Episode 46 - Interview with the Art of Horology

Published on Wed, 11 Sep 2019 23:02:00 -0700

Synopsis

Claire and Liam from the Art of Horology joined Andrew and Everett to discuss their business creating artistic posters and merchandise featuring luxury watches. They shared the story of how their passion project started from Liam illustrating a Speedmaster watch and posting it on Instagram, leading to an overwhelmingly positive response and eventual creation of their website and business. They talked about their process for creating custom prints from customer photos, as well as their pre-printed stock of popular watch designs. The couple also discussed the challenges of running a small business, finding the right pricing balance, and connecting with customers on a personal level.

Transcript

Speaker
Andrew Hello fellow watch lovers, nerds, enthusiasts, or however you identify. This is the 40 in 20 podcast with your hosts, Andrew and my good friend Everett here. We talk about watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like. Everett, how are you?
Everett Am I your good friend? You always say that, but sometimes you don't even text me back.
Andrew I usually don't text you back. And I'm also, uh, we do have interviews out for a new good friend. Uh, most important, uh, qualification is a basement space for a studio. So if you know anyone, I am. I am looking.
Everett You're making me sad.
Andrew How you doing, Andrew? So freaking good. Guys, listen, listen. Oh, boy. What do you got there? I have new two big new bags of old Vienna's red hot riplets flavored with St. Louis style hot sauce from our very good friend. Southpaw of St.
Everett Louis.
Andrew You don't have two, you just have one. Well, I'm taking two. Oh, the worst. Thank you so much, man. These are so good. And if I'm not mistaken.
Everett Miss Bacon? Miss Bacon. You said it wrong. I'm so excited.
Andrew You Miss Bacon. This bag is definitely spicier than the previous bags that we had. Dude, I think it is. Yeah. And he also sent us a seasoning jar. Yeah. Can. What do you call these? Containers? Shakers. Shakers. Yeah. seasoning shakers of the Red Hot Riplet seasoning. And this is the dream. I can't, I'm going to put this on everything.
Everett Yeah. You know, the nice part about those is for me, I I'm able to enjoy that flavor without, without the carbs, right? Cause I eat keto. Some of you guys know we talked about on the show way too much, but so the chips, I can have like four or five of them, but then I kind of have to set them aside. Otherwise I blow my carb allowance for the day. So now I can, uh, I can make some yummy kale chips in the oven on purpose. Oh, you know what? I don't have to. Oh, oh that's the music you're a mess i'll be able to edit all of that right out true don't you worry about that um but then people will be like what's he editing out they won't know yeah and you could just yeah we just we're confusing here on purpose we we aim to confuse but but yeah uh good week good week for you andrew busy week good week i'm i'm uh
Andrew I had some tests, some pretty important tests this week. Passed them with flying colors. And I'm in the clear.
Everett Has your has your class ranking improved? I know last time we talked to you were very.
Andrew I'm still tied for a second. This is some nonsense. The dude's perfect. I'm never going to catch him. That's OK, though. We get paid the same. That's right.
Everett Is he is he one of the state trooper guys? No, he's he's one. He's one of my teammates. Oh, that's too bad. So Andrews at the Police Academy, those of you who don't know here in Oregon. And so there's been Chow down on some chips. He's been, yeah. Are you just going to eat chips on the microphone? Yeah. God, you're the worst. So he's been, he's been doing the Academy. He's been the whole entire time, second place. There's like, he missed a first question on the first test. And this guy is just.
Andrew This other guy, he's just, he's just scoring perfect. He's impossible. He's Tiger Woods, like classic Tiger Woods, what we're dealing with now.
Everett Classic Tiger Woods. You know, you make a single mistake and you're screwed. Yeah. I mean, not, not modern Tiger Woods, but, but actually. No, classic Tiger Woods. Yeah, not the, yeah. Okay. But I think, This is an appropriate time now to tell everybody we're not alone. That feels a little creepy to say it that way, but I don't think it actually is.
Andrew No, it's weird to say it that way, but maybe we have guests. This isn't an alien thing. We have guests today.
Everett We do have guests today. So some of you know, we've been incorporating guests into our episodes and we love it. I love it. Andrew loves it because it means his only job, which is episode preparation, is significantly lighter. It's next to nothing. Yeah, and you're not even doing the coordination.
Andrew No, that's amazing. I just show up, eat chips, drink beer.
Everett So the only thing Andrew does is now been completely eliminated. But without further ado, we have got two, I think, pretty neat guests. This is different than anything we've ever done. Claire and Liam from the Art of Horology are here on the line with us. Claire and Liam, how are you? Hello. Hey, real quick before we get started. Why don't you tell these folks where they can find you so they can follow along as we start to talk about what you're doing.
Liam Sure, yeah. So you can find us at www.art-of-horology.co.uk. Instagram is at the underscore art underscore of underscore horology. Plenty of underscores there.
Claire Yep.
Everett I don't know this because I haven't tried it. I assume if you just put in your type art of horology, these guys will pop right up. I've never had any trouble finding them.
Liam Yeah, yeah. We hope so anyway.
Andrew Is there another art of horology without the underscores?
Liam I think there is a watch kind of school in the States. So yeah, it kind of clashes with that. But yeah, we've never had an issue with people finding us, thankfully.
Everett Yeah, that's right. And you know what? That's totally non-literal to be a horology school or a watchmaking school called the... That's not art, that's horology. You guys are actually the art of horology.
Liam Yeah, that's the idea. So tell us who you are. So yeah, we're a married couple in the UK. I'm going to apologize now for my nasal, fluey voice. But yeah, Claire and
Everett No, you know what? I was actually really surprised when you came on the line. Last time we talked you sound exactly like an English Morgan Freeman.
