We had invested a lot of time and money in the months leading up to our launch on Kickstarter, so we had certain expectations for how we felt the campaign would go, but these were completely blown away in the first hour. Within 60 minutes we’d raised over 90% of our funding goal, 10 minutes later we had shot passed it. Nothing could prepare us for the overwhelmingly positive response from the Kickstarter community and indeed our backers, but it wasn’t just pledges that were flooding in, but messages of support and encouragement too. 

If you’re not familiar with Kickstarter, they define themselves as the world's largest funding platform for creative projects. Ultimately they’re a crowd-funding platform where people like you and I can back projects that we believe in, in an effort to help them bring their product or service to market. Potential backers are offered tangible rewards and one of a kind experiences in exchange for financial pledges - if the campaign raises enough money, the creator then uses said finance to deliver the project (and in turn the product or service). 

Being funded in such a short space of time certainly brought a lot of validity and confirmation to our design of the Cherwell, and how it’s resonating with the watch buying public. We were always aware that the Cherwell would polarise some opinions when it came to size - dress watches are historically deemed to be restricted only to 40mm and under. With the Cherwell we tried to resist being swayed by preordained rules and offer up not just an original design, but open up the dress watch market to new people. Not everyone suits a 38mm dress watch and we have had so much positive feedback from people delighted that they now have an opportunity to fill the gap in their collection with something that they can feel comfortable wearing. 

The speed in which we were funded also put us in the fortunate position of being able to think ahead to our next steps. With such an overwhelming response we found ourselves standing on a strong foundation. It gave us huge drive to build upon the Cherwell - the dynamic face and sensitive proportions - and develop that more for our next design. We now have the springboard to do something spectacular and the extra funding has afforded us the flexibility to realise new designs sooner.

When our 30 day campaign came to close (only 24 hours ago at time of writing) we had raised £179,194 from 932 backers - a remarkable achievement for our first timepiece. Now it’s our turn to return the commitment showed to us by our backers, and deliver a watch with form and function, that's design-led and considered.