Interview with NJ of Bangalore Watch Company (317)

Published on Wed, 20 Nov 2024 21:26:40 -0800

Synopsis

In this episode, hosts Andrew and Everett interview Nirupesh Joshi (NJ), co-founder of Bangalore Watch Company. NJ shares the origin story of starting the brand with his wife Mercy in 2018 after living in Hong Kong and developing an appreciation for watches. He discusses their mission to create high-quality watches that tell modern Indian stories, moving beyond stereotypical Indian design elements. The conversation covers their various collections including the Renaissance, Mach 1, and Apogee watches, with particular focus on how they incorporate Indian aviation, cricket, and space exploration themes into their designs. They also discuss the challenges and successes of positioning themselves as a premium Indian watch brand in both domestic and international markets. The episode concludes with their regular "Other Things" segment where they discuss TV shows, Filson bags, and pie dishes.

Transcript

Speaker
Andrew Hello fellow watch lovers, nerds, enthusiasts, or however you identify. You're listening to 40 in 20, the watch clicker podcast with your hosts, Andrew and my good friend Everett here. We talk about watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like.
Everett Everett, how are you? All right. Andrew, when I, when I edited last week's episode, I was like, whoa, like listening to my, my interview. Everett, how are you?
Andrew And I was like, and you were a mess.
Everett I was a mess. Yeah. I actually had to, uh, there were a few things I had to take out. So if you heard that and you thought, wow, Everett's in Just know that the actual answer was even more informed than what you heard. Yeah, I'm much better this week.
Andrew I can tell. I'm much better this week. I can tell. This prickly pear, Tobuchiko, is good.
Everett Is good? Yeah, let me get a sip of that. That's what you were doing. I thought you were cheersing me. Oh, it's so sweet. That is really good. I'm drinking a beer, which I'm very happy for. I did have an all day trial in another jurisdiction today, so whole other city can leave early and trial. We were just kind of talking about it playing in that DoCo region. Trial is hard, right? You're just, you're just on the entire time. And so I felt a little exhausted.
Andrew I'm feeling better now. I can't imagine being on the attorney side. Cause just being in the box side, like where I can just be like, I don't know. Yeah. You're, you're a passenger, right? Yeah. And, and, and like a medium pastor. I don't know. I don't remember. I'd rather not guess. Those are like really common answers for me.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, uh, it's, it's just a, it's a big, it's always big and it's really a culmination of, you know, hundreds of hours of work usually. And so, yeah, I did that today and I thought I am not going to be up for this, but then like I got, I drove back to town, I got some food and now I'm like, You didn't just get some food, you got some Popeyes.
Andrew You did not get the right Popeyes, but you did get Popeyes. You can't get the, there's no wrong Popeyes. Let's be clear. Andrew, how are you? I am good. I'm on the, I'm on the tail end of a long weekend. I took a couple of days off last week. I took Friday night off to watch the Tyson fight.
Everett Well, let's just not, let's just not.
Andrew I, and because I don't like taking a day off in the middle of my week, I also took Saturday off. So I got to watch the duck game. That was exceptionally stressful, ultimately a relief.
Everett So I had to rank number one in the country.
Andrew We're still ranked and you can't take that away from us. just I have a lot of feelings about the Tyson fight and the undercards right so so we had three we had a co-main event which was we can maybe come back because we have something more important to talk about
Everett We do. We do. We have a, we have a guest today and it's been a few months since we've done an interview episode. I'm pretty pumped. I'm pretty pumped for this one. This is a brand that we've talked about on the show numerous times, uh, but have not previously, uh, have not previously engaged with the owner. And recently this brand reached out to us and said, Hey, we like what you guys are doing. Actually, they didn't say that. I think this isn't recent. I think this is like about a year in the making. They didn't say that. They just said, hey dummies, it's about time. Why aren't you talking to us? Here, we'll text you again. And so today we are joined by, you already know because you're at home and you've read the card, but we're joined today by Nirupesh Joshi, aka NJ, who's the co-owner and co-founder of Bangalore Watch Company. Anjay, how the heck are you? Thank you so much for being here. Welcome.
Nirupesh Joshi Hey, thank you very much for having me on the show, gents. I know it's late where you are. It's nice and early, 10.30 in the morning. November day in Bangalore cannot be better. Great time of the year.
Everett How is the weather in November in Bangalore?
Nirupesh Joshi It's about early 20s or the low 20s in Celsius. So that I presume it's about, you know, low 70s. I think for you guys, nice and sunny. The monsoon rains have just ended.
Andrew So you're like late spring, early summer right now.
Everett Yeah. No, we're heading into winter right now. Late fall.
Andrew Is this not the southern hemisphere?
Everett No, no. You guys are northern. They're northern atmosphere. Do I not know how to read a globe? I think it's possible that you don't know how to read a globe. Yeah.
Andrew Uh, 70 degrees right now.
Everett I think that's, I think that sounds perfect. 70 degrees. It's been cold and wet here for weeks, weeks, months, perhaps even. It's hard to remember. Um, so that sounds, that sounds lovely. So NJ, we are going to, we're going to for a moment, for a moment, pretend like the folks listening have never heard of Bangalore Watch Company. We're gonna walk through Bangalore Watch Company, but I want you to take us back. I want you to take us back to the... 2015-2016 time period as Bangalore Watch Company is fomenting in you and your business partners' minds. Set us up. Tell us what this looks like. Where are you? What are you thinking about?
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, look, great segue. Mercy, my wife, and I, we run the brand together. I think some of the listeners would call it foolish to get into business with your life partner.
Everett I think that's right.
Nirupesh Joshi I think you're right about that. Or get into life with your business partner. But it happened that it was the former, life partners first, who decided to get into business.
Andrew That's probably the smarter way to go.
Nirupesh Joshi You think so?
Everett I don't know about that. I don't know about that. I don't know. Because she's already on the hook at that point. It sounds to me like, based on where we're at today, that it's working out. But keep going.
Nirupesh Joshi If you had her on the show, I don't know what you might have to say. But we'll leave that aside. We've called Bangalore home for about 25 years now. We were not originally from Bangalore. We're from down south, further south in India. But we moved to Bangalore for our careers in the tech industry. So I had call center jobs, as you can imagine, as cliched as it can be, when I started my career. But we ended up spending a lot of time in tech consulting jobs for American companies, actually, for Boston MIT-based companies, specifically. We had the good fortune of being able to travel around the world. We spent a lot of time in Boston. We spent a significant amount of time in Seoul, South Korea. And then we lived in Hong Kong. This is the 2015 timeframe. So we had the good life. Things were good. I had a large, relatively mid-management position. Mercy became a trailing spouse because we were moving every two years. But we had a good life. And we got into watches when we were in Hong Kong. I joke that you can't run a marathon in Hong Kong. It's so small. Uh, and you're surrounded by, you're surrounded by watch boutiques all around you. We ended up spending a lot of time with, uh, with a lot of boutiques and got into watches then. So it's not, I don't have a story of my grandfather's Omega passed down to me, which got it, got me into watches. Uh, I'm more of a late bloomer that got into watches because of the proximity to all the, watch companies in Hong Kong and we ended up spending a lot of time there learning about watches and buying ourselves some nice watches. Um, that's where sort of the seed was planted for what we ended up doing now.
Andrew So, so how does that seed plant right to some, to some folks who are, who have access to basically every watch available that a person can buy on the open market to, Let's, let's make our own. Like where, how do you make that jump? Cause that's, that's a not insignificant jump. Cause there's tons of people who can, who have nice watch collections, who have access to watches, who don't start watch brands, who don't like leave their jobs and go all in into making watches.
