A Los Angeles-based watchmaker dreams big for American watches.
American watchmaking is certainly making a comeback, with the success of Shinola, Devon, Kobold, RGM, and others. Recently, another American watchmaker, Cameron Weiss, made waves when he was featured in a Coors video series called “Modern Pioneers.” In his video, Weiss talks about restoring the American watchmaking tradition.
Based in Los Angeles, Weiss manufactures cases, dials, crowns, crystals, straps, and even packaging. “We are starting the manufacturing of bridges and main plates,” says Weiss. “The goal is to bring watchmaking back to America. There have been American watch companies, but no one has really started manufacturing mechanical watches in volume here in the US. Currently, we use Swiss components and we do finishing and assembling here in LA. I want us to use modern manufacturing, like the Swiss do, and do it in a scalable way,” he continues. “We could get back to where the American industry used to be—hundreds of thousands of watches a week. People ask me why we even want to do it, manufacturing in the US. I think it’s more the challenge of doing something different and starting from the beginning. We can rewrite the way watchmaking and manufacture of components takes place.”
Despite training in Switzerland, Weiss wants to make American watches. “The Swiss have a very particular way that they finish their components and assemble their watches,” he explains. “What I am trying to do is to blend the modern manufacturing they have adopted and pair it with how we design and assemble our timepieces in an American way.”
Weiss has concentrated on an affordable, first-rate watch. “There are very few companies that create such a high-level watch, something with real watchmaking going into it, in our price range,” Weiss says. “We have these luxury elements in such an affordable watch. The interesting thing we are finding now is that US manufacturing can cost quite a bit less than manufacturing in other parts of the world. Pairing this with being a small company that spends no money on marketing keeps our costs very low.” Currently, Weiss sells directly to customers, with a few retail partners.
His long-term vision is to have a completely stand-alone, made-in-the-USA watch. “I think this is very doable,” Weiss says. “The biggest challenges are assembly and the manufacture of the escapement here in the USA. We need people that can pair the hairspring with the balance and adjust it. The hairsprings that used to be manufactured in the US used a different alloy that didn’t do well with magnetism, and the temperature had a real impact on it.”
Weiss’s company makes about 2,000 watches a year, and he projects production in 2016 to reach 2,500. “We are going to try to stay close in price when we are making our own movement,” he says. He has lofty dreams of where the company will be in the future—but then, he’s been dreaming about what he does now for as long as he can remember. “I love having the freedom to choose what to make,” Weiss says. “When we design a new component, I love seeing how excited the people I am working with are. It might seem like it’s just a screw or a steel ring, but the fact that it goes into a watch, it really makes them proud.” —Keith W. Strandberg