Watchwinder...What’s a Watchwinder?

Owners of fine automatic (self-winding) watches have a problem. If they don’t wear their watch, after two days, it stops running. Some would say “so what…just wind it by hand” but for the owner of several watches, that can be an annoying task. If the watch does stop it must be reset and resetting several fine automatic watches with various features (complications) such as day, date, year, moon-phase can be a challenge. More over, watches that are only worn occasionally tend to loose accuracy and end up requiring frequent and expensive overhaul. The lubricants in the watch movement tend to migrate and congeal while the watch lies unused, in the drawer. Turns out that fine watches work best when they are “exercised” regularly.

Chuck Agnoff, a successful industrialist with an innovative product engineering background retired on his 60^th birthday (in 1995) from Interroll Corporation, a conveyor company he had founded in 1965. His wife, Evelyn, gave him a gold ROLEX® President watch to celebrate both events. He recalls, “The watch had a great look and great feel. During the week I didn’t wear it at the factory and, as a result, on weekends I repeatedly had to reset it as it had stopped. What a pain!” So he invented a device to keep his watch wound when he wasn’t wearing it. It worked very well, so forgetting retirement, he decided to start a small company to build them and to sell them. Now, several years later, from a new expanded plant in Wilmington, North Carolina and a start-up European plant in Austria, Orbita is shipping their Watchwinders all over the world. They build them in several models and styles for winding 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12, or even 24 watches concurrently. All of these winders are microprocessor controlled and user-programmable so that the watch owner can adjust the winding cycle for his particular watch (es); turns per day, winding direction and automatic reversing. Agnoff commented, “I wasn’t looking for a new career but clearly there was a need out there for this product and I thought it would be fun to try entering the consumer goods industry after spending all my business life in the industrial sector”.

Orbita started by selling directly to consumers at list price through their own website (www.orbita.net) which Agnoff designed and installed. Then, they began advertising quite heavily in life style magazines like the ROBB REPORT, DUPONT REGISTRY and several Yachting magazines. That created lots of interest from consumers, but also caught the attention of many upscale jewelers. Soon, jewelers were knocking at the door as they recognized that this was a new product category that would enhance their sales of fine watches and be profitable in it’s own rite. It seems that the fine automatic watch market has been exploding worldwide and purchasers of these watches needed winders. Dealing with jewelers meant broader based sales outlets and higher volume for Orbita despite the need for a price discount structure that jewelers expected and needed to insure profitable sales. In fact, in some cases, jewelers buy winders from Orbita and give them away free…as a “sweetener” to clinch the sale of a high-end watch. Orbita’s sales volume tripled as a result.

In October, 2000 Orbita began parallel production operations in Austria to service their growing European market. A full sales and manufacturing facility is located near Vienna. European jewelers, generally small shops, have neither the staff nor the inclination to handle the paperwork involved with importing winders from the USA. Now, they too can obtain overnight delivery and, if service is required, have a local source.

In Asia, Orbita’s sales are also exploding. With centralized distribution in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore already in place, Agnoff is in the early stages of planning an Asian joint manufacturing venture with his Asian distributor.

Agnoff reflected, “The worldwide economic boom certainly has been a factor in growing this business…and my golf game wasn’t very good anyhow, so who needed retirement.”

ORBITA Corporation Tel: 910-256-5300 Fax: 910-256-5356 E-mail: info@orbita.net

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