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah. I mean, look, you ask any brand watch brand owner, they probably tell you that they started making a watch that they felt was not available in the market. So for us, it was somewhat similar. I'm a big aviation and space buff. Um, so obviously I gravitated a lot towards Omega, uh, IWC, uh, Bremont. Yeah. Yes, I noticed that when we started talking. And so I gravitated towards these brands and I realized that it was not just the quality of watchmaking that made them special, but it was also the quality of the storytelling and the narratives that make the watches special. I mean, the Speedy is the Speedy because of where it went and what it did. not just because of the technical complexity of that watch.
Everett It's not a technically complex watch, right? I mean, even going back to the sixties, it's a fairly humdrum watch. It only has 50 meters of water resistance.
Nirupesh Joshi You had to bring that up. Go ahead. No, I think when we started looking at watch companies, we felt that that narrative is what drew us to the brands and to the watches. And that's when we started looking back home to India to say, hey, you know, I mean, I could buy a $5,000 Omega Speedmaster, but is there something from India that I could probably wear and relate to a lot more than I would relate to a NASA program, if you will. And there was an absence. There was no watch company in India that was A, producing watches at a quality that we would say respectable from a world class point of view. And two, there was no watch company that was telling modern Indian narratives that we could relate to. Every watch that either came from India or was made for India by a European brand had a stereotypical design language. They would put an Indian god on the back of the watch, or they would put a Sanskrit numeral font on the dial of the watch.
Everett Because that's all Indians like Indian gods and Sanskrit on all of their stuff, right?
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, that's what we like. We're not modern at all. Tikka Masala.
Everett So you and Mercy in 2016, you both take a sabbatical. And at that time, you're obviously You guys are obviously in that place. You're on this joint sabbatical. You're in a place where you can start thinking. Can you give us just a little bit of a peek behind the curtain on how this went? What did this process actually look like where you guys have this conversation, start making decisions, start acting? As a person who started a watch brand, I recognize that there's this like, there's a moment when it becomes more than just a verbalization, a vocalization of a dream, right?
Andrew And as a person who didn't start a watch brand, I can imagine that how that conversation would go. Tell us a little bit about that conversation.
Nirupesh Joshi No, I think it's a conversation that had started much early on. Every time we visited a watch boutique and we put on a watch and we bought a watch, we would talk about how good would it be if we had an Indian watch brand that produced the same kind of quality and the same kind of storytelling that we can relate to. And every time we looked back home, there was this absence. So that conversation about what if there was a watch company that did this in India started early on. But that conversation soon, as you said, Everett, in 2016, during that sabbatical, turned into what if it was us who created that brand because, you know, we yearned for somebody else to create it, and there isn't one. So is it even possible? It might sound crazy, but is it even possible for us to do it? And then we started researching, figuring out how do you even start a company? How do you start a watch company? How do you make watches? Where do you make them? Of course, a lot of late nights on watchaseek.com. figuring out how other people started brands. I spoke with a few brand owners that were nice enough to talk to me early on. Shout out to Sujay and Krishnan at Melbourne Watch Company, similar story, and said, hey, how did you do this? How did you get started? And then over a period of a year or so, we felt that we had enough information that allowed us to be able to you know, start the brand. And it became real, Andrew, when we wired the funds for the advance for the Miyota movements, that's when it became real, real. We're like, no, no way out of this now. Right. So.
Everett And that first watch, which watch was that? Was your first, was your first watch?
Nirupesh Joshi We called it the Renaissance, the Renaissance Automatic. It's a simple dress watch, three-hander, Miura 9015. And we're talking 2018, right? So those were 30 bucks.
Andrew Well, and this is also like before brands are really in the space to share information like this is pre a rising tide rises all boats. This is still very cutthroat brands growing and dying every day. This is like the this is pre market saturation in 2018 and that 2015 to 2000 like 20 It was it was rough out there for for new brands.
Nirupesh Joshi It was rough, but it was also very successful for a lot of brands. I mean, I'd say this is the heights of the Kickstarter campaign. If you remember 2018.
Andrew Yeah, absolutely.
Nirupesh Joshi I remember I remember one Kickstarter popping up every week.
Andrew And I mean, I think meeting goal, meeting goals the same day. Yeah, absolutely.
Nirupesh Joshi Yes, I think Zellos used to do Kickstarter after Kickstarter at that time, 2018, if I remember correctly.
Everett I think there was also... And all they had to do was make it huge. Like Zellos was like, make the lugs bigger. And people were like, look at the lugs!
Nirupesh Joshi I think they had some oversized watches, but Zellos was peeling it on Kickstarter at that time. And others did too.
Everett I wish you guys could see his face right now. And Jay, that was stated so like. That was perfect. So calmly and you couldn't hear the look on your face at all. I appreciate that. I, I outed you and I'm sorry.
Andrew So you're, you're introducing your brand in what is probably the most competitive watch market to date. Like not before, not since that five year period between like about 2015 and 2020 is the most volatile watch market I think we've ever seen because of how easy it was for people to access manufacturing and because of how easy it was for people to hit Kickstarter and for how just the ease of entry. What did you do to separate yourself?
Nirupesh Joshi No, I think a lot, I mean I still feel that a lot of the, I think that the enthusiast community is an eco-chamber. You want to launch a watch that checks a lot of boxes from a technical specifications point of view. My opinion is that that may not be a formula for success in the long term. We've been around now for, this is our seventh year running And I can say that you need something that separates you from just the technical check boxes, right? and I remember the time very clearly that I went to the to our design team and I said You know, I want the lug-to-lug to be no longer than 48 I want the height to be no no no higher than 11 millimeters. I want the you know, the the the diameter to be no more than 40 millimeters. Because I had a checkbox from all my learning, and I said, this is what the enthusiast community wants. If the lug is more than 48, they don't like it. But then later I realized very quickly that there is something beyond just the checkboxes and the technical specifications that sets brands apart. And that's where our storytelling and narrative started coming in. And that's worked rather well for us now.
Everett I'm going to suggest something with no insult intended, but I've just pulled up pictures of the Renaissance. Not one of your watches that I'm more familiar with. That's not a picture of the Renaissance, Andrew, that's words. But I do know that that watch, beautiful. beautiful watch, but it is unremarkable when compared with the rest of your catalog, I would say. I don't think that's unfair. So that makes a lot of sense to me. You can see that as you guys mature as a company, the watches really picked that up. I've got a question because both you and Mercy come from sort of tech backgrounds and you've got a ton of like, uh, well, let's say, let's say software consulting experience. You've got this sort of big modern business experience, both of you that you bring to the table. I don't think that that's particularly uncommon in watches, but it is novel. Can you point to things that you did in those first few years that were perhaps different than other brands did because of those experiences?
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, great question. I think both of us come from a background of consulting and customer experience management and building technical and professional services teams. One of the things that we did and we still do today, Mercy runs our ownership experience program and she runs all our operations and customer experience. The way we handle customer experience has been different from day one. You know, we are a digital first brand. People come to our website and they order the watches on the website. We don't have a physical store today, barring a studio in Bangalore. But the way we handle our customer experience with empathy, with proactiveness because people are buying a $500, $600, $700, $800 item from an unknown brand in the early years. I think we had to bring that experience from our past and that's worked really well for us. There's a lot of proactiveness. We have people dedicated for customer experience. We hire them not from the watch industry. We hire them from Amex. We hire them from the top hotel chains in India and they handle our customer experience and that's worked for us.
Andrew Okay, interesting. So your move is the customer service side. When you say you're hiring from Amex and hotels, this is like Hey, you buy our watch and you get, you get the, you get this, you, you don't, you get the amenities. Yeah. Okay. I can, I can dig that. So you, you said you've been in Bangalore for 25 years about, you're not 25 years old. What got you there? And why upon starting a business like this, did you decide to stay there?
