facebookSpecial Interview
Interview with Orbita C.E.O. Chuck Agnoff
- How Chuck Agnoff Entered the Watchwinder Business
- The Watchwinder Market in 1996, Orbita's First Year
- Service Intervals for Automatic Watches
- Watchwinders and the Time between Servicing
- The Consequences of a Watch Sitting in a Drawer
- The Danger of Inexpensive Winders
- Why Mr.Agnoff Believes Orbita Winders are the Best
- Winding Direction, Programmability, and the Rotowind Concept
- Orbita's New Innovative Bergamo 40
- Orbita's New Black Ebony Ticino Family
- The Sienna 3, the Best Seller at the $1000 the $1500 Price Point
TOPPER: What were the circumstances that led you to the watchwinder business?
MR.AGNOFF: Well, you're talking to an old man who in 1995 was sixty years old, so now you know how old I am. I was CEO and founder of a company in the conveyor industry which had 300 hundred employees. I decided to smell the roses and retire at the ripe old age of sixty. Evelyn, my wife of about forty years decided to commemorate the event by buying me a gold Rolex to celebrate my birthday and my retirement. This was my first automatic watch, and since it was so dressy and I was still working in the factory, I wouldn't wear it during the work week. Every weekend, when I went to put it on, the watch was dead in the water: wrong day, wrong date, wrong time. I was shown an Italian device by the watch retailer who sold my wife the gold Rolex. It was a marvelous piece of hardware made in Italy for winding three watches. When he told me the price was $5000, I jokingly said to him that I can make 10 of them for that price. He responded by challenging me and saying he'd buy a hundred if I could do it. Well, that was three months after I retired, and that was the end of my retirement.
TOPPER: In 1996, the year that you started Orbita, what other watchwinders existed in the world?
MR.AGNOFF: At the time, the Italians were the only guys who had a watchwinder as a product on the market. It wasn't very well known, very well engineered as an eletro-mechanical device, but it was very pretty, very attractive, and there was some very casual identification of watch winders as a product.
TOPPER: How often should an automatic watch be serviced?
MR.AGNOFF: Well, it varies frankly according to the environment. For example, if it's an Omega Seamaster, for the fellow who swims down or scuba dives regularly, it's subjected to a much different environment than the fellow who wears it casually on weekends and doesn't have any environmental challenges. For most people who do not subject their watch to extreme exposure environments, I would say a 3-5 year cycle is appropriate.
TOPPER: Can placing a watch on a watchwinder when it is not being worn lengthen the time that a watch can go between servicing?
MR.AGNOFF: Wearing a watch or running a watch on a winder is infinitely better for the life of the watch than not wearing or winding it. Sitting in a drawer is the worst environment. Gravity is pulling down all of the lubricants, which are in minimal quantities to begin with, and the long and short of it is there is a tendency for the lubricants to congeal. Ultimately if you leave the watch in a drawer long enough and you finally put it on it won't work at all. I mean, that's the ultimate defeat when it comes to non-wearability. Wearing it is equivalent to putting it on a winder. The winder simulates the action of wearing it, and consequently if it's good to wear it, it's good to keep it on a winder.
TOPPER: If you do have a watch that sits for years in a drawer and lubricants congeal, can this cause permanent damage to the watch or will it likely be fixed at the cleaning?
MR.AGNOFF: Virtually all of the materials in a fine watch are inert materials; it's not a question of corrosion and certainly, a lack of use does not cause wear. The watch will just require a more thorough and more expensive cleaning. Remember there are watches that are 200 years old that are being sold for millions of dollars as antique watches and they still run.
TOPPER: Can a watchwinder damage a watch?
MR.AGNOFF: Our experience and communication with hundreds of different watch manufacturers has taught us that watches require about 600 to 900 turns per day of the rotor. The rotor is the gravity operated device for winding. While some watches wind in one direction and others wind in both directions, the average total number of movements or rotations is between 600 and 900. Now, does the fellow running the New York Marathon turn and wind his watch more aggressively that someone sitting at a desk? Absolutely. So, to give you a long winded answer, the watches are designed so if they are over wound, the main spring is housed in a drum, and the main spring just slips around so the watch doesn't jam and the spring doesn't get broken. While this slipping action protects the mainspring, the slipping action still is a wear surface, so consequently, you do not want to wind a watch so that it replaces more energy than the energy that it has lost in a day. On our more sophisticated winders, you can control it if the winder has programming capabilities. If it needs 800 turns a day you can set the winder for 800 turns a day.