Liam Royalty.
Everett I thought, is this Morgan Freeman with an English accent? But today it's a little different. So I hope you're feeling better.
Liam It's just this flu. But yeah, the seasons have changed over here. But we're both 31 year old married couple. And this is kind of our passion project. it's kind of grown organically and allowed Claire to work at it full time, basically.
Everett So tell us what the art of urology is. Cause some, you know, here's the thing we do this thing on the show, right? Where we, we want to talk about people that we want to know more about. Some folks are going to know about you. Some folks might not assume that Andrew and Everett are the average listener who don't know anything about you. Tell me about what the art of urology is.
Liam Sure. So the art of urology produce posters of luxury and maybe not so luxury pieces.
Claire Yeah.
Andrew I just pulled up an F91. Yeah.
Liam So, so we've got a, we've got a massive range now, but we, we have pre-printed stock of your Submariners, your Newman's, Speedy's, and then we also do custom prints. So if you have a family heirloom, we've, we've recently drawn a Seamaster, um, But we can design these custom posters and have them printed. We also do a range of merchandise, so we have t-shirts and jumpers. And yeah, we do all of this out of our bedroom in the UK.
Claire I say bedroom, it's more of an office.
Everett Many of our listeners are in the UK. I'd say upwards towards 20-30% are in the UK and they'll probably know exactly what you mean when you say jumpers. Andrew just raised his eyebrows at me.
Claire Can you tell us what a jumper is?
Andrew I was imagining like a, like a bodysuit romper.
Everett Yeah.
Andrew And I was, that's exactly what I had. I was immediately intrigued. I was going to say, I need an F91 romper to wear.
Everett We will take, we will take like 10% royalties when you introduce the art of horology rompers.
Liam Yeah. That's the next spring summer collection.
Everett Sorry to interrupt. Uh, so, So keep going. I mean, I think that this is, I think that this is one of those things that when you, when you talk about it in the way you have, it's, it's accurate, but I'm not sure folks are able to understand sort of how cool this is. So, so I mean, maybe I'll just ask you by this. What was the first print? How'd you get started here?
Liam Cool. So we started back in 2016 now.
Claire It just came out of nowhere really, didn't it?
Liam Yeah.
Claire Came back from work one day and was like, I've got an idea. And when he comes back with a home from work with an idea, I think, oh God, here we go again. But it was actually a really good idea and we kind of went with it this time. So.
Liam So yeah, just a quick introduction, well introduction, a quick history on our backgrounds. Might have to edit that out. That's a massive tongue twister. But so Claire worked in, and I was a creative director at a design agency. And I think in 2016 was when I started to get really serious about watches. It was reading a story on the Speedy and the Moonwatch. And you've got this whole romantic idea that this watch has been to the moon and every lady's dream as well. But a watch that's been to the moon with a spaceman is super cool. Well, to me it was. So I ended up illustrating a picture of this watch. And we basically posted it on Instagram and it had a massive kick off. We had comments, messages, where can we buy this?
Claire It was just like on your personal account, wasn't it? It just started. I think it was more as well like, oh yeah, we just had the birth of our first child as well, hadn't we? So like, I kind of didn't want to go back to work after that. So it was just more of like a, what can we do to make you stay home with kids that can also, you know, be able to live like an easy life as well, I suppose, wasn't it?
Everett I assume that that has not panned out the way you thought it might. The whole not going back to work thing.
Claire Well, I'm upstairs in the office sorting out orders, you know, emails, things like that. And then, you know, the kids will come trundling in wanting to play and things. So that's, that's where it's like kind of hit and miss with, it's not like a nine to five job. It's just kind of, you know, when I can, I do it kind of thing. So it's a bit of a difficult one sometimes for me, I think.
Liam Yeah. So just back to where it all kicked off. we yeah we started with the speedy and then we started getting inundated on instagram with messages and could we do a different print so we set up an etsy page um basically we just i just started drawing watches every evening when the kids were asleep and we was banging them out on etsy yeah yeah that was it then wasn't it it was just like yeah one thing led to another and then it just got bigger over time didn't it and yeah so so etsy was great for us It gave us the capital to then build the website. And then the money from the website went into merchandise and marketing. And organically, we've got to where we are today, which is, in my eyes, it's incredible.
Andrew So when you draw these, what is your background to just sit down and draw a watch? I mean, I could maybe hammer out a a circle with some sticks, but what's your background like that you're able to do this?
Everett Yeah, we're actually planning a competing company right now. So Andrew is doing market research.
Claire Yeah.
Everett That's good.
Claire Everyone else is joining on.
Liam So I was trained in graphic design and typography at university.
Everett Okay, so write that down, Andrew.
Andrew Step one. Typography, graphic design. What university?
Claire I was more like fashion-y design kind of areas. So I think it just kind of moved together really, didn't it?
Liam Yeah. So where was we going with this?
Everett Yeah. Hey, you know what? You guys take this wherever you want.
Liam We're here for you. Originally we did a lot of monochrome prints. Now they're the black posters with the white outlines. And that's purely because I'm not tarnishing all blokes with the same brush, but I'm very black and white. I want everything monochrome.
Claire Plain, simple, boring.
Liam No, I'm joking. Well, if Claire had her way, we'd have flowers on it. It'd be bright and colorful and so on.
Everett Oh, man, there's a dynamic here that I'm... We'll suss this out as we move on.
Andrew I think one of the Rolex rainbows on a flower background would be lovely.
Everett Yeah, rainbow Daytona, that's your next print, right?