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, great question. Look, I think for the listeners as well, I think some may be familiar, but for the ones that are not familiar, I think it'll be interesting to talk about Bangalore as a city and what the background of Bangalore is, right? Before the 1980s, Bangalore was a very quiet town. They called it the retiree's paradise. People retire from jobs and move to Bangalore because the weather was fantastic throughout the year. It was a quiet city, not much traffic, not much noises. People would come and settle down here. But after the 80s, 1980s, things started changing. Tech started coming in. Texas Instruments, the chipmaker, they were the first to set up a chipmaking setup in Bangalore. And this was, I believe, the early 80s, yeah. And then Intel came and set up a chip making, or at least a chip design setup here. Cisco came, a lot of software services came. With that, the Indian government also moved a lot of science and technology to Bangalore. The Indian Space Research Organization, the NASA equivalent for India, they recently put a rover and a lander on the moon's far side. They are headquartered here in India, sorry, in Bangalore, sorry. A lot of defense research and science stuff happens here. Aeronautical engineering of the government of India is based in Bangalore. So there's a lot of science tech that has happened in this city for the last 20, 25 years. And especially over the last five years, a lot of Silicon Valley venture capitalists have moved and set up their own offices here in Bangalore to identify new and emerging businesses. And this is sort of the tech capital. Because we started our careers in tech, that is what brought us to Bangalore, Andrew, and we chose to move back here because this is home. We're very familiar with it. We can hire people. We knew how to set up infrastructure, rent an office, because this has been home for us and we chose to stay here. And the weather is great. This is probably got the best weather in the country.
Andrew And based, you know, just kind of inferring from. what you're trying to achieve as a business model. That's the place, right? This is the hub of people traveling. You've got the customer service and customer relations hub of India right there. Your hiring pool is in your city. Is that fair to downstream assume?
Nirupesh Joshi It's fair. It's also challenging in a few places because if we were to start a tech company, an AI company that can do something cool, it would have been a lot easier to hire people here. But we now have a couple of Swiss trained watchmakers here in our brand. And that's been very hard because typically watchmaking as a skill is not as abundant as tech skills are, for instance, in India. roles are difficult to hire, but yes, if you want tech and if you want digital marketing expertise, if you want customer service expertise, this is a fantastic place to hire.
Andrew I feel like it'd be pretty easy to convince a Swiss person, hey, it's November 19th and it's 75 degrees. That's where you can work. Just throwing that out there. You'll hire your Swiss people in the winter, right?
Everett Yes. So in early 2018, you release the Renaissance, and then just a little bit over a year later, September 2019, you announce and do the pre-order for the Mach 1, which comes out in January of 2020. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that there's a huge shift in what you're doing with the watch almost immediately, where I said, perhaps somewhat pejoratively, that that Renaissance is a bit unremarkable compared to the rest of your catalog, you instantly, in 2019, or 2019 announce a watch that cannot be described as unremarkable. And I'm going to, I'm just gonna walk through a few of the things I noticed. So one, we've got a flag at nine o'clock on this watch. We've got a font set that is not perhaps audacious, but is incredibly well put together. And Andrew will tell you, I'm a font set freak. This is perfect. He's, it is upsetting how much he cares about fonts. You've got a, I'm gonna say your case is refined, but still safe. But then you go over to the crown and all of a sudden you're like, oh, interesting. We are making decisions. Decisions are being made that perhaps 18 months before weren't being made in quite the same way. So talk to us about that decision making. I think the second watch. for most brands, the second watch is the one that creates the most questions, because that's the watch where you set a trajectory, for better or worse, you're gonna set a trajectory with that second watch. So talk to us about how you change your philosophy from going from the Renaissance to the Mach 1.
Nirupesh Joshi I think that's a great question.
Everett Thank you. I am a professional question asker. He is.
Nirupesh Joshi I can certify to that. Very professional. It's a very interesting question. When we started, the goals were very simple for the brand. The first goal was to change the narrative for the kind of watches that came from India. We've always seen the Mumbai specials. We've always seen the repainted Seiko and Oris dials on eBay. The first thing Mercy and I wanted to do was to change that and say, hey, this is not yet another Mumbai special. There's this watch company started by a couple that are aiming to put respectable quality watches by any margin. And the second goal for us was to do that with a modern Indian narrative because we got very tired of the stereotype storytelling with Indian gods and Sanskrit numerals on the dial. I've probably mentioned this before. So one, respectable quality watches, and two, do it with very authentic storytelling from a modern Indian standpoint. So the story of the Mark I had always been in the works, but with the Renaissance, I think we played it safe, for lack of a better word. We said, let's put a watch out that we think is not very niche, like aviation or space or cricket is very niche, but let's put a watch out that appeals to the general population.
Everett Gives you time to figure out the logistics of making a watch, making a watch company before you sort of pull your pants down and say, here I am.
Nirupesh Joshi Yes. It taught us a lot about logistics, about manufacturing, about assembling in India, quality control, shipping. Yeah. The whole nine yards. And then when we saw early success with that, we said, okay, now we've got to switch gears. We've got to go all in. and started bringing out the stories. And that's the Mach 1. So it's a classic pilot watch aviation style. We had like a Type A and a Type B style. It had a fin flash at the nine o'clock position. A lot of people misunderstand that to be the Indian flag, but it's actually the fin flash carried on the tail fin of fighter jets. On the MiG-22. On any fighter jet now today, yeah, it was the MiGs and now other, we fly Rafales and Sukhois and they all carry that fin flash on the tail fin. The U.S. also has a fin flash system that they carry depending on which fleet and which airborne division. And then it's got a crown inspired by the afterburner nozzle of a fighter jet.
Everett That crown is something else. You know, you've talked about your design team a little bit. What was the process of designing that crown? I mean, what did you say you wanted to get to where you got used to? Just this is an afterburner? Or how did you get there?
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, we said, look, what are the aspects of the MIG? That story was initially inspired by the MIG-21 Type 77. It was a fighter craft that was originally, it originally came from the Czech Republic, but we started building that fighter craft in India, in Bangalore actually. And then we said, what aspects of that fighter plane can we incorporate into the design of this watch? So if you see the seconds hand, the red tip, that shape, like a triangle with an extension, that's inspired by the nose cone of the MiG. You have the crown that's inspired by the afterburner nozzle. So we brought in as many elements as we could from the fighter plane, and we translated that into design. I think the crown was a good idea. I think that's something that's talked with a lot of people that see the watch for the first time, the crown sticks out and they're like, oh, that's unique, that's very interesting.
Everett Yeah, you know, this is an interesting thing for me and I think probably for a lot of people at home. I carry a little bit of personal interest in this, but the process of design I think is an interesting one in, you know, you know, even going back to 2018, but really in modern sort of digital, in a digital world, right, where design is like this. Design is this multifaceted set of skill. You know, really, you need a bunch of different skills to do design. So you need to have perhaps a vision, right? Design starts with a vision, sort of a shape in someone's head, perhaps. You need to have, but then getting that design, you know, some people are very talented with a pencil or a pen and they can do a lot of good work there. But really, in order to convey information, in this industry, so you're in Bangalore, you're working in Hong Kong with manufacturers in Hong Kong, like putting the ideas, the vision, the shape that's in someone's head, perhaps your head or Mercy's head, and creating a communication, a way to communicate that requires a skill set. I know you say that you're designing upwards towards 90% of your parts in-house, What's the actual work process? Are you getting into Illustrator or Affinity or something? Something like that crown has, you may look at it and be like, oh, that looks cool. But I, as someone who's designed to watch in Affinity, is the software I've used, I recognize that there's a couple of things in there. You know, you've got this, this knurling, but the knurling's not straight, rather the knurling's on an angle, but you've also got a conical shape to it, and there's... I don't know how to say this, because I don't know all the words, because I'm not a professional designer or illustrator. How do you do that? How did you, and I don't mean how does that happen, I mean, how did you, NJ, or how did Bangalore Watch Company make that happen? Sort of a nutshell. That's a real sausage-making question, but I'm curious about it.
