Vaer: Building an American Watch Brand for Everyday Adventure

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 Reagan Cook and Ryan Torres, co-founders of Vaer. Vaer was one of the first microbrands that I discovered in my own collecting journey, and it's a perfect example of what makes this space so exciting.

Durable, well-designed watches with real specs at prices that are still approachable. In this conversation, we talk about how Reagan and Ryan went from working together at a tech startup to building Vaer, why they saw an opportunity between low-quality fashion watches and expensive luxury watches, and how they used their own savings to fund their first production run. We also get into their decision to bring assembly to the US. That shaped their approach to quality and service, and how the collection has evolved over the past decade.

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 Reagan Cook and Ryan Torres of Vaer.

All right. Reagan, Ryan, welcome to the Micro Collector Podcast. I'm super excited to have you on today.

Justin, thank you so much for having us. We're excited for the conversation.

Yeah, good to be here.

Absolutely, absolutely. You know, before we get into the conversation, I wanted to share that Vaer was actually one of the first microbrands that I discovered in my own microbrand collecting journey. I've been a watch fan, a collector in some ways all my life. You know, even from as a kid, I was collecting Swatch watches and all kinds of stuff like that. And then at some point, maybe not too dissimilar to your own journey as I know it, I found myself a little bit stuck in my collecting journey between, let's say, fashion watches that weren't as great quality and didn't have the level of design that I was looking for, and the high-end luxury stuff that I couldn't afford, right? And started sort of exploring the space a little bit more. A couple brands came up, and Vaer was one of those real early ones that I discovered where I was like, my gosh, like you can get a diver, like a real diving watch, or, you know, as we were talking before we hit record, the GMTs and the chronographs, at a price point that I can actually afford and with quality that competes with anybody out there. So big fan of you guys, and as I started this podcast, I had to have you on to learn a little bit more about the story and also how you do what you do, because it's pretty incredible.

We appreciate that. Yeah, I mean, your use case is pretty much exactly perfect for, you know, why we started this brand and the products we offer. You know, you said it pretty much right there perfectly, finding that watch that you can still afford that has the quality and the aesthetic that really is tough to find elsewhere.

One other thing as well, just for those who aren't familiar with Vaer, is like there's obviously a lot of microbrands creating a lot of value. One thing that's fairly unique about how Ryan and I have approached it is to say that you can take a microbrand template of premium materials and apply that to a quartz or solar quartz or mecha-quartz watch. And I think that's actually something that makes it relatively unique, is that I think if you were to survey, you know, a hundred microbrands, ninety-five of them would be focused on mechanical, and there's nothing wrong with that. But we are also trying to expand that mission and that idea to say, hey, you can still have a quartz watch with a screw-down crown and sapphire crystal.

Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good point as well. And I noticed that in your collection. And we'll get deeper into the collection and the various models and how you've sort of expanded that collection over time. But maybe for those that aren't as familiar with the story of Vaer and you guys, maybe give us a little bit of a background. How did you guys meet in the first place? And maybe personally, how did you get into watches individually? And then what was sort of that inflection point for both of you where you were both like, you know what, let's start a watch brand and let's start one together.

Man, so we've been doing Vaer about 10 years. The summer of 2015, I guess over ten years now. Summer of 2015 is when we connected on the concept. Before Vaer existed, Reagan and I worked together at a tech startup in Santa Monica. And we had worked together for a few years. We were surfing before work. I have like some of the watches that started my passion. I have like a G-Shock here and a Seiko SKX here. But yeah, at that time I was surfing before work, had, you know, built a tiny collection of, you know, the basics and couldn't really find a watch that spoke to me that had durability and that was affordable. You know, we're talking under $200 at that time. Seiko aside, Seiko's incredible, but you had, you know, G-Shock and Nixon for more rubberized surf watches. And then you had watches that became huge like Daniel Wellington and MVMT that had a more refined aesthetic, I guess you could say, but were not durable, made from pretty poor quality components.

