Our president, Spencer Shattuck, shares his experience as a young entreprenuer at TWC.
Read the full article here : https://voyagebaltimore.com/interview/exploring-life-business-with-spencer-shattuck-of-towson-watch-company/
Hi Spencer, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Towson Watch Company (TWC) is a historic American brand originally founded in Towson, MD back in 1998. After several years of ownership by one of Baltimore’s proudest businessmen, Kevin Plank (the founder of Under Armour), TWC was acquired by myself, and I couldn’t be more prepared to continue and lead the great legacy of TWC for many years to come.
My first encounter with TWC dates back to over a decade ago, during the midst of my final 8th-grade thesis, which I chose to write about watchmaking. At the young age of 13, I spent a week with the TWC founders, Hartwig Balke and George Thomas, pursuing my already present passion for watches, while also manifesting an opportunity that would be bound to present itself many years down the line. Which brings us to the present day and my newfound leadership at TWC.
Just months prior to my graduation at Johns Hopkins University in the spring of 2021, Kevin Plank reached out to me about potentially acquiring his exclusive luxury watch brand, knowing that I would be a trustworthy fit. It didn’t take long for me to pull the trigger, unlocking a dream of mine that has persisted since that first visitation with Hartwig and George at the workshop over a decade ago.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
It has been just over a year since I acquired TWC and became its President/Chairman and I would have to say that things have gone as expected to a large degree. This isn’t to say that my team and I haven’t run into any obstacles, in fact, just about every day we learn something new and make mistakes. Nonetheless, I was prepared for this, just like all entrepreneurs should be.
TWC has been around for a long time and is prominent in niche timepiece circles, yet years of stagnant activity now begs for modernization and changes. The luxury watch market isn’t an easy market to compete in, and the dominant European players we all know well tend to keep us independent brands in the shadows. The dream of making TWC a household watch brand and rejuvenating the once-great American watch industry will take a lot of time, effort, and infiltration, but it’s certainly achievable. There are some serious problems in the current market that deserve to be solved when people are paying such large amounts of money, and TWC under my leadership aims to do just that.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Towson Watch Company is one of the oldest and most reputable American mechanical watchmakers that exists today, specializing in the production of handmade limited-edition timepieces.
TWC was established in 1998 by George Thomas and Hartwig Balke, two German engineers that moved to America with the dream of starting a watch company. While initially built on the custom production of gold bespoke timepieces, TWC has established three signature collections (Masterpiece, Limited, Mission) over the past two decades that remain freshly updated year by year. This historic company is now entering a new phase, as our young and passionate president, Spencer Shattuck, intends to scale the awareness of what pure American watchmaking has to offer. Join us in the rejuvenation of one of America’s oldest crafts.
All Towson watch models are exclusively sold on our website or at our store in Baltimore City located at101 W Dickman St. Baltimore, MD 21230. This allows us to offer watch collectors, enthusiasts, and ordinary wearers an accessible price point for handcrafted high-end timepieces. Each model ref. produced by Towson Watch Company is limited in production to 100 total pieces. Once a model is sold out, it will never be produced again.
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WHY TOWSON WATCH COMPANY?
Towson Watch Company has persisted for over twenty years with no end in sight. Strong ownership, the quality of product, the mastery of our watchmakers, and most importantly, a whole lot of passion, ensures a lasting legacy for the brand. The value of our watches is completely vested in their material, technology, and craft. Unlike any other watch manufacturer with the same quality and attention to detail as TWC, we seek small margins to provide our customers with an accessible and justified price that is only dependent on the intrinsic horological value of the watch itself.
We intend for our brand to represent nothing but the quintessential image of high-grade mechanical watchmaking in its purest form. Owning a Towson Watch means owning a piece of American watchmaking history in the form of horological art. We consciously avoid cutting corners like most luxury timepiece manufactures and seek to provide collectors whom appreciate the craft with real intrinsic horological value. When people look down at their Towson watch on their wrist, they admire the craft and build of the instrument. A TWC piece allows you to recognize your love for watchmaking as a form of laborious art made just for you.
Describe TWC's approach to watchmaking.
Design and assembly strictly takes place in-house. Our watchmaking team is led by master horologists, George Thomas and Hartwig Balke, whom serve as mentors and instructors for the newer members of our team. Cases, dials, hands, movements, and bands are all produced by our partners in Switzerland and Germany in close collaboration with us. Once TWC receives the base components, our watchmakers modify the cases, decorate the movement, apply guilloche and embellishments to the dial, etc. Once everything is refined, the final stage of the process is assembly, which usually takes place once a watch is ordered. For certain custom pieces, our watchmakers will sometimes mold cases in-house and construct movements from scratch in-house.
Read the full article here : https://voyagebaltimore.com/interview/exploring-life-business-with-spencer-shattuck-of-towson-watch-company/