Nirupesh Joshi and a the ProPilot. And then I look for, I create mood boards based on things I like. And then I create mood boards based on things that we want to incorporate into our design. For instance, the fin flash is something we really wanted to incorporate into our design. And the afterburner nozzle of the MIG is something we wanted to incorporate into our design. The nose cone of the MIG is something we wanted in the design. So I create mood boards of what can go into the design And then the mood board goes to the designer who will then sketch things out and give me iterations and say, how do you like this? How do you like it if we put the, I would say, this is the fin flash, I want it somehow on the dial. And then the designer would come up with, hey, do you want the fin flash to be the minute marker color? Or do you want the fin flash as an actual flag at the 12 o'clock position? So we would do iterations. And finally, we would come up to an iteration that we think is something that we think is final. The hardest thing to do in design, I'm probably sure you've heard of this before, and the listeners too, The hardest thing to do in design is not the sketching, is not the development, is not the rendering. The hardest thing to do in design is to knowing when to stop.
Everett Every 11-year-old that's making a drawing, you got to know when to stop, right? You've added enough details.
Nirupesh Joshi Yes, you gotta know where to stop. You could keep going. So we put a timeline on when to stop and we pick from the different iterations that the design team gives us and we go with the final that we think is something that works for the both of us.
Andrew So my big question here is you have some great designs. You have super palatable designs across your entire catalog. with really good stories to complement them. How are you choosing these stories to tell and incorporating them into the design? Because they're so cleanly incorporated. And I think the one that like is most striking is your cricket watch, right? Like you look at that watch and- That's just the one you like the most. And you put it, and anyone who looks at it, no one who looks at it immediately goes, oh, cricket. Because that's a weird thing to track with a watch. But the story is what makes the watch, right? Like, cause cricket is an enormous sport outside of the United States. Very much like soccer. Everywhere that's not here. Outside of the United States and outside of the United States, you can call it whatever it is you want. It's soccer. But cricket is, is arguably globally bigger than, you know, pool, billiards. It's definitely bigger than American football.
Everett It's bigger than, it's bigger than billiards. You got that one right.
Andrew But I'm wondering how you find a way to, to choose a story and influence your design or perhaps choose a design and then find the story that fits your design? And maybe that's the question is, are you choosing a story and designing or are you designing and then finding the story that is appropriate?
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, look, I think if we, if we, If we make a design and then look for a story to shove it up the back of that watch, it would be unfair. We don't do that. We actually identify stories first that we think are inspiring to us and also believe that would be inspiring to a lot of people and then figure out a way to take that story and translate elements of that story into design. That's our approach. And as you said, Andrew, it's very challenging because at any given point in time, we have at this time as we speak, I have about 20 stories that could turn into watches. I don't know if all of them would. Some of them would, most of them will not. I think it's a process of brainstorming. It's a bet, man. You have to take that bet saying, this is something that I'm going to bet on. Because look, I mean, I'm sure you're familiar with it. A lot of listeners are. Once you choose a story and you translate that into design and bring a watch out of it, it's a 12-month process. Because you have to start a 12-month process. So you start with the design, then translate them into elements of the features of the watch, and then you go into prototyping, and then design. And until the pre-order opens for the watch, we don't know what the reaction of our customers are until we introduce the watch to the world. So it's a risk that we take. It's a bet. But we believe that we're betting on teams that we think are personally interesting and hope that would also be interesting for a lot of people. Cricket is an international phenomenon, barring the US. It's catching up in the US now. The International Cricket Committee, the ICC, just conducted a cricket tournament in North America because they want the North American eyeballs to start following cricket. It's a game where extremely successful. They have a new format now, which is only three hours. The game they used to play for days back in the day.
Andrew It could go on forever. That was always the joke about cricket. It's like it could never end.
Nirupesh Joshi Yes, but now they made a three hour format. It's called the T20. And this is a very successful format because even in India now the younger people are following the T20 format because it's, hey, I got beer with friends on a weekend afternoon. It's a three hour game just like how American football or baseball or any other professional sport or other professional sport. Yeah. Football is 90 minutes. So the 3R format works really well for us and it's becoming internationally more popular.
Everett In terms of the design of the overdrive, because we've talked about it now. So in terms of the design of the overdrive, tell me a little bit. So I think the most obvious, well, first, let me just say, I think you could look at this watch and I think many people probably do look at this watch and don't notice anything about it at first glance, which is the beauty of the Overdrive, right? The Overdrive is this elegant, really straightforward, modern sports watch. But there, if you take just a second, I think, well, I think you're gonna notice one of two things. You're gonna notice either one, the markings on the bezel, Like, wait, what? And then you're going to notice that there are exactly two Arabic numerals on the hour markers, the four and the six. So let's walk through. So first tell me about the bezel.
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, look, I think for us and also for the listeners, we've got to understand the rules of the game. Then it would be easier to understand the watch. Do it. Do it. I think cricket is played in a one-day format, which goes for the entire day, and a shorter three-hour format, which is now more popular. But if you play the one day format, each team gets to throw in baseball parlance 50 overs and each over six throws. So 300 throws each team gets to throw and the other side, the other team gets to score runs against those balls. So it's 50 overs if it's a full day game. But if it's a shorter T20 format, it's only 20 overs. And that's the one that's becoming more popular now.
Andrew Wait, wait. So so a T3 game, they only get to throw 20. They only get to throw the ball 20 times in a T20 game.
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, 20, 20 overs each over six. Yeah.
Andrew Oh, OK. OK. So it's one hundred and one hundred eighty pitches.
Nirupesh Joshi One hundred eighty.
Andrew Yeah. Yeah. That's a lot of pitches.
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, 180 people.
Andrew I'm relating to baseball.
Everett Sorry, that's a long. And so and so this bezel is, although it can be used as a 60 minute count or as a countdown or even a count up, it's intended for an observer of a cricket match to be able to click that at the end of an overwrite.
Nirupesh Joshi Yes, correct. So it's a unidirectional bezel. It's a countdown bezel, not a count up. So you could set it at 50 and track every click is to track down and elapsed over. Not that you don't have a digital scoreboard on screen, but it's a fun way to be part of that game. It was a tongue in cheek approach.
Andrew And every diver wears a computer and not a dive watch. I mean, let's be real here.
Everett It's beautiful. It's beautiful.
Andrew This was my first watch, uh, that, that brought me to Bangalore. This is the first Bangalore watch that I became aware of. Uh, and I saw it and I was like, I kind of like, I dig this like fun design, idea of like, this is this is the thing that we do. We're going to we're going to play cricket with our watches. And I really appreciated that. And then I became a little bit more familiar with Bangalore. And I love that storytelling and your willingness to kind of to be fun. Right. Because there's a of really important and really meaningful stories to be told and the willingness to say and also like Crickets the thing here. This is just as important. I loved that decision
Nirupesh Joshi Look, cricket's a religion in India. Everybody, I play gully cricket. It's called gully cricket, gully or street. So I played cricket on the streets in Chennai when I grew up. Cricket stars are gods. People look up to them. Do you still?
Andrew Because here we call it like pickup games, which is where like men of our age do something that we're physically not any more, uh, able to do and we still do it and then we get hurt. Do you guys have leagues like that? Do you participate in a league like that?
Nirupesh Joshi No, I don't. I play some badminton now. I think I'm 43 years old. I don't know if I can run around the cricket ground all day. But I play some badminton. But we do have people playing what's called is cricket in the nets. So it's a smaller ground with completely covered with nets so the ball doesn't go over. Smart.
Andrew That way you don't have to run for it.
