To start things off, I and the team here at Horage would like to say thank you to all those who have been along for the Supersede journey. Whether you were aware of it or not, you have all been part of history in the making. It's not just being a part of a pre-order, it's much more than that and I will share why this is such a special project throughout the post.
An incredible watch that is well worth the wait.
It's now been a year since we first started the Supersede pre-orders and in that time so much has happened.
The first Supersede production watches will begin final assembly later in December. Those that took part in the very first November 2021 pre-order will have their watches produced first then followed by customer orders placed in spring 2022, then August 2022 and finally the most recent pre-orders. There is no interest from our team or reason from our company to delay any of the assembly. We are focused on producing and delivering as quickly as we can. Paramount to our production is ensuring each and every movement passes COSC and all parts are carefully quality controlled to ensure you receive the watch that meets ours and most importantly your expectation.
Why has Supersede taken so long?
Although we have been upfront about the development timeline we often still asked why Supersede has not delivered yet. The reason for the timeline comes down to three main points.
Silicon Hairsprings
Development Timeline
Hand Made
1. Silicon Hairsprings
For those of you that have dug into the details, you will know that the key timeline for us sending in K2 movements to COSC for chronometer certification has been the last week of November 2022. We are now at that time and K2 movements have started to go to COSC for chronometer certification, Andi and Silvan personally dropped them off on Monday.
Lenny preparing movements for COSC. FYI the rotor is added after COSC certification 😉.
The day we have waited a decade for!
We had to wait for this time as we were unable to submit movements with our own silicon hairsprings prior to the 26th of November, 2022 due to an expiring silicon patent on the 25th. The 26th was this past Saturday and the first Monday back at the workshop Andi and Silvan made the 1-kilometre journey to COSC with movements in hand.
Likely some of the world's smallest signage.
With the first movements going to COSC this week they will be back to us in just over 15 days' time. Each movement is tested for that duration to ensure they fall within COSC parameters for certification. There is simply no shortcut to this or early finishers they all must do their time. To expedite the process Jonas and the team are sending in movements in batches. The first 90 movements went in on Monday followed by a much larger batch 15 days later. The reason for this is that in the first batch some movements simply might not pass and will need to be re-regulated and submitted again. The results from the first run will tell the team if anything needs to be optimized in regulating movements for the following batch. Our team is impressed with the results we are getting from our internal analyses and are confident in a positive result from COSC testing. The combination of silicon hairspring, anchor and escape wheel makes for nearly COSC-level accuracy without any fine-tuning which is both a time saver in production and makes regulating to COSC much easier.
Silvan heading in to COSC. This as far as we were allowed to film.
The utilization of silicon hairsprings is a very important milestone as we have been waiting 10 years for this opportunity to provide you, our customers with movements inclusive of silicon hairsprings. Looking at the greater picture your watches will be part of the first wave of watches from independents that now have the opportunity to innovate with silicon technology. The entire global mechanical watch industry has literally stagnated for 20 years in its ability to deliver a better escapement to you because of a monopolistic patent that was questionably granted based on a process being previously developed by Bosch in the early 90s.
Silicon hairsprings will kickstart the next level of innovation throughout the global watch industry.
We have spent over 10 years developing the processes to work with this material. This means that it will take time and likely a few years for others to develop these processes unless they are piggybacking on a brand that has prior know-how to develop this. This is because many believe that simply producing a silicon component in a reactor is all that is needed however the real challenge is how to apply that material with traditional materials used in watchmaking. After producing a component in a reactor the downwind process know-how is what will separate those who try and those that actually can. Those that actually can are the innovators so look out for independents mastering this process on their own.
Moving forward all future project developments from Horage will ship with silicon hairsprings.
K2 will be shipping with silicon hairsprings.
This is quite pivotal and quite literally fits the watches name, Supersede as this does in fact supersede what one could expect from anything considered a limited edition. Supersede is a first in the future of independent watches industry-wide.
You have been a part of history in the making and soon your Supersede GMT will serve as a reminder of this achievement.
2. Development Timeline
Supersede has been a living project in the sense that when we first announced it in the autumn of 2021 we still needed to work out some of the details of the watch. Helping us on our way were many of you who took part in the voting process as well as feedback on many aspects of development. We went well beyond just votes and feedback we even included you in the prototyping process and the challenges we were facing in production such as case design/finishing, luminous hand materials, rotor material, micro-adjustment bracelet and water resistance. There were some tough decisions to be made and at times heated debates, but in the end, it was well worth it as a better-produced and finished product has been made.
Click the image above to see the past voting results.
Supersedes design like all our watches has been a multi-year project. Within the first year of a watch project it's very rare that we have actual cases, dials and bracelets ready to show. These things take so long because we do this development ourselves rather than use an agency that sources OEM off-the-shelf developments like so many others do.
The challenges our approach to Supersede faced was that structural revisions would likely need to be made that we would then communicate later. As well, for those new to us, some communicated concerns over such developments as the micro-adjustment clasp or 200m water resistance rating being farfetched. Those that know us, understand that we don't back down from a challenge and rather than sugarcoat things we decided to take you all along for the ride and dive into the deep end of the project with us.
The late November 2022 timeline for getting movements to COSC turned out to be a well estimated time as all the revisions we would need to complete Supersede would indeed require an entire year until completion. It's one thing to make a revision, but it's another thing to plan that in production and for suppliers to do so in a timely manner. Giving enough leeway is important as dial, case, hand and bracelet suppliers need 6 months or more to schedule in revisions. In that time we also managed to optimize the movement for a platinum rotor as well as meet our target of 200 meters of water resistance.
