December 7, 2017
I spoke with Tom Osborne soon after I was stunned by images of his watch. Osborne, founder of the L’Heure Luxe wristwatch, is a man with a vision.
Anyone attempting to bust into the luxury watch industry has to be a little bit nuts. Rolex has an iron grip on timepieces worth their salt. IWC Schaffhausen boasts classic case design. Cartier is, well, Cartier. When you think pilots and watches together, you think Breitling. All of these recognized names have years to back them. They have history. L’Heure Luxe does not—and that’s what is so impressive.
While the budding brand is not nearly on the same plane as the Piguets, Pateks, and Jaeger-LeCoultres, Osborne doesn’t want it to be. At least not yet. His goal with L’Heure Luxe is to introduce the market to a quality, Swiss Made timepiece lineup at a relatively affordable price. Relatively? The watches he designs have all of the best features of the codified Swiss Made guarantee, yet are void of scalding markup.
A $500 watch certainly isn’t your more practical Timex replacement, but it places L’Heures on a luxury tier (hence the “Luxe”) that is reasonably affordable with some proper budgeting. A great gift, perhaps. However acquired, the owner of the wrist on which it will be worn will feel an exuding quality. And despite ethical concerns for conniving consumerism, there is still something to be gained from treating oneself. I consider the piece a possible first string of an heirloom—a vessel of value.
What draws me especially to the L’Heure Luxe Chronograph is its bizarre power to draw me from routine. I am so used to strapping on an Apple Watch which has insidiously syphoned all attention away from my collection of traditional timepieces. I feel bad leaving the others neglected, especially since the Apple Watch has absolutely no personality despite the ability to swap straps and faces. Alas, the practicality of a mini iPhone is too appealing to resist—or at least was. I have come to learn that constant access to notifications is far worse for mindfulness than I had originally thought. While I pull my phone out less, I flick my wrist three times as much. The true beauty of analog runs more than crown-deep.
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How did Tom Osborne get into the watch world? While he spent some time social media managing and heading PR for an online watch brand, he has always appreciated a solid timepiece. His father owned a few head-turners and, naturally, Osborne wanted the same. After backing Pebble smartwatches, swapping Casios, and testing watch startups, it was time to dive into a more proprietary brand—his own.
Rummaging through countless Chinese and Japanese watch guts, Tom realized that the Swiss are more than good for their cheese and fresh air. Following the likes of Rolex and other Swiss-stamped items, the craftsman begged for multipurpose design. A perfect watch is one which serves as both a fundamental utility and a fashion symbol, with little compromise.
An obvious challenge for L’Heure Luxe will be to rise above other similar ecommerce watch companies. Tom started his business with intimate knowledge of how these startups function. He realized early on that he mustn’t under deliver on quality or offer too premium of a price tag in order to come out ahead. This credo shines through the in chronographs themselves, as the underlying brand clearly balances both producer and consumer values.
Rather than rival the Rolexes, Tom looks toward brands like Dollar Shave Club and Warby Parker for inspiration. Their business models are more in line with L’Heure Luxe, where quality is offered for a fair price relative to the competition. To accomplish this, L’Heure doubles down on Swiss watchmaking tradition as evident in its bold flag logo.
Tom takes hints from digital marketing giants Ryan Holiday, Gary Vaynerchuck, and Seth Godin. He absorbs one book each month to feed an ever more efficient lifestyle. Working in sprints, projects like L’Heure Luxe come to realization via snippets of hard work. Internalizing the fact that consumers are increasingly wary of what they are actually getting when purchasing a product, Tom constantly brainstorms ways in which the genuineness of L’Heure can be communicated. Strong background knowledge of digital marketing is at his disposal. If you have the means and truly admire the brand and what it stands for, a L’Heure Luxe timepiece awaits you on some shelf in Switzerland.
All canonical watch companies were, at some point, unknown. With time, they gained trust and evolved along with the aesthetics of their fine-tuned products. To invest in a L’Heure is to invest in Tom Osborne’s vision for the watch industry and the future of luxury.
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I acknowledge that a very narrow audience is able to indulge in such lifestyle amenities. It is my hope that this article offered insight into an entrepreneur’s personal project journey and a niche industry more than it may have appeared to normalize extravagant goods. Consumer, capital, and environmental ethics are always a careful consideration in my writing.
This post first appeared on Medium, which I’ve steadily relocated content from for self-hosting.
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July 5, 2017
Dredged up this txt file from one of my λ folders in iA Writer. I have a trove of similar writings scattered about, and, as with this one, I can’t be 100% certain of the actual creation date. The file says it was created on July 5, 2017 at 11:39, but the words themselves could have very well been drafted in something like Apple Notes and copied into iA Writer at a later date. Because this is the only timestamp I have to go off of, I’m backdating this post accordingly. This same logic will apply to other posts—if I can find a plausible creation date, I’ll go with it. Otherwise I may catapult old musings into the present, likely referencing the fact that they have fermented a bit.
As you can see, I’m currently uploading this on September 14, 2023… a full 6 years later. It’s an effort to pad out my site archive with the chronological evolution of my writing style and perception of the world. I’m being indiscriminate with what makes it onto the site. The main criterion is that posts should be interesting enough should someone land on them—said reader should be curious enough to begin to read, even if they give up. It’s easy to slip into the abyss of these ligature-less letters.