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, so you don't have to run too much for it. And it's now, because also in cities, the grounds are becoming smaller. There's not as much space like there used to be before. So this net can be on the roof of a building and a bunch of guys can get together and play. They make teams on that app. I like it. So it's fun. But yeah, but this is an important feature that we wanted on that watch, apart from all the other things I've heard. Yeah, tell me about the 4 and the 6. So like in baseball, you hit the ball out of the park, you hit it out of the park. In the same way in cricket, you can hit the ball out of the park. But when you hit it out of the park, if the ball does not land on the grass before it goes out of the park, it's six runs given to the hitter, to the batter. And if it hits the ground and then goes out of the park, it's four runs given to the hitter. A ground rule quadruple.
Unknown Yeah.
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, so you don't have to run. Yes, exactly. You don't have to run, you know, a quadruple or four times between the wickets as they're called in cricket. So that four and six are very important for the game. So we put that four and six as Arabic and the rest of them are shaped like the wickets as they're called in cricket because the batter is standing in position instead of like swinging the baseball bat, they're actually protecting the wicket that's behind them. Yeah. And if the ball hits the wicket, they're they're out. That's beautiful. So the markers are shaped like the wicket.
Andrew Cricket's the coolest sport. I just I don't understand why. Now you're just sucking up. No, I'm not. It's it's so bizarre. When you're on offense, you're actually on defense. And in every other American sport, when you're on offense, you're just purely on offense. And in cricket, you're not. The offense is the defense. And it's, it's bizarre that it hasn't like blown up in America.
Everett You know, the first, the first time I ever, the first time I ever really like conceptualized just how bizarre it is that we know nothing about cricket in the United States. I was re I believe the article, I think ESPN does an article called the top 100 every year. And they had published an article like the top 100 most famous athletes in the world.
Andrew There was a bunch of cricket players.
Everett This is a similar experience. And you, you know, you read, it's like, okay, it was LeBron James and it was Roger Federer. And you know, you go through a list of people like, yep, yep, yep. And then you get down to like number eight and there's this fellow, I'm going to mess up his name, but Virat Kohli, I think. Did I say that right? And I was like, and he's like, I want to say it was like sandwiched in between like, uh, Tom Brady and Serena Williams, right? And I was like,
Andrew I've never heard this person's name.
Everett And you know, he's this like insanely handsome asshole. You know, you can just tell. This is the coolest dude in India. This is probably one of the, I mean, literally one of the top 10 coolest athletes in the world.
Nirupesh Joshi He's a cool guy. He's a health freak. He's a cool guy. He also married a top movie star. So as a couple, they're like the hot couple. Anushka Sharma.
Everett yes there you go smoking hot i'm just gonna say yeah i'm just gonna say for the record concur smoking hot so you don't have to say anything if you don't want to i'm sure mercy's gonna listen our wives won't or she could hear they stopped listening 314 episodes ago yeah so we gotta say whatever we want now so so but look but virat kohli plays the best one of the best cover drives
Nirupesh Joshi in the history of cricket. And the cover drive is a type of shot that you play. It's a very elegant shot. That's why that watch is called the cover drive. And on the back of that watch is a right-hand batsman playing a cover drive shot. It is not Virat Kohli. We won't admit to who it is, but it's up to people to guess. But yes, Virat Kohli, one of the best cricketers.
Everett But you know, I was going to say now it's a mission to try to figure it out, but I'm sure I could never figure it out.
Andrew We could, we could become cricket experts and never, never get it. Uh, so, so we, we've got a cricket story. India is not short for stories worth telling that aren't in the global zeitgeist. what's your kind of selection method or how do you choose a story and distill it into a watch that you know will be palatable? Because everything you've produced has been super palatable. They've all been well designed. They've all, you know, nothing is bizarro land, right? You start with your really basic, boring. And boring is like when I say boring. If you've ever listened to the show, you know that if I say boring, it's a super compliment. And then I want it to just be nuts and bolts, elegant, well thought out. lovely, right? Like I want boring watches, that's my jam. So we start with boring, we go to a pilot watch that is really hard to reimagine and really hard to put to market without just being like another one, right? And you did that. How are you choosing stories that are meaningful enough to put into a design that's gonna be approachable and be purchasable and mean something.
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, I think it's a challenge. It's not easy. I mean, look, we... One of the things that we get asked is, look, what you're doing is cool. How do you guarantee that you'll be able to come up with these cool stories 10 years down the line or 10 years down the line? Because that's what's going to make your brand different from all the others.
Andrew Besides being the only people telling the stories. I mean, really, really. I mean, who else is telling these stories in this
Nirupesh Joshi world. I think a lot of other brands do good storytelling. As a brand owner, I have admiration for Omega, although the Speedy story is a little old now, maybe, but I think they're trying to reinvent that story from time to time. I think the Deepsea story is fantastic. I know There's a bit of controversy but I think the Bremont folks were really good at what they did.
Everett You mean with the redesign of the
Nirupesh Joshi No, I mean, before that, I mean, take something like Martin. No, I think the redesign is, you know, I think everybody has an opinion about it. It's been there's enough people talked about it. But I do think that the Martin Baker is a cool story. Think of, you know, the whole ejections and a watch associated with that. So I do think that there are good brands doing good storytelling like this, although we don't see that coming from where I am. And we're hoping that this becomes one of those brands that gets talked about when it comes to good storytelling with good quality watchmaking. But it is a challenge, Andrew, to keep coming up with stories. It's also a challenge to identify the type of watch that this would become. For instance, when we did the story of cricket, we had to fit that into a type of watch that it would become. Can we take a cricket story and make it a dive watch? No, we cannot. Can we take a cricket story and make it a dress watch? We could, but it may not be as relevant. So we had to take a cricket story and make it a simple classic sports watch with a rotating bezel that sort of ties into the story. So the type of watch that we choose for each story is actually equally challenging once we identify the story, like the Apogee, for instance. What type of watch?
Everett Yeah, let's let's talk about the Apogee. We've mentioned it. We've mentioned it a handful of times. Let's just talk about the Apogee. So I think the Apogee so so Bangalore actually released a bunch of when did the Apogee actually release? I've read different things, but I'm seeing this really starting in like 2023.
Nirupesh Joshi So the app actually came out in 2021, the peak of the pandemic. It was a great, yeah, it was a great perfect timing. It was actually good because a lot of people were sitting at home twiddling their thumbs. So we had full attention from our customers when we launched WAPS. Frankly, yeah. So it came out in 2021, late 2021. It was a grade two titanium tonneau case, two crowns, internal rotating bezel for a second time zone, really cool watch. And I think we revisited that design. It did really well for us. We revisited that design and moved to a new material with a stainless steel and ceramic combination and relaunched it in 23. with a new material we're calling Cerasteel. It's a combination of veneer coat and stainless steel. But yeah, the first launch was 2021. And the idea was to talk about stories from the Indian Space Program. Indian Space Program came of age in the early seventies. And in the last 50 years, they've done some incredible stuff. We want to talk about it proudly and come up with a line of watches that celebrates that story.
Andrew I mean, some things that are better than any other national space program, like a smaller budget than SpaceX. kind of amazing.
Nirupesh Joshi Much smaller budget than SpaceX, much smaller budget than NASA. There was a joke that was doing the rounds where when ISRO, they're called ISRO, Indian Space Research Organization, referred to as ISRO, when ISRO sent a orbiter to Mars, the joke was that the per mile cost was a cost less than a tuk-tuk per mile.
Andrew Which is also less than a gallon of gas.
Nirupesh Joshi That was a joke about how they did it with incredibly, you know, at a small budget, but they did it nevertheless. But I think they've also done some other cool stuff, not just from a cost point of view of putting multiple satellites in the same rocket in orbit. Recently landed a rover on the moon, on the far side, on the south pole of the moon for the first country to be able to do that. they're doing some very cool stuff. And we wanted there to be a alternative to the space watch that everybody talks about. And for this to become that, you know, that the other space watch. So much so that we've been calling this space inspired the whole time. But early this year, we actually sent it to space and qualified it in space. It went on a high altitude balloon to a stratospheric flight. It was connected to a 4K camera. It was not inside a pressurized environment, it was outside. So it was exposed to minus 60 degrees Celsius. It was complete vacuum, no oxygen, no atmosphere. It worked throughout the four hour space flight. It landed back on Earth safely and we did tests in it and the watch worked flawlessly. So it's now, we call it space qualified.
