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Horology jobs11/12/2023 ![]() ![]() Weiss’ wife, Whitney, an avid cook, has adapted, even managing to host dinner parties amid the hulking and sometimes noisy equipment. Nearby, a work table holds two vintage lathes - machines used to shape metal. In the place of a table and sideboard are a computer, where Weiss designs watches using 3-D CAD software, and a 50-year-old watchmakers’ bench. The dining room betrays no homey touches. On a crowded bookcase, volumes on watchmaking share space with cookbooks. Now he’s shining watch cases in his living room, where the polishing unit rests a few feet from a cozy couch and flat-screen television. There, he received certification under the Watchmakers of Switzerland Training and Educational Program (WOSTEP) in 2011.Īfter a stint working for high-end watch company Audemars Piguet in Switzerland, and a short tenure with another Swiss manufacturer, Vacheron Constantin, Weiss started his own firm. After about a year working in a Westchester machine shop, Weiss enrolled in a two-year training program at the Nicolas G. In 2008, he forsook USC, leaving during his junior year. “I am certainly not the type of person who is scared to take a risk,” he said. It just grew and grew, and I just started to realize that business administration - it wasn’t for me.” “There would be times when I’d be late to class because I’d been working on a watch project. Soon enough, he was buying broken watches on EBay and fixing them. Instead of a watch for his high school graduation gift, Maureen and Alan Weiss gave their son, by then already a fanatic, $500 worth of watchmaking tools.Ĭameron Weiss took the set to USC, where he studied business administration. An encouraging review by Hodinkee’s Jasper said the timepiece’s manually wound movement is finished and assembled to a “respectable effect.” Still, in some critical appraisals of the updated version of the Standard Issue Field Watch that came out in June, there are hints of damning with faint praise. But for the most part, reviews of his timepieces commend Weiss for his bootstrapping effort, using Swiss movements but many other components fabricated by partner companies based in L.A. It’s a business that emphasizes pedigree, of which Weiss seemingly has little. “It is connected with the increase in luxury goods sales around the world, and there is still a fair amount of growth.” “A lot of the new interest is from aspirational consumers,” said Kelly Jasper, contributing editor of Hodinkee, a blog covering watchmaking. With high-end brands chasing the affluent in emerging Asian and Middle Eastern markets, the mechanical watchmaking business has exploded in the last decade. Though quartz wristwatches are popular because they keep nearly perfect time and are inexpensive, they are largely ignored by aficionados, who gravitate toward mechanical timepieces, some of which contain hundreds of parts and can cost tens of thousands of dollars - or more. a little more than a year ago, Weiss has sold about 1,000 of his Standard Issue Field Watches at $950 a pop - a far cry from battery-powered $60 Swatch watches that are regulated by quartz crystals (or Apple’s forthcoming smartwatch). ![]()
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