And so that fusion of something under $200 that was durable and had a great aesthetic wasn't really out there. And so yeah, Reagan and I partnered up, like I said, a little over ten years ago now, started sampling watches. The goal in the beginning was pretty straightforward. We wanted to have timeless aesthetics, we wanted them to be durable, and so that meant sapphire crystal, stainless steel case, screw-down crown with a minimum 100m water resistance, and a quality movement. And so those were the base features that we started with and that we still carry through every watch in the whole lineup.

But yeah, at that time, we partnered up. Reagan is a fantastic marketer and artist. And so we, you know, collaborated on the idea and then built the brand we have today.

Yeah, and then just for a point of reference of where we're at, as Ryan said, we were working together in the tech industry, early stage startups, and yeah, we were young guys, we were like twenty-five years old, with that idea. And like a lot of guys in their twenties, you know, they have aspirations of one day having maybe a Rolex Submariner or something, or a Datejust or an Omega. But that just financially was not a reality for us. So it was kind of an interesting point. I've shared this anecdote before, but the savings that we did have, that maybe you would have been able to buy, you know, one luxury watch. We kind of combined our savings and bought our first batch of watches, the first thousand Vaer watches. And that proved to be a pretty good investment. A lot of people say buying, you know, a steel Rolex is a good investment. Well, investing your money in your own brand is also a good investment. It turned out to be a really good one in our case. And that's the path we took.

But I think that's also kind of, it was kind of eye opening, because when I was, you know, 23, 24, I always thought that yeah, you had to spend, you know, several thousand dollars in order to get into that world. And as we did more exploration, digging, and then obviously product design as it came down to it, kind of made the realization that you could build something pretty fantastic and it didn't have to be, you know, breaking your budget.

Yeah, yeah, I love that story. And I love that you guys used that budget to invest in yourselves. And as you said, it turned out to be a great investment. Take us back to that first watch. So what was the watch? Also, how hard was it to choose which watch to start with? Because I'm sure as sort of watch enthusiasts yourselves, you had a dream already of a collection, I would assume.

Yeah, I can speak to that. And yeah, it's very interesting. You look at our lineup now, even the watches that Ryan and I are wearing, there's a lot of complexity at every level for those who are into watches. You know, it's kind of infinite. You can just spend your entire lifetime learning about new technical finishings, details, and even the internals, right? But at that time, as first time kind of business operators, first time watch designers, we started, Ryan had alluded to the fact that at that time there was kind of this minimalist trend, like Daniel Wellington probably best exemplifies it and, you know, say what you will about that company or their quality. It had that kind of timeless, you know, classic dress watch like a Patek or what have you. We kind of took that approach. Our first watch was like termed a classic. There was no numerals, it was very minimal. It's still, again, it was timeless, kind of had a, I mean, maybe a little bit less so than Daniel Wellington, but ours was kind of a Bauhaus, yeah, Scandinavian minimalist design, which was particularly unique because that's something that you wouldn't associate with a surf watch. It was not bulky, it was just very pared down. That said, if you reflect back on what we were actually executing on, it was very rudimentary, very simple. I mean, it worked. But other than, yeah, the sapphire crystal and the screw crown, there's, I mean, everyone's got to start somewhere, but there wasn't a lot going on with that watch.

But even just to achieve that was quite a miracle in its own way. But the great thing from that is like that was twenty seventeen, that first batch we were selling. We did our first field watch in the next batch. You know, we had to sell those first thousand before we could move on. And that's really how we've operated, especially those first five years, was like every time we ordered new watches it was like, let's try something new. Let's do our first field watch.

Let's do our first mechanical watch, let's do our first dive watch, solar watch, so on. And every time we've just grown and grown and grown. The collection, which has come with its own set of challenges.

Yeah, I mean, to that note, if you saw that first watch, when we look at it now, it looks like a kid's toy. Like it's crazy the difference between then and now. But the cool thing, I mean, I know you said we had potentially dreams for how we saw the collection, but honestly, we started there and didn't have much of a plan. Like it's been really fun and kept it interesting over the years. We've essentially, you know, until more recently, we've leaned really heavily into customer surveying. But over the years we were just building whichever watch we wanted to wear. So we, you know, started with that minimalist watch and then a field watch and then, you know, had a hankering for wearing a dive watch. The thing with owning a watch company, at least in our case, is I haven't worn another watch in ten years. I only wear our watches. So if I want to wear a dive watch, we have to build a dive watch. And that's kind of how it went. You know, it was like, hey, you know, a GMT would be fun. Let's build a GMT. So it came out of necessity for what we wanted to own and wear ourselves, and you know, we got to obviously build our own watches to fit that bill.