Claire Oh, no.
Everett On a jumpsuit. No, on a romper. Yes, on a romper. So, so you guys come from this, you guys come from this sort of design, graphic design, fashion design background, and then one day you throw up a, one day you throw up an Instagram of something you made for yourself, it sounds to me. Is that, is that accurate?
Liam Yeah, it was going to be something for my, what would have been Man Cave.
Claire Man Cave, which is now office.
Everett You, you played yourself. DJ Khaled. Cue the DJ Khaled audio, which I don't have. You played yourself.
Andrew I don't think we could use it. I think there's some licensing issues there. Why don't you go into your whole process from, say, let's do a custom order. If I come to you and say, Hey, I've got this watch. It's a family heirloom. What does that process look like from that initial contact to me actually getting the print in the mail on your side?
Liam Usually we get a message through the website and somebody has sent an email. So hey, Art of Horology, this is Everett. I've got a FP Jaune that I've been handed down.
Everett Oh man, thank the Lord that I have that.
Andrew Why haven't I seen it? What's going on here? Hold now.
Liam Or an SKX. So basically that's how the interaction starts. And then we'd ask you to provide as many photos as you can and We'd also ask what style are you looking for it? Would you like the monochrome, the black and white style, the more high fidelity colored version? Or more recently, we've started a sketch series, which takes a lot longer, but ultimately we're at the discretion of the customer.
Claire Yeah, it's like whatever they want really, isn't it? We'll just try and sort it out and then it'll be... I'll go away. Yeah, go back to it, go away and say, you know, That's what you have to give me some time, go back and we give people usually about three, three different copies of like, you know, is this okay? And we feed it back into emails, pictures like this is how far we are.
Liam Claire's making this sound really simple.
Everett Well, yeah. So why don't you, why don't you be more specific? I mean, what, so, so I understand, uh, having just, you know, looked at your designs and, and looked at your website. that Liam, you're doing the actual, um, the initial creation of the images. So what does that look like?
Liam Yeah. So again, it depends if you guys were to go down a sketch route, I basically sketched the poster by hand. Yes. So it's a bit of both. So it starts out as a sketch, which is done on our kitchen table when the kids are in bed. Um, and then it's scanned in and it's tidied up. because there could be a lot of smudge marks or something doesn't look quite right. But it's much easier to then fix that digitally. If you was to go down the monochrome design, which is the purely black and white one, we basically take your image into a piece of software called Adobe Illustrator. And I basically recreate that image. So once I've got it to a place that I'm happy with, we then send that back to the customer. And we go through three rounds of iterations. So if you're not quite happy with how something looks, or you want something tweaking, then yeah, we'll try and fit, fill the, fold that in. That's not so easy on the sketch.
Everett Well, Claire makes it sound really easy.
Claire Yeah. See, I'm not the one doing the work. We'll be back at this point until, uh, until the posting starts really.
Liam Yeah, so Claire's usually asleep at this point.
Andrew Just dreams it up, wakes up and it's a finished product. Look at that.
Liam Wakes up and it's there. So yeah, I go through three rounds of amends or changes with the customer. Thankfully, up until now, nobody's ever required more than that. And then, yeah, once the customer is happy, we have our printer. We have a relationship with a printing company who then prints it for us and deliver it. Claire wraps it and Yeah, just finishing it off.
Claire Yeah, just wrapping it off, making it look fancy, acceptable to be opened by
Liam anyone who wants one yeah so yeah that's one thing we've been big on early on we couldn't find a printer we were happy with so some prints were cool and then some were inconsistent and it was it took a while for us to find a relationship with a printer that we trusted so we're fortunate now that we have that relationship in place and then yeah we i don't want this to sound really fluffy but we want it to be a bit of an experience so we're kind of happy with how we package everything and we want it to be a certain way.
Claire Moved in like you know just even things like you know colors it was wrapped in and things like that it just as long as it all fits together and it's like visually pleasing to open and people are excited about that they've actually got an art of virology print on their hands and what more do we want.
Andrew That's what makes it special that's how you know you're ordering from people I like that.
Everett So I've recently ordered a t-shirt from you guys actually, uh, and I suspect, you know, that, um, is that the same process? So, so is there a different process if I'm ordering a print or a t-shirt, is there, is there a difference in your backend, uh, back of the house as it were, um, delivery and creation process?
Claire Yeah, with the t-shirts it's slightly different because it's, I wouldn't say it's newer than the prints but with the prints we house quite a few so it is a lot easier for me to you know get through obviously with the kids being at home it's easier to just take from the shelves that we've already got pre-printed and stuff but with t-shirts wise we don't get as many orders a week that we do t-shirts as prints kind of thing.
Liam Yeah so the issue with t-shirts we don't hold stock so our printers they can print on demand for us It comes out a bit of a premium to ourselves, but we're hoping over time we sell more and more and more premium.
Claire Yeah.
Liam So the issue is if we was to hold stock, we may have, I don't know, loads of two XLs and then they're just redundant. So basically you place your order. We, we have all of our templates and everything set up with our printer. And then we basically say to them this, This product needs to go to Germany and it needs to be there by Thursday.
Everett Yeah. You didn't send my shirt to Germany, did you?
Claire Oh, maybe? I don't know.
Everett Well, that's good because I'd rather get it in my hands versus some of these German folks that would never send it back to me. No, you wouldn't get it back from me.
Andrew That's a dope t-shirt. How did you pick the watches that you decided to start with? What was, what's your, your thought process going behind what watches you're going to keep in stock against what you're going to use for custom orders? I mean, you have a great diversity of watches up there right now, but what's, what's driving your choices?