Andrew So coming down on a balloon is a relatively uncontrolled descent, right? Like we're not talking about just like gravity free fall, but we're talking about a, you know, not under a parachute, right? Like this. Yeah. So we work at a space station. Talk about that. Like you have this watch, I want to put it in space.
Nirupesh Joshi Talk us through that. So first we said, look, the Apogee is a three-year-old collection. It's always been inspired by space. We've done some watches with meteorites. We've done some watches celebrating the Indian moon mission. But the next step for us and our goal and vision is to put this on wrists of astronauts for it to actually be worn professionally in space. But before we quote-unquote human rate that watch, we had to make sure ourselves that it would work in space. That's the first step for us. We started finding ways to do that. And we found a space engineering company in the UK who specialize in high altitude balloon flights. And we said, we want to send a watch to space. How high can you take it? And we talked about different time of the year, weather patterns, how high the balloons can go in different times of the year. And we decided on a 35,000, sorry, 114,000 feet, 35 kilometers up in space. It was actually entering the stratosphere. And then we had to work with them for about six months to engineer a special craft that could, you know, hold the watch and the camera that was facing the watch the whole time. And then it designed to remotely launch a drogue shoot, Andrew, to your question, that would stop the free fall, and that would create a slow descent back to Earth as the balloon is free falling back to the planet. So it was an engineering feat that was only possible because we partnered with this other company that allowed us to do this.
Andrew What else are they pulling to space, or did they just pull your watch? I'm sorry, I haven't talked to anybody else who had a piece of their equipment dragged into space. What else are they taking? Or was it just like a flight for you?
Nirupesh Joshi No, they're taking a lot of stuff for space. So they do other science stuff in space, but they also do a lot of marketing stuff.
Everett We're at an hour right now.
Nirupesh Joshi I think there was a company that did I think there was a company that did some marketing. They sent some products up in space, but we didn't want that to be marketing. So we didn't want it in a pressurized environment. We wanted the watch to be exposed outside in space. So we told them to build a craft where the watch would just stick out and be exposed to space.
Andrew So you told them, like, put a basket on the outside.
Nirupesh Joshi Did it have to be specially designed? The carbon fiber frame that was specially designed to hold a watch. We had to specially design a... That's how they make their money. They charged you for all that, didn't they? It was worth it, wasn't it?
Andrew I would have put a D-Link on the outside with a little wicker basket.
Nirupesh Joshi But we had to see the watch working throughout the time, so the camera had to face the dial of the watch. So we had to build a contraption that could hold the watch and the camera in the same plane the whole time, no matter how the moon bounces as it went up. So it was tough.
Andrew I think, I think they took you for a ride. I think a GoPro and a wicker basket would have done the trick. Uh, that's, that's awesome. I mean, we haven't talked to many. I don't know. We've talked to maybe one other brand owner who have, who have done something that significant to demonstrate the capabilities of their watch. And you're doing it just kind of just so you can. like there's no reason beyond like, hey, this is actually what we're doing. This is just proving your chops.
Nirupesh Joshi Yes, this is proving our chops because the watches had to be tested here. Look, it's very interesting and we're all watch people here, so I think we understand. Watches, when we're doing water tightness rating, we test them for, if the watch is 5 ATM, we put them in a pressurized environment, we replicate the 5 ATM atmospheric pressure. If it's 10 atm, we replicate the 10 atm atmospheric pressure, but in space, it's actually negative one atmospheric pressure So you have to make sure your watch would withstand that several times Um in and out in and out because when the watch is going up on the balloon It's one atmospheric pressure on planet earth. And then as it's going up as it crosses, let's say 50 000 feet 60 000 feet above where commercial jets fly, the pressure drops to minus one, and the temperature keeps dropping throughout the time. So when we test watches, when any company tests watches for water tightness, and we provide a water tightness rating, we're doing it in a controlled environment in room temperature. We're not, unless we're like META certified, we're not doing temperature changes and pressure changes at the same time. So this is something we had to replicate. We had to come up with a test process to actually change temperature and pressure back and forth and test to make sure that this watch would still not, we don't want the crystal popping in space. You know what I mean? So, uh,
Everett Yeah, that would be problematic. That's a bad plan. Hey, so we're getting a little long in the tooth here. I've got a couple of questions. I've got two questions. They're not directly related, but I think they go together. So first, I'm going to ask about the economics of your watch, the pricing, and the community that you're targeting. your watches are coming in between $1,000 and $2,000, which is certainly not expensive in the world of watches, but I think it is on the high side of what we're seeing in microbrand watches. How did you guys determine, how did you and Mercy determine that that level of, you know, we all kind of know how this works, right? You pick parts, there's margins, and all that. And once you figure out your price point, you make decisions about what materials and what movements, et cetera, to use. How did that become the level that you wanted to sell your watches at? And how is your your audience, your Indian audience, your local audience responding to that price point?
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, great question. So look, I think a $1,200 price point is a reflection of what goes into it, right? Of course, we're all watch people. We understand the components that go into it. Like many other independent watch companies, we do not use catalog parts, every single part. The crown is an example, Everett, right? Is that we had to design and tool. That bezel is an example of something that's just not a countdown bezel that's available off the shelf. We have to design. The internal rotating bezel of the Apogee has dots for 30 minute intervals because GMT watches don't do what they're supposed to do in India. We're five and a half hours ahead of GMT, not five, not four. Right.
Everett Right, yeah.
Nirupesh Joshi That's something we had to deal with when we set the time up. So GMT watches don't work in India. So we have to come up with a novel way to track that half an hour offset. And we created that stop in the bezel on the Apogee. So we don't use catalog parts. Every single part that we use, the hands, the dials, Everything is designed from the ground up for us. We have managed to identify and have been now working with some of the best people around the globe to do this. Our dials and hands are made in India by a company that also makes dials and hands for some of the most famous Swiss watch brands that I can't name now on the show. So we're probably their smallest customer. It took us two years to convince them to work with us. They just flat out, no, just refused to work with us. They said, We work with the Swiss, and you cannot afford us. Why do you need us? You cannot work with us. We said, no, no, no, we can. And we want you to tell us how to make this happen. And it took us a couple of years for us to convince them to work with us. So what goes into it is unique, authentic designs, top quality components, and a lot of attention to detail. We have our own watchmakers. We regulate these Sellita movements plus or minus nine seconds as they go out of the gate. And I believe our pricing is a reflection of the proud work that we're doing here and our team is doing here, backed up with that ownership experience that I mentioned. And the second part of that question is, this is not exactly a cheap price point in India. At this price point, you have all the Swiss brands that you can buy in India available. 65% of our customers and customer base is in India. So it is always a challenging question. And we always say, hey, if you're buying your first watch at $1,000, you should probably buy a Swiss watch because you'd be happy with it. Because at that point, you're buying not just because you want to buy a good watch, but also because you want social currency. You want to go out to that dinner and say, hey, my first $1,000 watch is at $1,000.
Everett Look at this Oris or look at this Longines or whatever.
Nirupesh Joshi But the kind of customers that gravitate towards our brand are typically the people that already have a few Swiss watches in their box and now are looking for something more unique, more authentic and more relatable from a story and a narrative point of view. And they know that it's, okay, it's also made here and designed here. And that authenticity is what comes through. But for our global audience, again, a lot of our customers are enthusiasts who have multiple watches, and they're always looking for something more unique, more authentic, and they buy into that story.
Everett Well, that brings me to my second question.