Yeah, and then just like as you can kind of imagine where I'm mentioning a GMT or a mechanical, like a mechanical chronograph as an example, is I would be very impressed for someone who's never designed a watch before for their first watch. I would actually not recommend doing that unless you love suffering. Just because a chronograph dial, I mean, every, like in designing a watch dial, every choice, every font, every position is something to get wrong. And you know, you really need to walk, or crawl before you walk, before you run.

And I think that's our approach, is like we've gotten more sophisticated, but you know, the amount of time that we've spent learning about some one feature such as luminescent paint, that's you know, five or ten years of knowledge, or on different crystal types, right? Like you would think, it's crystals, crystals, sapphire crystal. But do you want to use dome, double dome, single dome, flat, ledge, box? They all have different prices, they all have different effects. Like each one of those things is a lot to— We didn't, we obviously didn't even know that was an issue when you design your first watch, but as you expand you realize, my gosh, there's a lot of decisions to be made.

Taking yourself back to those early days, you know, what I think a lot about, especially in the microbrand space where there's a lot of people that are starting brands that don't come from the industry, there are some things about being an outsider that are benefits, that, you know, the ignorance is bliss, right? The fact that you don't know the way things are done, you can do things differently. And sometimes that turns out to be a great thing. In other cases, things that you don't know become huge challenges and huge learning experiences. Thinking back to from where you are now to when you started, is that true for you? Did you find that there were some things that like you guys did really, really well because you weren't held to the way things were done? And were there other things that, like, were painful learning experiences, that if you had the experience, if you came from the industry, maybe you would have been able to avoid those things? And what were those things?

Yeah, I mean I would say not coming from the industry has allowed us to not stay in our lane. We've been able to do what we want, when we want, how we want in terms of lineup. You know, we did start with that sub $200 quartz watch, but we now have watches from $200 to just over $1,000, quartz, mecha-quartz, solar quartz, mechanical. That I don't think a lot of, you know, coming from traditional industry, you'd probably choose mechanical watches and stay in your lane, or choose quartz watches and stay in your lane.

Granted, some brands deviate from that, but that's kind of the general consensus. And our not being beholden to the way things are done has been super beneficial to us.

Like I said earlier, we've been able to build what we want to build when we want to build, and been able to build, as we've gotten more mature and had a bigger customer base, build what our customers ask for. And that has been a huge advantage for us in terms of like business structure and operation, in terms of being able to speak to a variety of different types of customers. To someone buying a $15,000 Swiss luxury watch, the difference between $200 and a thousand isn't that much. But to a common consumer, the difference between $200, $400, $600, and $1,000 are pretty massive. They're different categories of people to speak to. And you know, our flexibility and, I guess, I don't know, lack of knowledge of how things are done enabled us to just go for all of those categories and do pretty well in each. Taking, you know, our general aesthetic language and Reagan designing watches that again can be sold, a watch that can be sold at our lowest end, I think one hundred eighty nine dollars right now, can look just as good as a thousand dollar watch. And that's a pretty, pretty cool thing that not coming from the industry enabled us to do.

Yeah, the other thing as well, like again, advice I would give to someone who wants to start their own brand is, well, there are obviously, like you could make a brand and then try and show up to Watches and Wonders and present your brand and hopefully get some notoriety, but that would be just about the hardest way of entering the watch world.

And hopefully you would either have huge financial backing, you would have worked under, you know, a master watchmaker, or just kind of really understand, even then it's a massive risk, which you know would maybe take multi-million dollars of investment just to kind of make that happen. Now, here in the United States, doing something like the Windup watch fair, that's another great approach. And you can go to a Windup show and see dozens, if not hundreds, of brands who are all operating kind of in that micro space.