There are winders made, most of them made in China, that give up the programming capabilities to meet cost goals. Often these winders will wind a watch 1800 or 2000 times in either direction knowing that without any need for programming that will wind any watch, and that's true. If your watch only winds clockwise and you have a winder that turns both clockwise and counter clockwise, well, clearly it will wind it. It will also over wind it. So the concern is not to break the spring, but to wear out the mechanism inside the watch by winding it more than is necessary. Good winders will never over wind a watch. Bad winders will.
There are winders made, most of them made in China, that give up the programming capabilities to meet cost goals. Often these winders will wind a watch 1800 or 2000 times in either direction knowing that without any need for programming that will wind any watch, and that's true. If your watch only winds clockwise and you have a winder that turns both clockwise and counter clockwise, well, clearly it will wind it. It will also over wind it. So the concern is not to break the spring, but to wear out the mechanism inside the watch by winding it more than is necessary. Good winders will never over wind a watch. Bad winders will.
TOPPER: Why do you consider Orbita winders to be the best winders on the market?
MR.AGNOFF: At the risk of sounding immodest, and I don't mind doing that, when we started we were alone in the United States. Within a few years there were two or perhaps three other American companies that decided to go in the winder business. We seemed to have generated a whole industry because within several years there were 30 or 40 watch manufacturers worldwide, all striving for this market. We prided ourselves and still do on making a technically competent, well engineered machine. Maybe that's my background of 30 years in the ball bearing and the conveyor industry, but I view a watch winder as a machine. A lot of our competitors view it as a jewelry box with a little mechanical gadget inside -- some of them using motors that are used for little toys, little Japanese dollar and a half motors. For example a typical motor we use sells for $32, made in Switzerland drawing very little, low current, running for years and years and years, also running very quietly. Lots of these other units make a lot of noise. So if you want to come back to your question, we are now the only remaining American manufacturer. All the other guys have gone away. We are here for the long run. I am very proud with the response I get from people about our fine customer service.
TOPPER: Some watches wind in one direction. Are there any consequences to accidentally winding it the wrong way on a winder?
MR.AGNOFF: All of our programmable winders are programmable for clockwise, counter-clockwise, or reversing operation. That's how we started and we found ourselves tasked with knowing which watch needs what setting. We went to the Swiss watch institute for that information; they said it was impossible because of the number of watches and models out there. We didn't accept that and I put my daughter on what turned out to be a two year project. We put together a data base which currently lists the winding characteristics of more than 4,000 different kinds of watches and we decided to make that public domain. http://www.orbita.net/pages/17100.htm Anybody can go to it, including our competitors, and find out the winding requirement for an Omega Seamaster, a Breitling Crosswind or what have you. When we were faced with this growing amount of Chinese competition with very low end products, mechanically and electrically, I decided to move ahead with a design on a clean sheet of paper and came up with what we called Rotorwind concept. This Rotorwind concept is used in our Sparta series. The Rotorwind concept uses an oscillating action, rather than a full rotating action. It rocks the watch back and forth just as it would be handled if you were walking in the street with you arm swinging. We found that by doing that with a timed cycle that we could get good winding capabilities without any need for programmability and allowing a watch whether it rotates in one direction or both directions to wind competently. And that's where we are now with our lower end units, the real watch collector still is focused on programmability, but the Rotowind addresses gently the question or rotating or oscillating without programmability.
TOPPER: What is the most innovative product we can expect from Orbita for the Holdays this year?
MR.AGNOFF: For the Holidays this year we hope to be able to start shipping, in fact I say that with a smile because our last two trade shows, one in Switzerland and the other in Las Vegas were incredible. We introduced a watch winder for winding forty watches concurrently. This winder uses a remote control so that the winders all disappear into a beautiful Italian cabinet, just looking like a piece of furniture. The owner of that nice collection, or for that matter, Topper if they want one in their showroom, can simply push a button and all forty winders rise like the Phoenix out of the desert and you can view your whole collection. So that's our hot new thing for this Christmas season.
click to view the Bergamo 40
TOPPER: Do you have anything new for the more modest budgeted consumer?
MR.AGNOFF: We introduced the new series called the Ticino -- very contemporary in styling. We find a lot of younger people who are getting into watches whose furnishings and decor at home are much more contemporary than my generation. Towards that end, we designed some cases which are black ebony with Lucite covers, which are pretty snazzy. And that is our hot item, for the collector ranging from one to three watches.
click to view the Ticino
TOPPER: In the $1000 to maybe the $1500 price point, what is your best seller?
MR.AGNOFF: Currently our Sienna 3, which is a three-head programmable unit, in a beautiful slopped front case with glass using either maple burl or teakwood, has been our leading seller for the last several years. By definition, a watch collector has more than one watch. A watch winder becomes either a nice Father's Day or anniversary gift from a woman whose father or husband has a new and growing affection for watches.
click to view the Siena 3
