Editing The Pen Addict 606/transcript (section)

== Creative platform for watchmaking and Notice's journey ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' fast forward that to today what's your favorite thing about having notice and being able to have this creative platform for watch making because I've listened to a little bit of an interview I just caught with you and you talk about a lot of music in your background and I think it's very interesting to have this kind of artistic background in what's a very technical creative process in watches so what is it like for you and notice now in the current day and time what are you enjoying the most about this brand and making watches well

'''Wes Kwok:''' it's both right like you have obviously there's a technical side the technical engineering side where you need to have a certain if you have a to achieve X water resistance so that's the technical side but on the fun side and really where all of our designs start is when we take all of those technical limitations or requirements away and just try to make what we envision make what we want to make and when I say we I don't mean just me and Cullen like sometimes like in the case of this collaboration that we're doing with a pen addict this was more like we had a group that we're working with that had requirements and we try to figure out a way to make it work right that to me is equally as fun right even though that's kind of like the more technical side you know like so one example one specific example with this project is the bezel is bicolored and it's made of aluminum and having different colors on aluminum is something we've never done before to get the transitions to be sharp because I've seen it before but the transition in the color ends up looking a little murky or foggy and we needed it to be super sharp and so we ran a bunch of tests and did a bunch of experimentation and made a whole bunch of prototypes to make it work like that

'''Wes Kwok:''' compressor diver let's see where we can take this like both sides are I just love it

'''Brad Dowdy:''' yeah how is it I want you you you you've segued me perfectly into talking about this other one into what I have you on here for today but you mentioned something about Cullen early on and I wrote this I wrote this note down as someone who's who's also had business partners how important

'''Brad Dowdy:''' together he could solder these things right he could do certain things and you could do certain things how important was it to have this collaborative aspect where there's not this 100% overlap in the design and creative process but Wes has his part and Cullen has his parts and these things make the whole better how is it a !

'''Wes Kwok:''' a bit blurrier right like we had to do everything together and get

'''Wes Kwok:''' as we grew as our sales volume increased as the number of team members on our team grew we had to be a little bit more clear about where our lane is and what exactly our role is in the entire machine and so the way I like to put it though is Cullen is definitely the product guy he's the one that has the product ideas and he figures out what's needed for notice

'''Wes Kwok:''' things that the pen addict needs or whoever our collaborator is so he's definitely that I guess in tech terms it would be like CTO I guess

'''Brad Dowdy:''' and

'''Wes Kwok:''' my role again there's a very little bit of overlap in that right but my role is more so talking to people getting their ideas translated into a language that Cullen can understand right there there's that I mean everyone knows parts of a watch but to get it across the finish line we have to be able to translate it into watch terms then translate it into the actual language that our factories speak and so I'm kind of the liaison on the client side whereas Cullen's the liaison on the supply side and it works well I think I said in that interview that you were alluding to that this whole notice was basically us getting the band back together right we kind of already developed that creative synergy when we were kids and figured out what he's good at what I'm good at and we're just continuing to develop that relationship as we get older

'''Brad Dowdy:''' very cool yeah I love hearing that about the partnerships and how the different tasks and responsibilities go so let's get into this watch what did you think when you got an email I'm guessing you got an email from Michael Harris who is a good friend and a long time stationery lover that the pen addict slack would like to make a watch and they would like notice to make it what did you think when you got this email

'''Wes Kwok:''' yeah so I actually remember exactly when that happened too we had just released another collaboration and what it is so there are three main pillars of our business one is nodex which is our research and design platform we test new things we have an R&D budget that we try out a bunch of different experiments the second one is intersect ! which is a show it's not really a show it's more like a cocktail party if you actually go there and attend it you know what I mean the last one is design lab and that's our collaborative platform and

'''Wes Kwok:''' they specifically don't want to start a watch company because that's a whole different headache in itself where can they go to do that and we wanted to be that place and it's not like I mean collaborations are very common in the watch industry but most of the time what it is they change a color or they add a logo on the dial or something like that we wanted our platform to be a bit more flexible where we could actually do pretty much anything that our collaborators want within reason obviously so in the past we've done stuff as deep as creating an entirely new platform that was for our last collaboration I think that was the one that Michael reached out because of but I was excited I already knew that there was a lot of crossover between the watch and the pen world I actually was just dipping my toe into the pen world I got myself a bronze tactile turn nice which I'm a big fan of I still yeah I still use it and so I was dipping my toe into that world I was also getting into the denim world I got into the sneaker world I'm a big knife guy so I already know that there's all this overlap between the EDC community but we never had direct exposure to the pen world before so I wanted to see what it was like to work with someone that was primarily in the pen world like yourself and Michael so I was super excited by that by the idea of being exposed to something new

'''Brad Dowdy:''' yeah and it's new for me too I like to joke with Michael and all the watch channel so the

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I was looking the other day and we've had like I forget what year I started it but it's had over 6 million messages in the slack and I would like to joke that 5.9 million of them come from the watches channel so that's the big joke in the slack channel that's by far the most active passionate board in the slack so I'm not surprised that they wanted to come up with something like this and when they hit me with it I was like yeah sure they just wanted my sign off to use the name maybe use colors you know orange I think looks great in watches traditionally so I was like yeah and looking at notice I was like oh this could turn out pretty cool and what y'all created looks spectacular can you tell us what the watch is about why or

'''Wes Kwok:''' the platform was the well actually to be fair there was no pre-existing platform before this okay right so the sector platform is kind of what we built it on but there was no sector dive GMT there was a sector dive and a sector GMT one obviously was a dive watch one was a GMT and so Michael's idea was I mean it was brilliant because we for some reason had never thought of it even though it's kind of like let's just put it together dive GMT so it literally is the two put together and really he did all the legwork in figuring out what does the pen addict community want in a watch everything from colors but also to functionality so one of the big changes that we made after smashing the GMT and dive together one of the big changes was instead of doing the dive bezel as like a standard dive bezel we did a countdown bezel so the utility is a little bit different and I mean I'll put on the website soon I'll send you the link to describe the differences but

'''Brad Dowdy:''' yeah and Michael actually shot a video explaining that I was like okay yes I see this yeah

'''Wes Kwok:''' so the utility is a little bit different and then I guess you guys did a limited edition poker chip for the group as well and that that's where that idea came from from the bezel design to just model it after that poker chip yeah yeah and then new color so yeah it was one of those things where Michael really did all the legwork figured out what what the group wants and you know it sounds pretty straightforward but really kudos to him because when you find yourself in a design by committee situation you're going to tear your hair out you know and Michael did a really good job of filtering it and you know maybe he has a future in watch design someday

'''Brad Dowdy:''' that was actually I kind of had like a side question I was like I was not even going to get into it but do you prefer the design by committee aspect or do you prefer to just like hey here's the concept you go and it's like there's no right answer there's no wrong answer each project is individual so I'm glad that this design by committee seemed to work out very well and you know I'm just getting all the updates and Michael explaining all this and I'm really just nodded my head I'm like yes it

'''Brad Dowdy:''' to see what everyone thinks about this watch and I I'm just stunned and shocked and pleased with how it turned out

'''Wes Kwok:''' yeah thank you thank you and I would say arguably the most important part of this project is where the funds go we want to do as much as we can for charity especially like no one really needs a fancy watch so at the very least if we're going to sell