Liam Um, initially it was, it was whatever we thought was cool. Like your dream watch? Yeah. It started with a series of Grails. So we had the Speedies and the Subs. I think we did a Belarus early on, which I don't know why.
Everett That's a little random, but cool watches.
Liam Yeah, they're doing some cool stuff in a minute as well. Have you guys seen that new releases?
Everett Man, that brand new, the BR05, is that the one you're talking about? I think so. You know, they just released, they just sort of announced or released, I'm not sure which it is, this watch called the BR05, which is this sort of Adam RPK, Royal Oak, kind of married with a Nautilus perhaps and and I think it's really interesting. I felt a little bit when I first saw it I felt a little bit like this is a Photoshop meme joke because it's so derivative that I was I was a little bit shocked. I think probably on its own it's a cool watch. I don't know how I feel about the derivative nature of it though. We'll just leave it there. I like it.
Claire Yeah.
Liam Um, yeah, initially it was just a set of grails. Um, and then I had this fascination with the moonwatch. So I just basically kept doing different iterations. We did an anniversary print for that. It was, it's a kind of purple, purpley green poster. That's, I think that's been our bestseller.
Claire Yeah.
Everett Which watch is this?
Liam The business. the Speedmaster, it's called the Anniversary Print, and it's in purple, and you get half of the watch, and there's a moon, and it's got the date of the moon landing and so on. But yeah, that's our bestseller, which is never expected. And then we've not done any new releases, really, besides the Sketch Series. So I think time is being eaten up now by the custom orders that we get, and Yeah I don't know if we're going to reach a tipping point where we need to find other artists or something to help with the load.
Claire Well I don't know because it's like if we do the custom prints the custom prints is obviously like a personal thing so there's some prints that we've done for customers that we've not released but it could be released because it's just like say a black sea master but because we've already done it for a custom they pay the custom price therefore we don't release as a generic pre-print if that makes sense. So therefore there are a few in the burner that we could, you know, swap around with some of our other prints to may have better sellers or something like that. But because we've already done that, we'd have to rejig it to sell on pre-printed.
Liam Yeah. So with the custom prints, we retain copyright, but basically what you pay for is the service to have your watch interpreted in a poster. But out of, I don't know, kind of, basically if I'd paid for something, that I could buy a pre-printed one for, I don't know, $30 or I've paid $100 to have a custom made. And then next week I seen what I'd paid $100 for trading at $30, I'd be pissed off.
Andrew Yeah, a little bit.
Liam That's why we don't... Yeah, so we try to stay away from that. But yeah, anything that takes our fancy really, or if we get a lot of requests.
Claire Yeah, we do get requests for a few things, don't we, so... Yeah, but they tend to be kind of sporadic. Well, if a new release of a watch is coming out, it's like, are you doing this? Are you doing this? Are you doing this? And it's like, not just yet.
Andrew It's not even been produced yet. Give me a break.
Liam Yeah, we get a lot of people wanting microbrands. Yeah. Which is, it's difficult.
Everett What makes doing microbrand watches more difficult than say, for instance, doing an SKX?
Liam Well, the fact, I think the microbrands, if we was to, when you say difficult, you mean We wouldn't stock it, basically, because there wouldn't be demand for that, whereas the SKX, again, is one of our bestsellers, and it's iconic, essentially. But yeah, the microbrands, I am absolutely obsessed with the Haléos Seaforth.
Everett Yeah, I think so many of us are. What a wonderful watch.
Liam It's mega. But if we were to draw that and hold it in stock, maybe I could be wrong, but I'm unsure if we'd have that demand. And our house isn't big enough to have hundreds of posters in stock.
Andrew You could just wallpaper your walls with the C4, though. I think I'd be good with that.
Liam Yeah, it's pretty fair.
Claire He's trying to wallpaper the house with the prints, but it's not going to happen.
Everett I mean, I guess that brings up an interesting, for me at least, an interesting idea. Some people might not find this interesting, but are you able to sort of focusing On your pricing model, are you able to make allowances for smaller stock? How much does minimum order quantity and the ability to print multiple iterations of something at once, how much does that affect your workflow?
Liam On that, because it is a local printer and we have a good relationship, they're kind of friendly. It doesn't have much of an impact. It is just purely space at the moment. And we try not to hold too much stock that isn't selling.
Claire Well,
Liam Yeah, basically, we try not to sell unstocked, it doesn't sell.
Everett So say you were able to do a C4th print, say one day you got inspired, you made a drawing or a sketch of a C4th, would you theoretically be able to do that and then print three or five of those with minimal impact and have them for when people want them, but maybe charge a little bit more? Hey, this is lower demand, so these are three dollars more per print or something. Is that something you're able to do at this time?
Liam We probably could be able to do it.
Everett I mean, I'm not trying to apply pressure, but I'm turning the screws a little bit, guys.
Liam So one of the things people don't realize, which is a big, it eats into our product, is shipping to the States. So out of our customers, we've shipped to over 28 countries now, I think. So basically we send each of our posters in an A2 tube and that costs us £11.95 to send it. So it's about $13-14 to ship it to the States.
Everett That's not a small amount of money.
Liam No. A lot of people, hence when we spoke earlier about people who are much bigger than we are, Usually a lot of the emails are, why is shipping so expensive?
Claire Yeah.
Everett Because we have to put this in a box and put postage on it and actually get it to you, you son of a bitches.
Liam Yeah. So if you consider it's going to cost $14 to ship to the States, and then the packaging that sits in and the cost of that, the way we package it and the stickers and the marketing promotion. So you could be looking at. Bit of my time. And Claire's time. So that could be 20. 20 dollars or so to get a product to the customer and then you have to have the printing costs plus markup on the poster. So you could be looking at 40, 45 dollars for a poster which if you take a step back would anybody be willing to pay that much? I don't know.
