Talking into the watch universe …
... And the watch universe talks back. How in our small horological world one little thing can lead to another.
Before leaving for a business trip to Prague earlier this year I decided it would be a great time to meet an old friend, Ondra, who lives there and also happens to be into watches (heavily). His Instagram handle is @tempusx , feel free to check out his profile to convince yourself.
When I called Ondra up to ask if he would be free for a beer and talk ‘hodinky’ (which is the Czech word for watches, in case you didn’t know), he’d suggested we also gather a few more of his local watch buddies from Prague. A few minutes later into the conversation we both decided that this would also be a handy occasion to make an AIS collector’s meetup out of it, exclusively for the Redbar Prague club. And so we did.
Fast forward to the meetup, I was incredibly surprised to be welcomed by a great turnout, especially for such short notice. Over beers, Italian charcuterie and local Czech cheeses, lots of watches were shown, discussed, of course cleaned, and wristrolled, of course new friendships were made too. Enter: Bhanu.
Bhanu, one of the founders of Redbar Prague and I had a great time discussing small independent watchmakers and their value propositions, especially in comparison to the big name brand competitors. Bhanu was also excited to hear more about the AIS Collective, our story and where we’re headed. Hence he invited me to an interview for none other than Revolution Magazine, which you can read more about here.
Not only do I enjoy and cherish these types of events and conversations, but what always blows my mind is how one small thing (or beer) can lead to another great thing and will eventually be followed by a whole chain of exciting events and experiences, especially in our small but magnificent world of horology.