Do you remember the last time you moved?
How was that experience for you?
Moving is almost always a universally-dreaded experience. There are so many aspects to moving houses — you have to pack up all your things in an organized fashion, arrange how you're going to transport all your belongings, and hire help if you need it. Considering all these things can get overwhelming fast.
Now imagine moving an entire business. We’ve been moving at Vortic for what seems like an eternity now, but the end of the tunnel is finally in sight.
That’s right, the moving process that we’ve been talking about forever is finally wrapping up, and we are excited. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss how the moving process has gone and give you an idea of what to expect on the podcast for season two.
A Change of Scenery
Welcome to Season 2 of Building a Watch Company!
Somebody stop us if we ever try to move again. Thankfully, we own the building we’re in now, so we shouldn’t need to move again for a long time. However, we would move for a good problem like scaling up to producing ten thousand watches a year. But that’s a bridge that we’ll cross when we get to it.
For now, check out Tyler’s update on the finishing touches of the big move:
“We need to talk to the city again before we hang that [sign]. We wanna backlight it and make it really cool. We're also talking about possibly hanging a large clock on the screening around our HVAC equipment on the top of the shop — that would be really cool. Overall we've still got a fair amount of finishing touches to do. There’s ‘ready to work’ which is where we're at right now, and then there's kind of fully moved in.” - Tyler Wolfe
We’re thinking it may take us almost a month to get “fully moved in,” but it’s just small things like hanging and organizing all the bins in the assembly room.
If you’ve ever moved before, you know this feeling! When you’re still living out of boxes and have yet to hang any decorations on the walls, your new home feels livable but lacking. It’s an even longer process when you’re moving a whole company.
Hanging decorations isn’t the only thing we’re doing, though. We’re also revamping the watch-making process a bit and adding on new hires:
“Derek's got a different workflow in there, and he's got different equipment in different spots. So he's still figuring out exactly what he wants to do with storage and different areas and how those are gonna work. He's got our new watchmaker Kent, which we're stoked to have out here, starting Monday. Kent moved here to Fort Collins from Flagstaff, Arizona. But yeah, a lot going on for all of us in the machine room. …. We've got different workflow, different positions of everything, different tables, and so it takes a lot.” - Tyler Wolfe
It takes a while to get used to a new work environment, even if you’re still the same company. For any readers who are considering moving or gearing up to move your company, we suggest giving yourself ample time to adjust to the change and set everything up.
A Learning Experience
Every new experience provides the opportunity to make mistakes. By making mistakes, you teach yourself new lessons on how to succeed the next time.
This long moving process has taught us a lot, but one of the main things Tyler learned from the whole process is how much time he would have to invest to simply accomplish the small things.
“I think what I learned — I underestimated all the small things and how long that would take because it really, yesterday was the first day that I was really able to sit in front of the machine and start setting up. All day. Just because there's so many little things here and there. I spent a lot of time this past weekend just standing there staring at it, thinking, what do I want to do? And that's even after I 3D-modeled the entire machine room!” - Tyler Wolfe
It’s all about getting a feel for the place — a vibe if you will. R.T. had his own input when it came to developing the vibe of his new space.
“Well, It’s almost the same as when you move your house. If you're moving your home office or even your living room, you find yourself asking, Do we want the TV on that wall, or that wall? Until you kind of put the furniture in there and see how big the couch is in relation to the room, you just don’t know. This is a much bigger, more expensive, valuable, and important decision for us than just where the couch goes. But it's kind of a similar process. Basically, the vibe — we gotta have a good vibe.” - R.T. Custer
Having a workspace that passes the vibe check is definitely important. We’ll continue applying the finishing touches to the new space, but for now, let’s move on to what you can expect from us in season 2 of Building a Watch Company.
What to Expect in Season 2 of Custer & Wolfe
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! In other words, for season two, we’re going to follow the same core formula that we had in season one.
“Once every other week, we're gonna sit down and do a little behind the scenes on what's going on. Being in a professional studio now, we’re gonna try to add a lot more B roll. We can get a bunch more kinds of behind-the-scenes footage that we can overlay on this kind of stuff. And then we're going to try to make the episodes shorter — if we're doing this really consistently, we can be a little more concise. Then for the weeks in between, we'll do just one of us.” - R.T. Custer
Tyler will continue providing updates on what’s going on in the machine room. There’s a lot of super interesting stuff happening there, so it’s exciting being able to share that with our listeners.
“We'll dig into things more specific to us. My focus is totally on the machine room, and there are a ton of little cool improvements that are probably uninteresting to our general audience, but for the people that are interested, that's our opportunity to dig a little bit deeper into specifically what we do. The devil’s in the details. It's the small things that make life better, the product better, and the company better. That's what those episodes are for.” - Tyler Wolfe
Speaking of updates, Tyler has a quick update on the machine room before we close the curtain on the first episode of season 2.
“We’ve had a job listing for a machinist live for a little while now, so thank you if you applied. We're gonna start doing interviews next week. We're looking for somebody with a lot of experience. Ideally, somebody that's already here [in Northern Colorado] — we don't necessarily want somebody to relocate, but we're not against it — to operate the machines, maintain the machine room, and have enough experience or enough training that they can make a few parts on their own.” - Tyler Wolfe
As time keeps moving forward, so does Vortic. We’re committed to keeping you updated on all sides of the business. From marketing and advertising all the way to the machine room, we want to bring you along this journey with us.
Thank you for joining us on our opening epside of season two of Building a Watch Company. We can’t wait for you to see what we have coming your way. We’ll see you next week!
Check Out Our Instagram and YouTube Channel for More Vortic Content
Moving is a huge process, and one we hope not to do for a long time.
We are so glad things are finally coming together. However, things just don’t run as smoothly when you’re still living out of boxes, and everything feels out of sorts. Anyone who’s moved houses before knows this feeling. If you’re in the middle of moving your business, you have our support!
We advise setting aside plenty of time to focus on the small details when you’re getting all set up. As you’ve already seen, we underestimated how much time we’d be spending just looking at everything.
At Vortic Watch Company, we don’t just make watches, we restore pieces of history. Vortic takes timeless, antique pocket watches and reimagines them as incredible, one-of-a-kind wristwatches. Check out our Instagram to see our featured watch of the day, and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get email notifications. Our watches don’t stick around for long!
Subscribing to Custer & Wolfe's YouTube channel will keep you informed on all things Vortic. There, we'll share everything that's happening with us, including our warehouse growth, production process, and ideas for creating an impactful business!