Claire Yeah that's it, it all works out. It's like a lot of the time we think like is it worth all like you know it's very enjoyable we like doing it it's obviously everyone else enjoys it too like you know receiving a print and stuff but then sometimes you know we do come back to ourselves we are only a small business and sometimes it does come out of our pockets you know to start you know when we first started it came out of our own pockets it was like shall we shall we shall we buy the prints all out because at the start it was like we bought them all didn't we bought them all and we have loads and loads of stock and And it was, you know, and then the bigger it gets, the bigger it gets. It's, Oh, we haven't got this in stock yet. We haven't got that in stock yet. Things like that. So it's a bit hit and miss everywhere.
Liam And basically what we're saying is a lot of what we do is trial and error. So when we started again, we didn't mention this before, but until we had an accountant, we didn't realize we were initially losing money through our personal
Claire Yeah, we were just giving them away. We were just sending them off, you know.
Everett And feeling low pressure because some income was coming in, but at the end of the day, it wasn't a feasible long-term project.
Claire Yeah.
Everett Yeah. You know, we talk about this a lot on the show in different sort of iterations, but the idea that, excuse me, there's always going to be that customer that feels like they can't pay that much for that thing. And I think that finding that threshold. Sometimes it's a knife edge, and sometimes it's a lot wider than that. But having the ability as a business owner to understand the delta between what you need to make a living or perhaps even become modestly successful versus what Joe Schmo on his couch in Cleveland wants to pay for the thing you're doing Having the ability to navigate that delta, I think is probably the hardest thing about this process. We do a thing here where every week we get together and we drink beers, and it's very low stress. But for neither of us, this is our full-time gig. But even sometimes we have to think about that. When we go to our wives and we say, hey, sweetie, I need to buy a mixing board or a microphone because we're going to go to Portland and interview these watch guys, and we can't look like assholes. We need to have semi-professional stuff.
Andrew I wore shirts and a t-shirt.
Everett You know, that's, it's a thing we have to think about, you know, how do we, how do we invest in this company? How do we continue to put out a product that people want, but, but not, you know, not risk spending the money that we're working hard for. And you guys have done this full time. You guys have completely converted, or at least in Claire's instance, completely converted your income base to this thing. So how do you guys navigate that? And this isn't a question so much, I'm just talking about generally the principle. I think that's a really hard, uh, a difficult thing to navigate.
Liam Yeah. I think one of the big things was getting an accountant in. Um, I do feel like we've hit a sweet spot now in regards to the cost of the product and the delivery. One thing, an early mistake we made was I tried to, well, I think we both tried to set a business up as a business rather than this is us two. Claire and Liam at home, purely, I don't know if it was based on a trust issue, but we wanted to look bigger than we were. And now we feel that's kind of detrimental. So we're trying to untie it and basically tell a story of this is just Liam and Claire.
Claire It was very difficult at the start, you know, demand was there and it just, at the start, it was, it was really difficult for me to get through, especially when our first Christmas hit, I think it was. And we had a little one who was, you know, just coming up to, um, what, a couple of months old and it was really difficult trying to get through the, you know, sorting through the posters and trying to get everyone else's, you know, Christmas presents out to everyone and it just really hit us hard and then we just had to really like focus on it, didn't we, a bit more?
Liam Yeah, so yeah, I think we need to, we're trying to get a story out that is, this is us two, this married couple, with a family basically.
Claire We're doing like a show, aren't we, in the UK, like in the Midlands, not far from now. And, you know, it's a little event for all the... Sorry? It's a watch fair.
Liam A watch fair.
Claire It's a watch fair. I'm getting told I'm getting whispers. It's a watch fair. So, you know, just to show people, you know, if they have heard of us, that this is us. It's just us two. It's not like a massive company and things like that. So it is nice that we are getting, you know, rounded up basically and going, who are you? What do you do? And things like that. And even things that we never had it on the website, like who we are and stuff. So we started doing a little about you kind of pages and, and trying to make it a little bit more personal kind of thing, haven't we? So it doesn't hit us too big.
Andrew That's so impressive for just like a Tuesday plan coming home and, and saying, you know, I think I want to try this. And especially after being pretty, pretty new into watches, I mean, getting just kind of igniting that passion. Uh, What was that trigger that got you into watches and then subsequently down this trail that you're on?
Liam Yeah, I think I may be going a bit off piste here, so rope me back in if so, but I've always been very entrepreneurial. Before watches, I had a charity that I built a website for and everything was based around coming up with an idea and just trying to put it into motion. I'm always coming up with ideas.
Claire And so, yeah, it's like you'd come home with an idea and then like the next day you'd be like, Oh, by the way, I want to jet ski. And then the next day it'd be like, Oh, and the next day after that, it'd be like, Oh, on a sailing boat, let's go away. And you'd be like, okay, what are we going to do? Which one should we choose?
Liam So, um, yeah, so basically I come from a family of engineers, but nobody kind of wore watches in my family. So basically, I think I've grown up with men that are interested in how things work and very hands-on and mechanics and so on. And then, yeah, the first time I've seen a moon watch, basically, that whole story of it going to the moon and it coming back and it still worked and it was fine. And then, you know how it is, you go down a rabbit hole.
Everett Oh, we don't know anything about rabbit holes here.
Andrew Or moon watches for that matter.
Liam It was a podcast where you spoke about, is it the carpenter who builds things on YouTube? Oh, boy.