Andrew I love that. like maturity as a brand owner to not be the, Oh, we are the one and only watch that you need. I've never heard this mentality from a brand owner of we're your third watch. We're your fourth watch. We're not your first watch, and we totally accept that. But we're number three. Not in the way of order of precedence, but we're the watch that you should buy to expand your horizon. That's the coolest fucking brand owner position.
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, no, thank you for for rephrasing that for me, Andrew. I've never really thought about it that way. But we're but we're being very conscious about the the fights that we the battles that we want to pick. We already have an uphill battle being an Indian brand, doing everything in India. Our duty structures, our tax structures are very complicated. importing Swiss components here, finding watchmakers, setting up an assembly lab which is certified by Wichy for all the testing that we do and the assembling that we do. We're already, you know, we've already picked a lot of battles and the question we're asking ourselves is do we want to pick yet another battle trying to prove to the young 25 something customer in India that this must be their first thousand dollar watch or should we pick uh something else and say let's go to the 35 40 something someone like me and say you already have your swiss watches you don't wear them you're wearing an apple watch for work most of your most of your time Yeah, here's the watch that celebrates the spirit of Indian cricket. You grew up in India playing street cricket, playing cricket, and this is a watch that's going to remind you of that time. Here's the watch that celebrates the Indian Air Force. Your father was in the Air Force, and here's the watch that's going to remind you of him. I think that's the angle that we choose to pick as opposed to saying, this should be your first $1,000 watch because we're better quality than Tissot. Maybe we are, but that's not the fight we want to pick.
Everett Yeah, well, well, so I had another question. That's OK. I had a good segue earlier, but I think I have an even better segue now. Have you, so speaking of your global audience, have you experienced a level of stigma that you've had to overcome regarding perceptions, global perceptions about what people might expect from an Indian product? I believe offline we were talking about Titan watches earlier, but I think that there is perhaps not an unfair expectation that Indian products might be coming in at a lower price point with cheap manufacturing. You guys have clearly made a product that is completely different than those expectations. Have you found in a Western market, in a US market or a European market, that that stigma has affected you and that you've had to create messages to overcome that?
Nirupesh Joshi I think the honest answer is is we expected that stigma, but honestly, we have not seen it as much as we feared we would. You know, we've been working with, you know, folks that are in the watch media for seven years now, and if you go and look at the forums, we probably have less than 10% of the people saying something about this is yet another Indian watch made with underage children assembling the watches or something like that. But that's less than 5% of the comments. Most of the comments are very progressive. And this is something that really surprised me about how they're looking at it. Yes, of course, people might have opinions about, oh, I don't want an iris flag on an Indian watch, or I don't want a MiG-21 fighter plane on the back of my watch. um that's different that's that's not this is cheaply made in india product stigma um so surprisingly right the people the people are treating your watches like watches and not
Everett not like Indian watches. These are watches. And I'm going to criticize your, your double, uh, date window or, you know, the, the placement of your date window or whatever. I'm going to criticize though. I'm going to be a watch nerd and say, Hey, this is, you know, I don't like your, your second, your second hand length or whatever.
Andrew Almost like the watch enthusiast market is beyond where I was manufactured and designed. Because everyone knows that an enormous amount of the manufacturing occurs in China. There's no disputing that. And sure, you can do some manufacturing in India. And we do some manufacturing in the United States. And some people do some manufacturing in Switzerland. But by and large, it happens in China. And we're all pretty OK with that. The rest of it is kind of just like a metaphor.
Nirupesh Joshi I think it's a level of authority that we have seen where people are looking at watches as watches and not by the place of origin. Although the storytelling might not appeal to everybody, right? I mean, a cricket story might not appeal to everyone. We know that, we understand that, but I don't think there's that stigma that we feared. We haven't seen a lot of that ever. So thank you to the watch community for our watches.
Everett Yeah, I love that. You know, it's a testament, I think, to the community. I love the watch community, by the way. I just love it. I love every bit of the watch community. It's a testament to the watch community that a watch like the Bangalore Overdrive is immensely successful because of what it is. This is an Indian designed you know, watch made with Swiss parts and Indian parts and, and built in Hong Kong and regulated in India. And that watch is immensely popular and it sells all over and it gets universally praised on worn and wound and every publication out there. And then Dave Portnoy creates, uh, a Swiss made blah, blah, blah.
Andrew $10,000 watch for 1200 bucks.
Everett Cause I'm
Andrew Fat Mark Zuckerberg.
Everett And the watch media calls it out and says, this is bullshit. This is bullshit. It really, really is a testament to this community. It's why it's cool. It's why Andrew and I are, you know, six years later, 300 and change episodes doing it.
Andrew It's why people keep listening to us.
Everett And I think that's why you're here today. So that's, that's tremendous. And I love it. We have not asked Dave Portnoy to come on the show. I don't think he'd come on.
Nirupesh Joshi I think you have other watches similar to that. I do want Zuckerberg though. I mean look at Ming for instance, a Malaysian origin. You have Atelier Finn, which is proudly Chinese origin, right? You got Wise now, which is Thailand, the incredible Finn. I think the community is always open to that.
Everett But yeah, that's a great point.
Andrew As long as we're going, I have one last question because you have such an interesting watch experience. What watches inspire you? Like what are the watches that you look at and you're like, man, I don't want to remake that, right? Because it's super clear you're not trying to remake watches. But what are the watches that you have owned, seen, that drive you?
Nirupesh Joshi I'm more of a classics guy. I don't like busy dials, so my watch choice is always simple ones. Yeah.
Andrew Boring. That's the word that I use and people usually stay away from chronographs because they're too busy.
Nirupesh Joshi I don't like them. I don't need them. But but the watches that always inspired me, Vacheron Patrimony, Vacheron Overseas. IWC Mark 20 now in their new iteration. Fantastic. I'm not an integrated bracelet guy. I don't like that design. So none of the integrated bracelets inspire me. Not the 12, not the PRX, not the APRO.
Andrew Dude, you are so stratified in your knowledge. You just named them all. You're like 150, 200, 2,000. The stratification of your immersion in the industry is awesome.
Nirupesh Joshi No, thank you. Look, you cannot be a good brand owner if you don't have your ears to the ground. I listen to podcasts. I'm spending a lot of time reading watches, looking at watches. But yeah, those are some of my watches. Andrew.
Everett Well, I think with that, we probably need to move on. Um, but it's, it's rad. I think we could talk a lot more about your brand and I think we could talk more, a lot more about your watch knowledge. With that said, I think the folks are going to be curious to hear about your other thing. I don't want to hear it yet. I'm going to, I want to build up the power a little bit on this. I'm going to ask Andrew, Andrew, other things. What do you got? I came prepared.
Andrew I came prepared with another thing and it's in the way of an Apple TV show. And I started watching this Apple TV show because of a segment on Fallon that featured Jason Segel. who was in this interview with Jimmy Fallon where it was, the question was basically like, how did you get here? And Jason Segel was like, oh yeah, no, like I had this idea and I want to make this show. And my agent sent this thing to Harrison Ford. Like, he was like, hey, watch Forgetting Sarah Marshall. That's like who this guy is. And Harrison Ford watched it and he sent it back and was like, Yeah, I'll do it. And then there was a delay, like, like hours of a delay. And the following text was BTW, good dick.
Everett What?
Andrew So this thing that Harrison Ford agreed to do was an Apple TV show called Shrinking, starring Harrison Ford and Jason Segel. It's the story of Jason Segel as a therapist who's like struggling through his own personal things. And Harrison Ford, who, you know, come to find out is also struggling through his own personal things. And it's this like really great, terrific show that has two seasons available on Apple TV of really beautiful character storytelling. So my other thing this week is shrinking on Apple TV. It's fucking beautiful.