Click the image to view the platinum rotor post.
Supersede is the thinnest GMT micro-rotor watch with 200 meters of water resistance in the market that I have been able to find. If you find another with a micro-rotor watch with a stack of function like Supersede such as GMT, Day/Night Indicator, Date, Power Reserve Indicator all under 10mm in thickness with 200m water resistance and not to mention over 72 hours of power reserve, please do let me know.
Supersede ready for the water. - Photo by Instagram @thewatchdude2
Pressure testing Supersede.
As well the new micro-adjustment buckle has attracted not just enthusiasts' eyes, but those of other brands wanting to utilize this extremely well-engineered buckle. When we start gaining the attention of competing brands wanting to use our technologies we know we have developed something truly special for you. At this time we simply don't have the capacity to offer it further to anyone other than you, the Horage supporter.
The micro-adjustment bracelet.
Investing in the future
Some of you might recall that we have reiterated our desire to continually invest in more manufacturing. At the heart of our company, we are a group of engineers and watchmakers that develop ground-up movements. Doing so involves conceptualizing and engineering not just the form and function of the movement, but each and every part and component that make up the movement along with every process and tool to build the movement. We work with around 200 production partners that help us machine or produce individual parts that we then quality control and begin assembly of the sub-assemblies that comprise a movement. Some of these parts simply don't make sense for any brand to produce on their own such as jewels, sapphire crystal, bearings, and more as the companies that make these are already highly specialized in these parts and the investments in such developments would simply sink a watch brand.
Sphend the master gear cutter constantly in the pursuit of microns.
Nearly 14mm of gear material to cut. The average is around 4mm. More material at one time requires a greater understanding of machine limits, but when done correctly can save significant time in production.
Measuring gears to ensure they are within tolerance.
Freshly cut and ready for decoration followed by applying axles.
We have had a chance to go a step further and are now machining the most time consuming and critical components ourselves. From cutting our own gears, machining balance wheels, machining and decorating bridges/main plates as well as rotors, our team is dead set on onboarding the most difficult and time consuming parts production. With so many brands feeling the supplier crunch we are doubling down to ensure we can decrease our time to delivery and lower production costs.
Paoluzzo AG where we machine bridges, plates and more. A super modern and clean facility in our hometown of Biel/Bienne.
Mike preparing to machine K2 bridges.
Reviewing the result with Lorenz and discussing how to optimize.
3. Hand Made
For some odd reason, many believe that mechanical movements and watches are made only by machines when in fact the large majority of production time is, in fact, hand time.
Each and every part produced on a machine is set and tuned by hand. This involves measuring and controlling each and every process by hand and with the eye and mind of a human. The actual machining of a part is very quick in the big picture and we consider this machining, a tool to aid the watchmaker in production because there is so much happening before and after machining a part. There are many processes in-between such as decorating movements or polishing/brushing of cases, bracelets, etc. that all rely on human hands. The most visually communicated of the handmade story in watchmaking is the hand assembly of each and every movement as well as the casing of the watch. Each and every part of a movement is set with hands and obviously with the aid of tools like a jewel press or a screwdriver. The time of production is not just the assembly, it's the processes leading up to finished parts ready for an assembly called T0 (Terminage zero).
Watchmaking is not like making a spatula where the entire production is complete in one run. Making a movement alone is a process exercise with over 3500 processes to complete.
For Supersede and any of our development projects, we don't communicate hard dates because we don't have some outside entity producing these for us for a hard timeline. We produce the watches ourselves and oversee each and every process up until the point that the courier picks up the watch at our door for delivery to you. If one of the 3500 process points runs into a delay then the production is naturally moved back, there are no shortcuts when doing things by hand.
Lorenz measuring bridges to the micron to ensure he and the other machinist can dial in the machine for absolute precision.
Amanda hand brushing the K2 bridges with a tool made in house specifically for this bridge.
Lenny hand setting each of the four screws on the balance wheel.
Lorenz hand pressing axles on wheels.
At one time we used to put handmade on our watches, but so few could grasp this understanding that it turned into a full-time job relaying what we understood as the obvious. Today our watches have Biel/Bienne on the dial where Horage is physically located and where our engineering, design, and assembly of our watches happens. The investment in taking more processes into our own hands is about the only thing that has changed.
Your Supersede watch is very much handmade with the support of various machines and tools to help us achieve the end result. Doing things by hand takes time, but it is also what makes watches so special.
We are looking forward to getting the first watches out later this December to those that took part in the first pre-order round in November 2021.
Till next time...
Landon Stirling
It is nice to see that we have shipped the first watches to a German, British and Spanish client. So we are getting into the flow. ;-)
Horage team, can I suggest you let your community backers who have orders with you over the past 13months know the exact cut-off for changes to their orders (eg straps and rotors) based on when their watch is being sequenced through production? This may avoid any last minute mishaps!
Horage: please can you amend my order from grey strap to orange - thank you!!!
Landon, thanks on the posts and the recent update, I’m tuning back in - are you still answering your emails? I messaged to make a mod to my order but others like Tamara and Ty are now answering your gmail, trust all is OK!
Super excited to follow the production of this and can’t wait for delivery. Has anything been decided on the packaging for this piece when it ships?
Arrrrrrrg Where is my watch! I need it!!!! ;)