kits, right? Where there's some dive watches. I've personally done four now. So I've done the starter kit, one of the dive watches. I've done two GMTs. One was actually at Windup San Francisco. So now you're starting to run some of these, you know, in-person workshops at Windup, which is really, really awesome. I really enjoyed that as well. And the pilot one is the most recent one that I did, which I really love. Just such a classic pilot watch. A little more challenging than some of the other ones because, you talked about this a little bit, the second hand tool makes a big difference. So without it, I actually like the challenge, because now I know I can do it without the tool.

Yes. That's a good progression.

Yeah, but what are some of the ones that you find are most popular? If people are listening to this and they're like, okay, I'm gonna go after this and buy a kit or two, which are the ones that they should consider and that are most popular?

I think right now the starter kit is actually really popular. I was not anticipating that, actually, because it's not the cheapest option, right? Most of the retail shops online, the cheapest one sells the most, the cheapest and the most expensive looking. For ours, I think that starter kit is a very good performer for a very good reason. It has the second hand installation tool. I think that's very important for starters. It gives you the confidence. Even if you may not need it, I do think it's good to be there, because the last thing you want when assembling a watch is the fear of not being able to complete that watch. That's going to affect you. Because the steps are not difficult. The mindset of just having that fear would make that assembling process quite a bit worse, I would say. So that's why the tool is very, very good to have, strongly recommended.

And then that kit, there's also some, I guess, starter collectors. If they are not into the mechanical watch world, seeing a mechanical skeleton movement is interesting. For people more experienced, get a regular non-skeleton version. We have both. And another good thing about that watch, it's a universal look, right? It's a dive watch. Everyone knows how it looks. We modified the dial a little bit so that it doesn't look like a Rolex. I didn't want like a homage. So that watch is a presentable DIY watch, plus one good thing, you can mod it. So you basically have the full thing plus the tool to get into this whole modding circle, or hopefully not a wallet sinkhole. But yeah, so you can start modding things, and once you mod that watch, it's not just our watches. You know how watches work, you know how the movements, where it goes, how to remove the stem, which components can be removed, with what technique. Then you can mod other Seikos, for example, if you want to.

So that whole kit gets you started and would also very clearly let you know if this is something that you want to pursue. And once that one is done, then you're in a good position to try out some nicer stuff. Like the 9075. I really wouldn't recommend that as the first kit because it's a very nice watch. I really like that movement as well. If you break it, I mean, we have 99 point something, 99.4-something percent success rate. Like the remaining, that little dot right there, is when people have a watch without a second hand.

Yep. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So you will always have a functioning watch after this process. Don't worry about that, but the second hand may not be there.

Yeah, yeah. With that zero point something percent.

So but it would be a waste, right? A 9075 is a very, very nice movement. And that watch, the dial itself, the factories are having a tough time catching up to our requirement as well. So that one, actually, we're not selling a lot because that dial is too difficult to make. Yeah. It's a very interesting dial. I think it's here.

Maybe this is the next step for me. I've got the experimental kit, which is the chronograph. So that's sort of the next one.

That's a different kind of difficult.

Yeah, different kind of difficult. And I saw you have tourbillons on there as well. And even the bluing kits and stuff. So you really provide a nice long path for people to go down to experiment and explore watchmaking. It's not just, you know, okay, we got the starter kit and then we got different iterations of it. There's different levels to this, which I find is really interesting and exciting.

Yeah, my whole intention is to let people experience the craft and know how to appreciate their own watches more. I think a lot of people would be like, Grand Seiko watches, blued hands, interesting, right? And then if they go buy like an old JLC and also they see the vintage ones where the blue is kind of getting a little bit brownish purple, or it's oxidized a little bit. What is that, right? Plated watch hands never oxidize. So I mean, it can oxidize in a very bad way. Like I don't know if you want to call that oxidized, but you have like rough patches on top. It's not like the old vintage watch type of oxidization. Now when you look at that, a lot of sales would just tell you, okay, blued hands, these are expensive. What does that actually mean? And when you do it yourself, then all of a sudden you start to appreciate, especially those watches where it's blued by hand. Like it's not automatic in an oven and then the color comes out, every single one is the same. Like if you look at some movements, for example, the screws, some of them have slightly varying colors. Those are the watches that I would say, those screws, I would actually enjoy the difference in the colors. Some people would be like, well, why is this slightly more purple? I'm like, that's the evidence that this thing is done by hand.

So for example, things like that. Luming kit. So many people talk about lume, like how bright certain lume is, why, right? Then I would want people to try, to know that they can actually achieve a lume that's brighter than anything else out there. If they follow my instructions, get the Super-LumiNova powder, do your own luming, you can get something that's brighter than anything else out there. That's guaranteed. Because practically speaking, in mass production, you cannot optimize on every single step, while you can do by hand. And then the chronograph one, you would now appreciate the alignment of that. So many of these, each of them are designed so that you can appreciate an aspect of mechanical watch. So that's basically how I design all these things.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the thing that stuck with me from the workshop in San Francisco was you saying at the end, now you can really go out there on the show floor and look at the GMT watches and appreciate, you know, what goes into it. And it's so true. Once you do it yourself, you have this different level of appreciation. One other question just on the kits: how long does it take you to create a new kit? I know that some of the content is reusable, right? If it's like a similar movement or a similar type of watch. But I can imagine it's quite a hefty process. Like you're having to design the watches, you're having to source the components. In some cases you have to create new materials. How long does that process take end to end?

