ALLAY El Capitan
A watch brand from nothing: from first sketch to market in six months
- Type
- project
- Year
- Medium
- Product development, brand, sales
- File
- aljosha-insta-images_1-1.jpg
In 2016 I founded ALLAY, a small watch brand from Berlin. I was founder, general manager and product developer in one person. The El Capitan was our first watch: an angular digital watch, reduced to case, display and strap.
The task: trust without a history
A watch brand without heritage, retailers or budget competes against brands that have been building trust for a hundred years. Every outside service — photographer, agency, web developer — eats into the margin. The question was how a new watch could be convincing enough that people would buy it from a stranger.
The decision: leave out and do it yourself
The answer had two parts. In the product: leave things out until only what a watch needs remains, in materials that last — a 316L stainless steel case and sapphire crystal. In the company: do as much as possible myself, so that every decision lies with me and the money goes into the watch rather than into invoices.
The process: from CAD to customer service
The form took shape in CAD, in Vectorworks and Blender, over many variants of proportion and size. Then came printed models for ergonomics and fit, then functional prototypes with the manufacturing partner, refining tolerances, weight and components step by step. I built the route to market myself as well: product photography, film, copy, packaging, website, search engine optimisation and advertising, plus lean quality control with extensive testing of every batch.
The result
Six months passed from idea to market. The return rate stayed below 2 %, and because the services were produced in-house, costs for outside providers fell by 70 %. Above all I learned how every design decision resurfaces later in price, returns and perception. The second watch, the Terra Incognita Mark I, built on exactly these principles.