Everett The carpenter. You know, we've talked about Alex Steele. He's a blacksmith. We've talked about... Some machining guys. Darbin Orver is a carpenter. She does a lot of stuff. I'm not sure exactly.
Andrew We talk about a lot of builders. We're kind of tinkerers.
Everett We do. We love that stuff. Oh, are you talking about the guy that does the flame finish wood?
Liam Yes.
Everett Johnny Bills. Yeah. Johnny Bills. That's right. That's right.
Liam Yeah. But yeah, basically I went down a big black hole of watches movements.
Claire Well, to be honest, it was kind of more like, Oh, I like the speedy. I want the speedy. And it was like more like, don't think you can afford that. Let's draw it. Let's stick it up on the wall. We're done.
Liam You can hang it.
Claire Yeah.
Liam No.
Claire Yeah.
Liam And the funny thing is, I think I'm not that interested in it anymore. Probably because I've drawn so many.
Everett You're, you're feeling like you're losing interest in the watches a bit.
Liam No, just, I think the Speedmaster was the watch I always wanted. And then I've drawn it so many times that I think it's kind of killed it for me.
Everett Oh, the Speedmaster specifically.
Liam Yeah. I've also got chicken wrists, so. It looks fairly big on me.
Andrew It looks big on me too. I don't, I was so disappointed when I, when I put it on, I was like, come on, I want to like you more, but it's just, it's just not for me. So since we're there, what, uh, what does your, your watch collection look like?
Everett Uh oh. We're getting giggling from Claire. No, you guys are here together. We want to know both of you guys. What's it look like?
Claire Well, we'll go for yours first.
Liam So I once had this lovely Tudor, vintage print state that I had to sell to have the kitchen renovated. Yeah, mine's fairly, I don't know what the word is. It's a good collection. It's my SKX, which is daily beater. Yeah, Mavizzo Date was, that's probably my most sentimental piece.
Everett Claire, can you please say the word Tissot again?
Claire Oh, yeah.
Andrew No, saying again, it's important.
Claire Yeah.
Andrew Yeah. I think that's right. It's better than how I say it.
Claire Yeah. So that's how I went in when I went to go and buy it. Can I have a tissute please? So yeah, that was like a 30th birthday present, wasn't it? So.
Liam Yeah. So that, that's a watch I say lusted after for a long time. Um, I've got a BlackPay 58, which that was a kind of treat for the posters doing so well. I had to beg for that for a while.
Everett Well, well done. Well done. You've landed it. It's your job.
Liam And then I've got the other pieces that I've got a Seiko 5 my granddad gave me and the more sentimental pieces. So I've got this old weird Parmex thing. It's absolutely worthless, but my nan gave it to me. It was her watch way back when. So yeah, mine's kind of, it's quite a light, light collection.
Claire Light collection.
Everett I'm hearing a little skepticism coming from the other side of the podcast here.
Claire Well, mine's more Casio based.
Andrew I dig that.
Claire I have probably about seven or eight different variations of Casio. Oh yeah, I've got that one and then I've got a, what do you say, an Alla Alla? A quartz one, yeah. But then I've also got, to be honest, I did buy a Seiko recently, didn't I, myself? Because I actually like it. So I don't know, I've still got it out of the nine, I still do like it. And it was like the first one I actually went, I'll just buy it. And then recently you bought me a vintage Omega.
Liam Yeah.
Claire Yeah. So that's a nice little dainty piece. So I've got two nice little watches there, but then the majority are Casio based ones.
Everett You know, this, this sounds actually similar to Andrew and I's watch dynamic. I'm the one who's always bringing in new stuff and going bigger. And Andrew's like, you know, I like this F91 and I'm going to keep rocking this.
Andrew I want it in all three colorways.
Claire Yeah. Yeah. I've got like a matte black one. I've got a camo one. I've got a gold one. I've just got too many, but every time I see them, I can't help but buy them. So I just need them there. But I have said to you though, my next one, because Liam got his 58, I would like a black bay 36. So this is mine.
Everett Oh yeah. You're speaking our language right now.
Claire Yeah, so I think I need to start begging now and then you know his and hers kind of stay late and draw some posters Very cool guys.
Everett Well, I I know we talked a little bit about this before Andrew. I'm sorry. I've interrupted you I was just clearing my throat. Oh, okay I know we've talked about this before but before we started recording but one of the things we do every episode is we talk about other things we like because I think we thought it was important from an early phase of our podcast that it, you know, we don't just like watches. We like watches, but we like other things. So each week we do this thing. I understand that you guys have thought of another thing, but we'll start as is the tradition with Andrew and then me. And then we'll, if you haven't prepared something, I'm going to give you probably about seven minutes would be my guess to scramble wildly on your Google machine and find something. Andrew, other things. What do you got, man?
Andrew Whenever we get into a jam about another thing that we haven't thought of, I just typically go to my YouTube history, if that's some help that you guys need. And I'll send you this link, Ev. To YouTube.com? No, it's NPR today. India failed to have their soft landing. Oh yeah, I read about this. They don't know exactly what happened yet, but there was all this hype. They had everything done and they didn't get their soft landing on the moon. So yeah, give us, well maybe they did. So India has been working to land a lander and Rover on the South pole of the moon, which is an area of the moon that has not yet been landed on by any of the other three countries who have landed things on the moon and, and maintain them because Japan a couple of weeks ago launched a something into the moon. It also failed, but right, it was Japan. Am I wrong about that?
Everett Gosh, I don't know.
Andrew Somebody just crashed something into the moon recently that they weren't intending on crashing into the moon. It wasn't me. No, it wasn't me either. So, you know, we're clear on that.