The thing though that I would recommend is, whether it's Watches and Wonders, Micro, or Worn and Wound, is that that is the enthusiast side of watchmaking, and that's important. But when you enter that space, you're competing with everyone else that's exhibiting there. The thing that Ryan and I have taken as an approach is there's, you know, 99% of the market are not showing up to that because they do not get home from work and then open a watch forum and start thinking about watches. They have other hobbies and whatnot. So that's again like Ryan and I had a passion or interest in, you know, outdoor sports or like being outside and that type of thing. So as much as we love and appreciate the watch industry, we also wanted to balance that with what our interests were and making sure we're making watches for people who don't think about watches every day. They think about what they're gonna be doing with their watch. And that would be like just a general recommendation, because it's harder to be watches and only talk about watches, because those are the brands that have been doing it for a hundred years, you're always gonna be at a slight disadvantage. But if you take some niche interest that you possibly have and start building a watch for that community and be that person showing up in your community and be the watch, you know, brand within that space, I think that might be, you know, a more interesting and maybe a more comfortable path.

And just to finish the second part of your question, not coming from the watch world, I mean the biggest challenge is learning the technical engineering QC side of everything. That has been learning through trial and error instead of historical knowledge. You know, we're not trained horologists. And so batch over batch we've learned things. You know, our first watch, the dial and everything was loaded from the front of the watch. That was like the way minimalist watches were done, but it disables you from being able to service those watches. That was the change we made. And so on through the last 10 years in construction of case tubes, pinion heights, as Reagan mentioned, tens, if not hundreds, of hours on learning about lume through digging into forums and reaching out via email, testing all of our watches adjacent to competitor watches in the closet on time lapse. Like those are the kinds of things where we're not from the industry, we don't have that classically trained knowledge, and learning that over time, as well as you know, building our own QC processes from scratch. When we started, we were, you know, silly enough to think the manufacturers will properly QC the watches, they'll be good to go. Now we have QC steps at manufacturing level, receipt level, assembly level, and then again at our warehouse before they ship. Those are things that were just developed over the last 10 years through, as I said, trial and error through time. If we were to start a watch brand today, it would be, you know, we'd plug and play all of those things we've learned. Had we come from the industry, I'm sure we would have had a lot more of those tools from, again, the engineering, construction, QC, the physical part of it. And so that was a lot of the learning.

But where we've had a leg up and advantage is we're both great at digital marketing. We came from that world and that has been really, really beneficial in helping our growth.

Yeah, one other thing I'll add on that, in terms of what Ryan's saying and plugging in, is the one thing that would be a disadvantage is that when most brands, the microbrands, would start, they would kind of latch into the existing, say, Swiss made or Swiss assembly system. A lot of brands across Europe, including some of the best British brands, are like, okay, we're a British brand, but we're gonna actually, all of our QC, our assembly and our shipping or what have you are gonna flow through Switzerland or something like that.

Because we didn't have that direct connection, what we, as Ryan was saying, we had to actually learn that ourselves, which means we've actually had, and we didn't really mention it on this interview yet, but we've had to build up like a very robust, if not the most robust, US assembly and manufacturing network. And we built that from scratch and it didn't exist. So what we've essentially done is built this whole supply chain here in the United States stateside, which was essentially done out of necessity or ignorance to some extent.

Because we were like, okay, well, how else are we going to do this? How else are we going to learn how the internals of the watches work? But now it's essentially a competitive advantage and a competitive edge, because if we had done it quote unquote the easy way, we'd have just been like, okay, all Vaer watches are Swiss made, therefore they're all using Swiss movements, therefore we're kind of constrained on that. And we just kind of do that side of the business. Instead, we're US assembled, we bring in Swiss, Japanese, or even US movements.

We're much more flexible and we actually have full control over our manufacturing.

Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that sort of US assembly and what the reasoning was behind it. I saw an interview with you, Ryan, I think, where you talked about maybe some challenges in quality that you experienced abroad and, you know, wanting more control over the manufacturing process. Was that sort of the reason behind the US assembly, and sort of what has your learning been through that journey? What are some of the challenges that you've discovered in assembling in the US? And what are some of maybe the benefits that people might not think of, because most people think of either, you know, lower costs in Asia or, you know, quality and prestige in Switzerland. What are some of the things that you found that the US has to offer that people might not be thinking about?

