Two workshops: Los Angeles and Lyon.
Our new workshop in Los Angeles, CA, and our original workshop in Lyon, France, work the same way. Every catalog watch ships with its 3-year warranty card, and a watch that gets stuck at any of the five steps doesn’t leave: it is pulled from the batch.
Three instruments, no assembly line.
A binocular magnifier for the dial and indices, a pressure chamber for water resistance, a timegrapher for timekeeping. These three instruments decide whether a watch ships or not.
One at a time, not in batches.
Every catalog watch ships with its own 3-year warranty card.
Seiko calibers, repairable anywhere.
We buy our movements from Seiko: Seiko NH35, NH34 GMT, NH70 skeleton, VK63 meca-quartz. They aren’t in-house calibers, and that’s deliberate: any watchmaker knows how to open them and parts are available everywhere. An in-house movement would cost three times as much and couldn’t be repaired anywhere but here.
See our Seiko movementsNone of this can be automated.
A Seiko automatic movement is regulated by hand, one position at a time. That’s what takes time, one watch after another.
Five steps.
A watch that gets stuck at any of them doesn’t leave. It is pulled from the batch.
Visual inspection
Checked under a binocular magnifier. Dial, hands, indices, sapphire crystal.
Water-resistance test
Pressure test, 5 ATM (50 m).
Movement
Timegrapher test in 5 positions. Regulated if needed.
Adjustment
Power reserve set within tolerances.
Caseback
Screw-down, gaskets and engraving checked.
Around the workbench
- Receiving — References and batches checked on arrival.
- Packing — Modus watch box, warranty card, certificate.
- Shipping — Secure packaging, tracking number sent by email.
The watches that
leave this bench.
Six series, the same five steps.