Everett Are you making the China-Japan error again?
Andrew No, man, maybe. I don't know. It's possible. It's a little embarrassing. Sorry, y'all. But India just had their lander and rover combo. They lost communications with it. They don't think it's made it. They're still trying to diagnose exactly what happened. And I'm sure more news will come out in the coming days. They felt really confident. They'd gone through all their previous missions where they've had separations and ooh, I forget the word for it, where they meet back and join forces and then fly back. Anyway, they've done all their things. They had all their gates met and then they lost their lunar lander and I'm bummed. I was really hoping to see success on that. I wanna see more things. I'm motioning and gesturing like people can see me.
Everett I like these hand gestures, they're good.
Andrew I wanna see more things land on the moon.
Everett Yeah, no, it's pretty disappointing. Pretty disappointing. It seems like there's still a bit of a question mark, but I assume the more time that goes by, the less likely it is that it's a malfunction and it's a crash. Yeah.
Andrew Yeah, a little bummed. Hopefully they figure it out and here in the next few months, they've got the resources to try again and drop something on the moon.
Everett Yeah, I think it's such a, I think this is why in the 60s in the United States, we had a hard time publicly supporting the space race. And we see that a little bit now. There's this tension between the amount of resources involved in space exploration versus the benefits gleaned. I always think that supporting certain things that are hard to justify is important. For me, education is something that we don't support enough, because I think some people in their minds think it's maybe not important. But more sort of ambiguously, I think, gosh, we need to be supporting art, and we need to be supporting the humanities, I guess, is the way I would refer to it. But furthermore, we need to be exploring things just for the sake of exploring things, and we need to be investing our resources. I'm a lot more motivated to give our government, our government's money to try to go to the moon than I am to put a wall up between us and Mexico, and I hope that's not a hot button, but there's this priority. It certainly is a hot button, but there's this prioritization that is hard to make when it comes to things like art or space exploration or whatever. It seems like always, historically, and probably forever and ever, amen, there's going to be this tension between what are we getting out of this versus how much we're spending on it. And I think it's really important. Hopefully, like you said, India is able to get their feet back under him on this thing.
Andrew I want him to get on the moon. I want that South Pole explored.
Everett Yeah. Yeah. I think that's right. I think that's right.
Andrew I want to know.
Everett So I've got another thing.
Andrew Do it.
Everett I've got another thing. It's been at least two weeks since we've talked about a Netflix show. So do you mind if I do it? Oh, I think it's actually an Amazon show.
Andrew Doesn't matter. You just talk to your Roku.
Everett Tell it what to do. Yeah. Roku. So there's a show that came out recently called Carnival Row. Carnival Row. This is a, I think it's probably appropriate to say a fantasy setting in a world where there are fairies and there are minotaurs and other sort of mythical beings. So fantasy is very accurate. Yeah, that's right. And these, they're people, right? They're just people and they're people that live with us. And you know, when I say us, I mean just normal old human hominids, And the culture is very much set in maybe the early 20th century global world, but without having any of the geographical references. And it's this fantasy show that's got monsters and heroes and villains, but it's also exploring race dynamics and things that we deal with in our real life at IRL. Uh, you know, fun and exciting and sort of romantic way. Uh, it's been really fun. It's a little bit, uh, it's a little bit indulgent at times. It's a little bit. You know, otherworldly and sort of, uh, fantastical, which, which makes sense, but it's been really fun. I think we're about halfway through the first season, which is the only season that's available and it's been really cool. It's been a fun watch. So if you've seen that pop up in your feet, I totally recommend it. The writing's good. The story's a little dense, and so that's created a few lapses where Kim and I have had to go back and sort of rewatch something or stop and talk about what was happening. So the story's complex and it's just been a lot of fun.
Andrew Great.
Everett Great.
Andrew Claire, Liam, what have you guys got?
Claire Well, TV shows and things like that. Other things. Other things. I was a bit not there then. Sorry, go ahead.
Liam My thing is, before all of this, we were massive climbers. So yeah, we'd travel Europe and we'd climb and drink beer and we'd climb. And then we'd climb, climb, climb. And then we had kids and posters.
Andrew When you say climb, do you mean like top roping or like, like mountain climbing?
Liam Yeah, all of it. I don't know what you guys call it in the States. Traditional trad climbing. Okay.
Andrew Yeah. Yeah. We use the same terminology here.
Liam Oh, sure.
Andrew Weird, right? That wouldn't usually fit, but yeah, no, that tracks.
Liam Well, we've got different grading systems and stuff, but yeah. Yeah. So my thing is I'm pushing massively for Claire to let me go climbing soon. So that's my other thing that I'm interested in.
Claire Yeah. And now it's more kind of national trusts. Do you know national trusts?
Andrew Tell me more.
Claire Okay, um, they're just like stately homes in the UK. So the National Trust own these stately homes. And you purchase a card yearly. And you go to these stately homes and things like that. So basically, that's what we do now. Because we're the kids, don't we?
Andrew When you say stately homes, are they like museums, like historical homes and estates that have been maintained and are now open to the public to explore?
Claire Yes. Okay. We kind of do those kind of things now with kids because you just kind of let them roam free, don't we?
Everett Are these homes that were historically owned by aristocracy?
Liam Yes. Yeah. Yes. National Trust are an organization that purchased these homes and then maintain them via public donations and support. So yeah, but it tends to have big gardens and you pay a small amount each month. Yeah. So it's just and you can just visit and the kids get to play and there's always loads of fun stuff on.
Claire Yeah, there's always events on and stuff, so it's just more kind of getting out and about and making sure the kids are still out and about. If we can't go climbing for a little while, then we can take them later on.