Yeah, absolutely. So I mean, in the beginning, one of the most fun parts of the business early, early on, Reagan and I, we wanted to make leather straps to go along with our watches. So we'd spend time driving downtown, picking out hides, working with leather makers to make our own custom straps in the United States. Local sourcing and craftsmanship was always a piece of the pie. It's a fun part of the business. We started making our watches entirely overseas.

And I don't even know exactly where the discussion first popped up between the two of us, but it just seemed like a really awesome way to bring some of our production to the US to begin with. It seemed like a really neat challenge. Little to no people were assembling watches in the United States at that time. And it seemed like a really great way, and it showed to be true, to get closer to our product to better understand the construction.

You can order a watch from overseas and design a watch overseas, but there are all of those minute elements that, even having designed and ordered it from a, you know, industrial engineering perspective, you don't get the best understanding of it. And so we started assembly over here. At that time there was no infrastructure, as Reagan said. We had to call local watch shops and try to present to them this concept of bringing them a kit of watch components that they could assemble together for a fee. It wasn't even a concept. Like it was completely foreign. And in doing so it was incredibly challenging, again because we were reinventing the wheel, if you will. There are obviously assembly houses in China and Hong Kong and Switzerland and Japan, in the United States, in Los Angeles at the time, none at all that we could find. And so we had to create the process from scratch at that time.

Over the last, I think that started three or so years into the business. So it's been, you know, seven or eight years since we've done assembly in the United States. We've really dialed in the process to where we can bring on new assemblers who've never assembled watches at scale. They're generally watch technicians that service oftentimes Swiss luxury watches. But through that process, it has just been monumental in learning about the construction of our watches, learning about the shortcomings of our watches. A lot of these guys, as I said, are Swiss luxury technicians. They're working on Rolexes and Patek and whatever it may be. And so they look at our quartz watches, when, you know, at the time we started with quartz watches, with a very, very critical eye. And that critical eye of them, you know, again being used to working on ten, twenty thousand dollar plus watches to now working on our two hundred dollar quartz watches, they brought in recommendations for construction changes and optimizations to the way we're building our watches that we, when feasible, always listened to and implemented. And so over the years, assembling in the United States allowed us insight into changes we could make to our watches that we never otherwise would have had. It got us so close to the components, construction and engineering in a physical way, not just, you know, over video chat or over email. But Reagan and I would be sitting in the assembly areas with them, watching assembly, reviewing the watches, seeing rejected components and so on. And that hands on local approach again allowed us to make our watches so, so much better.

Yeah, and I think that what I would add is like, as much as it wasn't, like, deeply thought through, well, it was not thought through in the sense that we did not understand how much of a pain in the butt the whole endeavor would be, 'cause it was a huge pain. Like it's like a real hurdle. But I do think great businesses take on those challenges, because we kind of see that the message in the end will be a differentiator and something to tell about the brand that is very unique.

But from a philosophical perspective, going back to what we were saying earlier in the call, like we wanted to make that affordable watch, but we wanted it to be of quality. Well, when you think about it, you think of the big brands, the American ones like Fossil, Timex, Movado, right? They're selling two or three hundred, four hundred dollar watches, but they're so low quality that if they were to be damaged, as Ryan's saying, they're probably front loaded. Like their repair system would be to throw that watch out and send you a new one.

And so anytime that it's replace, not repair, which is literally like the entire budget industry and fashion industry, which could also include some watches that are like a thousand dollars, but they're like only cost five dollars to make, like that's the kind of the thinking or the deeper philosophy that kind of underlines the crappiness within the affordable side of watches, is that they're all made in whether the Philippines or China, so they're never made to be serviced, really. They're always like single use.

And that's why they have mineral crystal or other issues. And so, like, if we ultimately want to disrupt the affordable watch segment, and we believe in like having this watch for their lifetime, we need to start with the ethos of this is to be repaired, not to be replaced.

