The writeup today is primarily intended for watch enthusiasts who follow the NH manufactured in Australia project - those who already have an NH watch, or intend to add one to their collection.

However, even if your interest in watches is broader than an investment in micro brands, you may find the communique of interest. I certainly hope you would.

Creating a watch brand from scratch is an ambitious project. Watch brands come and go, and for the past hundred or so years, many watchmakers have tried to turn a rather generic product into an immortalized, lasting, multigenerational brand name. Most of them fail.

The handful of watchmakers who succeeded were not necessarily the best, nor the most advanced makers. The most successful were those who understood that a watch is far more than a precision timekeeper, or even a tool: essentially, a watch is a fashionable luxury item.

The best examples of 'luxury horology' are traditional brands like Cartier, Patek Philippe, Rolex and recently, Richard Mille. Brands which spend huge sums of money advertising their watches primarily as luxury status symbols.

If you are to predict which brand will outlast the competition: bet on the best marketer, not the best maker. And if I am to bet my last dollar on a brand that will be here in a hundred years from now, I would put it all on Cartier. The old money luxury brand, bold and assertive.

Being a watch brand is not enough. To outlast and outsell, the prerogative is to grow and metamorphise into a luxury brand.

Yet in reality, if luxury and status are the only reasons we buy watches, then we would all wear only Cartier and Rolex. But we do not. We are drawn to different brands for different, deeply personal reasons. Aesthetics, workmanship, ergonomics, practicality, design, longevity, affordability. A wonderful horological kaleidoscope!

As you are already aware, the reason why I have invested more than 10 years on building my own brand is to prove a single point: that a small, independent Australian watchmaker is as good as any Swiss brand trained watchmaker. And in many cases, much better. With the release of our NH55 Timascus watch, that point has been made and proven beyond doubt.

Of course, the timascus project was a culmination of ten years of learning, investment in manufacturing, and training of the next generation of machinists and watchmakers. Together, we achieved much more than what I initially dreamed and hoped for. We started with a watch project and ended up with a manufacturing ability to make components at a precision and complexity level that surpasses horology.

Which in itself is a strange place to be. The fork in the road: should we continue to make watches, spend another five years developing an in house movement, invest heavily in marketing and branding - or, make high precision parts for other industries?

In both cases, the manufacturing aspect is practically the same. Yet the financial outcome could not be more different. A watch, as a product, is fundamentally different to any other assembly of precision parts.
A watch is built to last for 50 or a hundred years, exquisitely finished, and requires regular servicing. Also, it is sold one at a time, and each sale is directly related to your investment in marketing.
On the other hand, a 100 GHz waveguide, as precise as a watch, has a life span of 3 years. After that it would be either non functional or obsolete. Each waveguide is sold before being made. Actually, our customers demand is five time higher than our maximum production output. The best of all: industrial parts are completely devoid of branding, advertising and marketing to the end user. Not to mention, again, that unlike watchmaking at small microbrand scales, manufacturing of industrial parts can be fully automated.

As there is no real commercial incentive to make watches, why in the world should we continue to make them? I have no rational answer to this question, yet I know that we must. 
The responsibility to continue learning, getting better, then passing that knowledge on is the only way to preserve not just our own independence, but the independence of the next generation of Australian watchmakers.
An independent watchmaker planting a microbrand is like a small organic farmer who grows his own produce, not just to feed his family and friends, but to preserve the environment, save the seeds and save the local biodiversity. Not profitable, yet priceless.