Liam Look at our next home.
Claire Yeah.
Andrew Since you guys are climbers, did you guys watch the Dawn Wall?
Liam Yes.
Andrew OK, that was terrific. That was one of the most incredible feats I've ever seen. You familiar with it?
Everett No, tell me, tell me.
Andrew So a dude did He climbed the Dawn Wall in Yosemite, uh, and he created his own route, like a part of this, this enormous wall, like rock face in Yosemite National Park that had never been summited. So he designed his own route through it. And it was two dudes who, uh, were the first to ever, ever free climb it. It was, it's a really impressive documentary. And this guy has this crazy story. He was, they were like him and his girlfriend, a couple of friends were climbing in, ooh, Kyrgyzstan. And they got captured by like rebels. Homie pushed one of the rebels off the cliff and then they ran for three days through the wilderness and got saved. It was it's a crazy story. He lost a finger in a table saw accident and he still climb. It's a watch the documentary The Dawn Wall, y'all. It's worth it. Even if you don't like climbing. That sounds interesting.
Everett Definitely do it. I feel a little like your your segue was such that you're not interested in all at the National Trust, though.
Andrew I will actually I had a question, but then I then the Don Wall popped in my head. The question is, how old are some of these homes that you guys are going to see?
Liam I don't really know. Yeah, right from the 1700s. Geez.
Claire Some are even like castles and things like that, aren't they? Yeah. So like, you know, castles in like Conway, you know, like Wales and things. That's so cool.
Everett You know, we, for obvious reasons, have have less of that in the States. But we do have some, you know, some of these historically significant homes that have been maintained. It's normally by non-profits. We don't have, as far as I know, there's no national or federal government agency that's maintaining these things. But over the last several years, I've had the opportunity to tour, you know, James Madison's home and Thomas Jefferson's famous Monticello. And then in Portland, we've also got a place called the Piddock Mansion, which is newer, but also significant. And it's really fun to be able to just, you know, see the architectural inspiration. You know, you do these tours and they always have fantastic old artwork and it's a really fun, it's a fun opportunity.
Claire Yeah, it's amazing. There's actually a place in Liverpool, which is not too far from us, called the Hardman House. And I think they were photographers, I think it was. And basically that house in Liverpool is kind of set up exactly how they left it. So even things like cupboards left open with, you know, the egg rations from like the war and And it's literally jam-packed with so much stuff that it's barely movable. But all the stuff is from the era and it's all left out on the table and things like that. So it's really impressive to see that people have kept it like that and to show it like that.
Everett I had some of the same feelings when I toured Monticello. I actually went through Monticello a couple of times, which is the home that Thomas Jefferson built. I had that feeling too going through like how amazing is it that there's this thing that is almost certainly been in Thomas, you know, this pen, for instance, that's almost certainly been in Thomas Jefferson's hand as he was writing who knows what, you know, really fun. And I don't know how much of this context you guys have in your National Trust homes, but Thomas Jefferson is famous in American politics for all sorts of things. But one of the things that he's sort of more increasingly, there's more increasing awareness of is his relationship to slavery. He was, you know, famously a slaveholder, as slavery was sort of public knowledge. And so when you do tour the property, there's these slave quarters, and there's underground, you know, service hallways and quarters. And, you know, it's just this fascinating glimpse into history that's really fun.
Claire Oh, yeah, it's like we love it, don't we? And the kids, like, they just
Everett lap it all up don't they just like all the corridors and things like that and all the little secret rooms and things like that they have in places like that here as well so it's quite interesting perfect to play hide and seek you just close the door and you can come back in a half an hour and they'll still think you're looking well very cool guys i think that this is about the time where we're probably gonna uh start to wrap it up uh i'd like to give you guys an opportunity to Uh, just if there's anything that you guys want to freestyle on or, or anything that you guys would like to plug now would be a great time to do it.
Liam Yeah. Yeah. So we've got the watch it watch fair hosted by watch it all about on the 8th of November in rugby. If you're in the UK, it might be a bit far for you guys. We probably won't make it. We've also set up a 15% discount code on the site. if you used coupon code 40 on 20.
Everett Oh, really? Yeah, at that. This is hey, you guys, this is important. This is our very first coupon code.
Andrew Milestone. I will pimp that. How long is that going to run?
Liam So we've set that up to run to the end of this month. Wonderful.
Andrew Perfect. We'll keep it running. We will make sure that everyone knows.
Liam Awesome. Yeah. And that's about it.
Claire Yeah.
Everett Well, very good, you guys. Thank you so much for joining us. Andrew, you have any parting thoughts?
Andrew You guys were great. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for giving us some insight into what y'all are doing and for passing that on to our listeners.
Claire Yeah, well, thanks for having us. Thanks for letting us have the opportunity to speak and possibly understand where we're going to as well, really, isn't it?
Liam Yeah, this massively helps us to get the story out there. We're not a massive company and it's just us two at home.
Claire Makes us understand that it's not as small as we think it is.
Andrew And one more thing, let all of our listeners know where they can find you guys.
Liam So you can find us at www.art-of-horology.co.uk.
Everett Wonderful. Thank you for joining us for this episode of 40 in 20, y'all. Obviously, as always, feel free to check us out at Instagram at 40 in 20. You can, if you would like to support the show, cause really this helps us out so much. You can check us out at patreon.com slash 40 and 20. Please check out Art of Horology. They do wonderful stuff. It's a ton of fun. A discount code 40 and 20 for a 15% discount through the end of September. Don't forget to tune back in next Thursday for another hour of watches, food, drinks, life, and other things we like.
Andrew Bye bye.