And we're not gonna send it all the way back to Switzerland or all the way overseas. It needs to be done locally. So have our service process, have our parts, and that's like, I think that's actually one of the most underappreciated aspects of our business and about US assembly, is it's not just about assembling the first time, it's about taking care of it for the next, you know, however many years.

It's funny, it's one of the things I actually worry the most about the microbrand industry, is that a lot of the brands out there don't think about servicing, right? They think about producing watches, selling watches, and especially like you said earlier, you know, a large portion of these watches in the microbrand segment are mechanical watches. So they're gonna need to be serviced in five years, three to five years or so, right? I don't know that a lot of the microbrands out there are set up to be able to do that, right?

And handle that, their success in selling the watches, the amount of service requests that they're gonna get when that time comes. So hearing that you made that investment, 100% agree with you. It's a strong part of the story of the brand, a differentiator in the story, but it's also in a way a moat, right? The infrastructure that you've established is really, really hard, as you guys know, to replicate. You know, there's a lot of learnings, it takes time, and you've kind of established a little bit of a moat there, where when it comes to maturing the brand and scaling the brand, you have that infrastructure on top of which to grow. So I think it's really, really cool. There are probably some benefits that you couldn't have predicted, like tariffs and the fact that you know your watches are US assembled, that maybe you benefited from that as well. But I think the long-term benefits are also really apparent too. Let's talk about the collection a little bit today. And what I'd love to hear from you is who is your buyer, right? Who are your watch collectors or consumers? Are they collectors? Are they the Windup crowd? Are they, you know, folks that are maybe curious about watches and just starting to get in? And, you know, looking at the collection, Ryan, you had mentioned this, you have a lot of options, right? You have both in terms of the mechanisms that power the watches, the quartz, solar, mechanical watches, but also the styles of watches. And is the idea to sort of educate people or sort of take them on their journey to learning about different types of watches? That's my sort of view from the outside, but I'd love to hear sort of the collection as it stands today and how it aligns with who you're looking to target.

Yeah, I mean, this is where things get not complicated, but our consumer base is so broad. I was trying to look for a reference. We had a situation recently where somebody on Reddit, it was almost like we architected it, but it actually happened. Somebody on Reddit asked about the durability of our watches and like a carpenter, a construction worker, a marine, and a biker each replied with their own situation.

Just to show the dynamism of our consumer base, we do have and have leaned into and focused on the Windup crowd, if you will, the watch nerd crowd. Like that is a world we love. Since we started attending Windup, I think I went to my first Windup in San Francisco as an attendee in 2017 or 18 and was enamored by that world. And then we started participating shortly after our Kickstarter, that being part of that world, Windup's honestly a big piece of it, because that got us shoulder to shoulder with other brands who we became friends with and learned more about the watch nerd world. That's driven our watch designs. But yeah, all that being said, I have, Reagan, you maybe after I answer can give better proportions of our customers. We do have the watch nerd world. We also just have a ton of military and blue collar and, well, basically one watch owners. Somebody who previously owned a Timex, they need a watch as a tool to keep the time in whatever they do on a day-to-day basis. They're a mechanic, they work on a farm, they're a nurse or a doctor, whatever it may be, and they need a watch for that practical purpose. And they own one watch and they buy ours because they found it. It's affordable and it's durable. And then we have on the other end the watch nerd, the collector is someone who owns you know, an Oris and a Nodus and a Rolex and they buy a Vaer as well. And so the beauty of our business, with our differences in prices, with going from quartz to automatic and everything in between, and the fact that we not only have a watch that speaks to the watch nerd, to someone who really cares about, you know, components and vintage-inspired design, we also have branding that a lot of our branding honestly speaks to surfing, because Reagan and I each surf almost daily.

But there's just that whole other part of the world of a lot of people who don't collect watches at all. They're not into horology. They just own a watch as a tool for whatever their daily use case is.