The Romance
The romance began when twenty one pirates licked the moon and it rained silver spoons onto the desert floor. A monkey howled with a twinkle in his eye as he sat in the corner, wheat on rye. Buttered barley and crispy oats. The man with the purple hat lay sideways among the stars and quietly wondered where his thirteen daughters were. Perhaps a piglet yawns or writes an email in the corridor but who would know save his feminine friend with lipstick as red as tomato soup. Soup thick with tongues chafing and liquids splayed across a tense surface eaten by the clasped flesh of a rotten peel. The backseat kind where you keep your millions and a crawfish looking for a thrill. His mind spilled into your palms and the boy wept. Why is it so that a room with thirty colors could be so bland. As bland as the rumbling of a pebble in a firm breast. Take half off of that shirt which hath been forgiven the stains of romance—for what is romance but the careful footwork of a severed bicycle pedal.
Twice came the oceans and they choose to forever scrape a charcoal dream across the sky. Always wonder, always wonder why.
More Time
If there were more time in the day I would bury a fur coat and mark it with a curly shaped rope which once ceased the breath of a small spade. Many moons have called and swords dance in between serrated teeth. Sometimes when bags choose to open and out whips the scent of a caramel whisper, she will clench dolphins and ride her golden letter into the black of night. The sparrow clips its wings and drowns in a cloud of desperation within a world of blue and sun shines upon those who eat themselves from broken piers. Take hers over your shoulder with a grain of saffron and sparkling bronze. She listens… she listens.
He Was Born
He was born on a rainy rock. Please, please he bellowed. A lip rubs his cheek and a binocular hangs off a distant stick. Shut the door and batten the rubber touch of appetite. Thick grows the mind with ivy spiraling into nothing. Nothing. For every waking child pumps into a drum of viscosity with the sound of a trodden rodent. If so many are meant to love, why does the sky have but two? Lift into the bony breath of a siren the word of your mother and spin a top laden time and time again with the kindred twigs of fermented memories. Drive into the canal and remove from within a writhing remembrance of things to come. A kitten screams. And when it reaches the surface, a man tastes his knuckle and hears the salt. A shaven salt.
Poetry
August 30, 2016
The following are class notes taken during Professor Purvi Parikh’s Modernity and the Death of God.
16 08 30
Religion is acknowledgement of a guiding entity separate from that of the individual, be it a collective soul, nature, God, gods, goddesses, idols, or doctrines.
Hi! I enjoyed learning about Religions of India last year with you and decided to declare a Religion Studies minor, which is why I am taking this class. I am a Media & Communications major and hope to incorporate this knowledge into my future work as a journalist and documentarian. — ███ Littrell
16 09 01
Assumptions of modernity:
Modernity has a long history of being defined in different ways:
Kant’s idea of immaturity relates complacency with doctrine.
16 09 06
Religion:
Approaches to religion:
16 09 08
Conceptual, normative, and explanatory issues complicate religion.
Protestant Reformation:
(16th century)
Dichotomies:
Secularism is necessary for direct-access democracy. There are two forms:
- Common ground—based on beliefs.
- Independent ethic—based on reason.
Seek the overlapping consensus.
Citizenship: equality, freedom, individualism.
16 09 13
Secularism does not ensure tolerance.
16 09 15
Secularization and religious revival.
Secularization Theory:
- Structural differentiation
- Privatization of religion
- Decline of religion
Rise of new religious movements in the 1980s.
De-privatization of religion.
Public role of religion in modernity:
- Start new debates.
- Take public stands.
- Critique modern values.
- Don’t impose norms or agendas.
- Mobilize on the basis of issues.
- Outcome dense matter. (?)
16 09 22
Talal Asad asserts that religion is constantly changing and is an important part of public debate, contrary to popular secular belief.
16 09 27
Asad asserts that human rights are inherently connected to civil rights.
16 09 29
Sabr (صَبْرٌ): Endurance, perseverance, persistence.
Agency, freedom, resistance to subordination.
16 10 04
Perspectives on agency:
- Conventional: Capacity to act from one’s will in the absence of authority.
- Saba Mahmood: Capacity for action enabled by subordination.
16 10 06
- Peace of Westphalia (1948)—The result of warring among Christians brought state sovereignty and religious freedom.
- Ottoman Empire (1299-1922)—The decline of the Ottomans led to English state recognition through secular statehood.
- Treaty of Versailles (1919)—Developed nation-states and the notion of the minority.
16 10 13
The Impossibility of Religious Freedom:
Lived religion, religious vs secular, public vs private, dogma, pluralism, mainstream vs personal, thought vs action, orthodoxy vs orthopraxy, first amendment, high vs low iconography, credibility, authority.
16 10 18
Religious freedom is impossible because it would require a universal definition of religion.
16 11 03
16 11 08
- Wendy Brown—Tolerance is not freedom
- Depoliticization, personal ethic vs political discourse, post-9/11
- Substituting emotional vocabulary for political problems (?)
School
April Littrell