Everett Did you find it was hard to get into it? So we started it and I liked it at first and then I like immediately the first episode sucked me in. And then there was like the next three episodes where I was like, I don't know. And then we finished that first season. And I remember finishing and I don't know when I got picked back up emotionally, but there was a point at which I was like, I'm not into this. And then, and then without even knowing it, I got sucked back in. And when we finished that first season, I was a little disappointed that it was over.
Andrew Yes. But the like disappointedness of like, I'm not that into it was like more of like a triggering of insecurities. Yeah. And it wasn't, I'm actually not interested. It was like, they were speaking to me and I was like, I don't want to watch this. This makes me uncomfortable. Then it was, I'm not enjoying this. Apple TV does this really good job Not maybe good job isn't the right word. They do this really unique thing of capturing these male characters and maybe that's why they write it for Apple TV of these like male characters who are super vulnerable and super open, but also like have all these like they just write these really, really, really relatable male male characters. who are kind of uncomfortable for every dude to watch. It doesn't matter where you are in life, you're like, oh yeah, no, I'm with you. I feel it. And you uncomfortably watch these shows with them. and experience it alongside of them. And then they like progress to like, OK, fine. Finally, I'm watching this character and I'm no longer watching myself. So my my other thing this week is shrinking. It's beautiful. And Jay, other things. What do you got?
Nirupesh Joshi Well, like I. I want to talk about this love story I have with Filson. Right. You, you guys must be familiar with the Seattle, Washington, just up the road only vaguely. Yes.
Andrew Yes.
Nirupesh Joshi Yes. You know, I did not discover Phil until I left the U S I discovered Filson when I was in the far East, I was in Seoul. There was no seller of Filson in Seoul, South Korea. That's neither one.
Everett It actually surprises me a little bit.
Nirupesh Joshi Yeah, turns out that Filson has a huge following in Japan. So they have sellers in Tokyo and other places in Japan, but not in Seoul, South Korea. At least not at the time, I'm talking 2012. And then I moved to Hong Kong and I realized there was one seller, but he did not carry all the Filson goods. I fell in love with this Filson tin cloth 72 hour briefcase. I think that's what it's called. There was no way for me to buy it. I wanted to see it before I buy it, but there was no way for me to see it. So I took a punt and I asked one of my colleagues who was traveling to the States to bring me one, or a colleague who was traveling from the States to visit our office in Hong Kong to bring me one. And I'm talking 2012. That bag is still with me today, 12 years and running. I don't know how many long haul flights it's seen, how many red eyes it's seen, how many cities it's traveled with me. It's torn in a few places, but it's What's fascinating, it tells the story. And I know, this is not just me, Filson Love Worldwide is all about the bags that they've been keeping for 15, 20 years, I know that. I've seen it on the forums, and this is my thing. I don't think I would ever part with it. I actually bought a new Filson because they stopped the 72-hour briefcase product. They now have something called a 24-hour briefcase, a smaller iteration. I bought myself one of those because my other one was sort of looking very dated. I think some people, gear guys, understand and they think it's cool for somebody to carry a dated Filson bag. But when I go to some of my other meetings, they think that I'm just carrying some rucksack. Yeah, you're like a hobo.
Everett Get out of here.
Nirupesh Joshi Yes. Yes. I want them to respect me as a brand owner. So I ended up buying a second Filson, a 24-hour backpack. But I don't think I'd have a part with my 72-hour briefcase. Mercy wants me to part with it and use the new bag, but I still carry the the 12 year old 12 year old person.
Andrew What color do you have? Is it the green? The otter? The otter, the tan or the blue?
Nirupesh Joshi The natural tan, the natural color. Yeah.
Everett uh you know in the legal industry in the legal industry in the pacific northwest you're actually you get more credibility the more beat to hell your philson brief is so except one of your law partners brings a hand cart filled with clear plastic totes well i i you know you know that's a trial thing the clear plastic totes a trial thing uh it's interesting guys that guys that i work with are all to me to me users oh yeah no they're all
Nirupesh Joshi They have their names initialed on their Tumi backpacks and their Tumi bags and briefcases.
Andrew I'm all about the Filson. I carry a Mystery Ranch pack in the same way.
Everett I bought a briefcase a few years ago and the Filson was high on the list. I wound up going with a Billingham in their Hadley line, the Billingham Hadley one, but it sort of matches that aesthetic. But the tin cloth bags are, I love them. I think that's a terrific, that's a terrific other thing. I have another thing, Andrew. Do me. I have another thing. My other thing, I feel like this, Andrew, I feel like this is an old school other thing because it's, it's sort of like a thing I got and didn't really know what to expect and then I got it and I was like, I maybe bought the best thing ever. I don't think that's happened in a while. So I recently started making pies. I, I just loved it. Pie is my favorite food. It is. It's the best, it's the best food group. It can be filled with meat or sweets. Of all the food groups, pie is the best. And I, I decided one day I was going to make a pie and I looked everywhere for a thing to cook a pie in and I didn't have anything. So I had to come over to you and get a pie pan. And you, thankfully you're right across the street and thankfully you had a pie pan.
Andrew There was a small tax.
Everett a pie tax, I quickly, quickly, before my pie had even finished cooking, I started trying to figure out what pie pan I was going to buy. And it did not take me very long to settle on a pie pan made in France called the Emile Henry nine inch pie dish. And what I found out in that 20 or so minutes of research is that the Emile Henry pie dish is the pie dish. It's like the Apple Watch or whatever. If you're gonna buy a pie dish, you buy an Emile Henry.
Andrew And it costs nothing.
Everett And it costs nothing. Wow, it's 40 bucks. It's 40 bucks. Yeah. So I was just like, fuck it. Amazon ordered the pie dish and got it, and I was like, this is one of the most beautiful things I have. It was one of those decisions that was made so quickly based on such overwhelming advice that I was like, I felt really confident and then I got it and I was like, yup. It's beautiful, it's well made, you can just tell. It's like one of those things that you get and you're like, aha, I get it, aha. So that's my other thing for the week. I just want you to Google it. I want you to Google Emil Henry Pie Dish if you've ever made a pie. Or if you haven't. Or if you haven't. Order the Emil Henry nine inch pot dish and make a pie.
Andrew Make a pie.
Everett Make a cherry pie or an apple pie or a rhubarb pie or a pumpkin pie or a minced meat pie, perhaps.
Andrew Everett's cherry pie was really good.
Everett I make a good cherry pie.
Nirupesh Joshi My wife called it. I just looked it up. I just looked it up and I think you can make a biryani in it. Oh, yes.
Everett I'm sure you could.
Andrew You definitely could. It wouldn't be quite right, but it'd be super close.
Everett NJ. Yes. NJ, before we go, before we go today, is there anything you want to add? Anything that you want to tell people, the listeners of 40 and 20, the watch clicker podcast that you haven't yet said?
Nirupesh Joshi No, I just want to say that look this has been a fantastic conversation I haven't I've been on a lot of podcasts, but there's never been one that's uh as free-flowing We talked about not just watches, but everything else I think um, so thank you for facilitating this conversation and I hope for the listeners they get an opportunity to learn about New unique brands like us. There's many others all around the world And thank you for not being judgmental based on the origin of the product but just looking at our watches just as watches Yeah, that's pretty much it. Keep discovering.
Everett I like that. I like that too. Hey, folks at home, check out Bangalore Watch Company. Just Google it. They're terrific. If you don't know, now you know. Do me a favor. Go to our website, watchclicker.com. That's how you can see all the things that are written by the Watch Clicker staff, but also you can listen to every single episode of this podcast. If you want to check us out on social media, you can do that on Instagram. 40 at 40 and 20 underscore watch clicker or at watch clicker. That's where we post all our social media stuff. If you want to support us at, oh boy, we hope you do patreon.com slash 40 and 20. And don't forget to tune back in next Thursday for another hour of watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like. Bye bye. That was close. That was close. Yeah, I almost racked.