Yeah, I don't have too much to add on that. I mean, I think Ryan nailed it. The thing is, like, we are still learning and expanding. I mean, we still don't have the perfect answer to that question. As a good anecdote on it, we recently opened our first showroom, kind of our first physical store here in Venice Beach, California. And that was just at the end of last year, kind of at the end of November. And, you know, we take 10 years of insight and knowledge of like, we know our lineup, we know which watches are popular, but of course we put them in a new environment, which is a showroom here in Los Angeles. And what do we know? Well, not only is like the average order value double in store than it is online, but the whole SKU mix is completely different. And how we're still trying to kind of come to terms with that. Perhaps it's that, you know, maybe it's a wealthier buyer that's flying into LAX and here for business, therefore they have more money to spend. Or maybe it's that, hey, they came in to buy a G2 quartz GMT and they're like, wow, this G5 mechanical is awesome and I can see the quality difference between the $500 and the $1,000 watch. So I'm just gonna go with a thousand. Or maybe it's, as long as I can hold it and try it on, I'm more comfortable spending more. So those are all just things that like, are those people coming in the shop all like just because they're spending more money necessarily like the watch nerd, the Windup crowd, hard to say. But I think it really, I think at the end of the day we want to provide watches at all price points and accessible. And I think the other point I would make is if you look across microbrands and those who are familiar, they will see a lot of their favorite brands continue to push up market. Brands like Christopher Ward now making six, seven thousand dollar limited edition releases, that's awesome, good for them. But like they're never going down to making three hundred dollar watches. Like it's just that's never gonna happen. And all the brands do that. I mean once you realize you can sell a $2,000 watch, the next thought is can I sell $3,000? Can I sell $4,000? And it's still just one watch, which means the shipping, the packaging, I mean COGS are going to be higher, but all of the logistics is the same to sell that seven thousand dollar watch. What's great for us is that we started at the basically at the bottom, the most affordable watch that you could have reasonably made, which is like still that sub two hundred dollar price point. We will never abandon that. So we will always have that first rung on the ladder for someone who doesn't have a lot of budget, but we will keep pushing up and that's where it's fun, is that we can kind of try to keep holding our own into higher and higher tiers of watchmaking. And I think we'll continue to do that.

Yeah, and I think that's where this idea in my mind of, it seems like Vaer is positioning themselves as sort of guiding you along your journey as you explore watches and you learn about different types. I mentioned before we hit record, my young teenage cousin texted me about, you know, I want a GMT. I want to start a watch collection. Which one should I buy? And I sent a link to your GMT. You know, again, it seemed like you had options that were in his price range, but also as he starts to think, you know, what's a chronograph? What's a GMT? What's, you know, maybe I want to explore dive watches or solar or, you know, various different other movements, you have the full gamut and at the price points all along the way where he can sort of find his way and not, you know, stretch the budget too far. So very cool to hear the thinking behind that. You mentioned the showroom. I was gonna ask you about that as well.

You know, obviously establishing your own showroom is an investment. Even, you know, at your stage, you've been around for 10 years. It's, you know, perhaps an early sort of milestone for you guys to have your own showroom. It sounds like it's paying off. You mentioned the higher order values. What was the thinking behind the showroom? At what point were you like, you know, we need a physical presence? And what made you decide that now is the time to do it?

Yeah, we've, you know, ten years is a long time. We've been around long enough to where our business is established, if you will. It's a living, breathing thing. If Reagan and I, there was a period where if Reagan and I stepped away, it would cease to exist. Now we have a team and we have an audience and we have people who are recurring customers to the point where it's a very stable business. I'm, you know, very careful with our decision making.

And or with my decision making I should say, and we probably waited longer than we needed to to open a showroom, but we're at a point now where the business is established enough that it was kind of like, we could support the rent if we needed to, if it didn't make any sales. That was kind of where we wanted to get to. And so yeah, we got to a point where we were comfortable. We found a place we really like locally in Venice.

To be honest, I had no clue what to expect in terms of success. I mean, I know people love our brand online, but making sales in person's a daunting goal, daunting path. But it has been immensely successful, more than we could have ever imagined. We're already looking to open new showrooms. I think it's, you know, it's an amazing thing to get our watches in people's hands. What they see online is one thing, but when you actually feel our watches in person, the conversion rate for the store is absurdly high. As Reagan mentioned, our AOV's twice as high. People will come in for, you know, one of our quartz or solar quartz and end up buying a mechanical watch because seeing that in person is so exciting and so interesting. But yeah, it was a big scary step to lock into rent on a place that may or may not generate revenue. But it has paid off through and through and we're very excited to bring the Vaer experience to other cities.