Yeah, I think three-hand watches are a little bit easier because we have the most difficult part down. But we are still improving. For example, the Miyota movements, we used to not have that hand installation assisting tool. I'm working on that and it's been like two years. Because of iterations, testing things out, different manufacturing process. Sometimes the tolerance is not good enough. So that's been two years. And then this is something that I still don't know how long this is going to take. It's been three years. So this is the movement kit. I don't know how some other brands can just sell movement kits with paper instructions. I have no idea. And then definitely not with a Miyota and Seiko movement, because those are actually very easy to break.

This is the 6498. So this is the classic one. Like if you go to any watchmaking workshop, assembling a movement, generally this is the one to go for. Because there is one very, very strong reason to this movement. It's because of how it was made. It's a pocket watch movement.

Interesting.

Yes. So back then it was made to operate in rough conditions. Even if you don't oil this, we have tried completely. So these are the things that we need to try that we never tell anyone. We clean it up completely, no oil, and we try to let it run. Because we want to make sure that after people assemble it, let's say some people are not very, or they're too creative in trying to clean their own components, right? I don't want them to be needing to get this to be oiled completely before they have a functioning watch. So we tested all the different movements, we take them all down to individual components, parts. We clean all of them, we assemble them, we try to have them run without oiling. This is the only one that would function normally.

Interesting.

So that's why we would only allow ourselves to create a movement kit with this one.

Yep. Yeah. A lot of thought goes behind it. Maybe that's a good segue into what's coming next. So it sounds like movement assembly is something you're exploring.

Yeah, we're working on it.

Both on the EONIQ and the DIY side, what are some things that folks listening to this or watching this can expect to see from you in the near future?

EONIQ side, we are adding one more craft: enamel. So we are adding that into our portfolio. We already have a lot of prototypes. We want to do enamel a different way. We don't want to be just doing, okay, the standard multilayer sanding and then you've got like a guilloché or engraved dial at bottom. We don't want to do the standard one. So we are figuring out something new, very new with enameling as well. We wanted that to be a unique type of watch. Like even if you're very experienced with enamel, it's going to be a piece that's worth collecting. So we want it to get to that standard. So that's probably going to be the most expensive EONIQ watch ever made. Now, yeah, because what's the yield now? But yeah, you know, enameling, if you have heard like anOrdain stuff and all those, then you'll know that it's normal for one dial to be created over like a week's time. So we have to figure out where we can optimize a little bit on that. And the way we're creating it would require a little bit of art as well, 'cause each dial is going to be different. It's not just where the pinhole is, it's not just where the imperfections are, but it's actually the way we're designing it to be. Each piece is going to look very different, like from this distance.

Okay.

So that's the new EONIQ product. And Caliber 852, we're going to create an automatic version.

Nice.

Yeah. So that's the next two new products for EONIQ. And for DIY Watch Club, I have too many new things.

I saw that you recently did a bronze case, which is very exciting. I love bronze cases. So I think that's, beside obviously having to complete the chronograph, which is my next step, I think I'm gonna do the bronze case as well, because that looks really, really nice.

You know the one cool thing about, that's actually a reissue, by the way. We used to do a watch that's similar to this, not exactly this, but it's an updated component. Makes assembly a little bit easier. It's backward compatible, but then a lot of things, like little things here and there, is improved. But the key thing that I want to talk about, bronze case with DIY Watch Club. The fun thing is because the watch case itself, it's not the value of the whole watch, right? If you get like a bronze Tudor, you go and do like sanding, stone washing, it feels very painful. And I would not, well, some people may find that to be like chump change in their pocket and they would do it. But I wouldn't, right? But with DIY Watch Club, you can buy a watch case and then just do it. Do all the experiments that you want, aging, scratch it, refinish it, however you want to do it, and just iterate until you get something that you like and assemble a watch. So that's the fun thing with DIY Watch Club and bronze case. Or ours, we have one. This one is silver plated. So very thick layer of plating of silver. And that's how we can achieve this look. 'Cause a little bit like how Tudor had like a 925 silver watch case.

Tudor had one. Yep.

That one ages very, very beautifully as well, the patina that it develops. But that one you will never kind of push it into like a pile of rocks to get it scratched up, right? So this one I did that, and that's how I get this very unique look to this watch case.

Yeah, yeah.

So this is silver, a very thick layer of silver plate on top of the watch case. And this is bronze. So these are the two that's really fun if you want to play with the aging side of things.

I think that's next up for me beyond the chronograph, is starting to experiment a little bit more, right? Now that I've assembled watches, experimenting, aging them, maybe doing some bluing as well.

Yeah. I think bluing is definitely worth it. You'll appreciate a lot more. Then you'll start to realize why a lot of the nicer blue hand watches have very clean dials.

Yeah.

Because you don't want to distract from that hard work that you put in, right? So that's why a lot of nicer watches are actually very simple watches.

Very cool. Well, Quinn, this has been really fun. Obviously, you know I'm a big fan. I've done a bunch of the kits. Now I have EONIQ in my collection as well. So I really was excited to learn the story behind the brand, your story, building both brands and both companies. If folks want to follow along, they want to learn more about both.

Yeah, there's a website.

So maybe tell us, you know, the best places online and the social media channels as well that you're most active on.

So Instagram, DIY Watch Club. So that's for sure gonna be the best channel to stay up to speed with what we're doing. I always put up prototypes. In fact, I get a lot of my design inspirations from the community. So in DIY Watch Club, you will see me showing, hey, this is a prototype. What do you think about it? I actually need your feedback. You helped me create a better product. So that's DIY Watch Club. So it's really fun. EONIQ has its own Instagram. EONIQ Atelier, Signature, they all have their own Instagram. Just go to EONIQ and you should be able to see the link to the other sub channels where we do specialized things.

Very cool. Well, thanks again for taking the time. And have a great rest of your day.

You too.