Yeah, one other, so as a point of reference for where Ryan and I are at as a business. So we've always from day one wanted to be a business at scale. We want to be a big business. We wanna be, you know, reviving American assembly and American watchmaking, not for like a thousand pieces a year, but a hundred thousand or a million watches a year. That's our goal, right? So and we see this because we've been to many Windups and Intersect, which is another great watch show that people should check out.

But at what we're trying to achieve, it doesn't make sense for Ryan and I to be on the road, you know, losing our voice over a weekend. And that's why we don't go to Windup SF or the other shows. We pretty much just go to New York. And even then, most of the time, Ryan and I are not behind the booth, not because we don't want to be there and chatting and meeting customers. It's that like we were trying to use that time to meet with other brand owners and press and otherwise. But again, trying to do it at scale. And so the show, like, if you were to start your own microbrand today, it's an awesome thing to go to shows, but like to go and try and make your whole business around that and be on the road away from the family and going to twenty shows a year, which a lot of microbrands do that, and they lean into the shows as a way not just to get the word out, but to actually make money. I think it's like, I wouldn't say it's unsustainable. Everyone has different levels of capacity and energy to do that, but for Ryan and I, we just didn't think that was gonna be the best use of our time. Therefore, what we can hopefully do is you know, open a store rather than, you know, just be there at that shop at a Windup, we can open a shop in New York and have a place for fans of watches to come and see Vaer all year round and to hopefully create a great shopping experience. So that's like, again, it's only possible at scale, but we've been kind of working behind the scenes to make that a reality and have, yeah, great showroom spaces around the US and hopefully the world.

Awesome. Well, Ryan, Reagan, this was really, really awesome. As I mentioned at the very beginning, Vaer was one of the first microbrands that really pulled me down the rabbit hole. And it was so much fun learning a little bit more about the story behind the brand, some of the challenges along the way, but obviously the immense success that you guys are experiencing. And I'm excited to continue to see that success. If folks are interested in learning more about Vaer, you mentioned the showroom, but what are some other places that they can go to learn more about the brand, explore the collection, but also to maybe engage and connect with you guys or other collectors?

Yeah, so I mean vaerwatches.com is a great start. We have a solid community on Reddit now. There's a Vaer Watches community on Reddit. We also have an owners group on Facebook. So those are places you can go again if you want to like take part in the community and have conversation about our watches and models. In terms of, you know, engaging, you can sign up for our email list. We send emails weekly, if not multiple times a week.

If you're into that, it's information about new releases. We try to share information just about watches in general. You know, we want our audience to know, understand, and love the world of wristwatches. So it's a lot of information about our designs, about the fundamentals of watches, whatever that may be. And then yeah, our showroom is an awesome place to come. We are open eleven to six every day. You can book an appointment if you want. If you book an appointment, you get a free Vaer hat, regardless of whether you buy a watch. Honestly, we want people to come in and experience the brand. It's a no pressure environment. It's also been amazing because it's in LA. A lot of people go on vacation and travel through LA. So if you're ever in LA for any reason, just, you know, take the time to stop by. It's a really fun experience. We will be at Windup New York, Reagan and I.

But yeah, I mean you can email our team through our website and have a conversation anytime, any questions, whatever it may be, we're there to answer. And then we also have a YouTube channel. We're working on creating more content, but we have quite a few videos, short films that we've entered in film festivals and one that's you know, more of the brand side, but you can really you know get a feel for the Vaer ecosystem through all those different channels.

Awesome. Well I'm gonna have to swing by the showroom next time I'm in LA and grab one of those

Please do.

hats. And I'll also hopefully see you at Windup New York.

Awesome.

Awesome. That sounds great.

But thanks again for your time and for sharing your story and have a great rest of your day over there.

Awesome. See ya.

Appreciate it. Thanks again.