Hasta La Ideas

Last year, we wrote about an ambitious design student with a dream to create flexible wooden watches to replace the clunky link versions we see in too many designs. Since then, Lorenzo Buffa—the man behind the great idea—has found a manufacturer and has launched a Kickstarter campaign for The Carpenter Collection from Analog Watch Co.

At press time, the campaign goal of $10,000 had been surpassed. We took some time to catch up with the young designer and learn about what’s been going on with the project the past year and what he plans to do with the funds:

Lorenzo Buffa, founder of Analog Watch Co. and designer

Core77: What’s happened with the concept since we last spoke to you a year ago?

Lorenzo Buffa: A year ago, the project was a design thesis project. I wanted to combine my interests in materials and woodworking to prototype a product and a brand. Within the year, I’ve been working with manufacturers to understand how the industry works—things like supply chains, lead times, tooling, SKU numbers, etc. I took part in an entrepreneurship bootcamp, was awarded a fellowship and a $6,000 grant from The Corzo Center for the Creative Economy and most recently have been a part of GoodCompany Ventures 2013 accelerator.

How did you manage to find a manufacturer?

We were really fortunate to have manufacturers contact us, but they only know of the collection because of the publicity from the first Core77 article. The press from that posting brought multiple manufacturers to the table—after a few months of relationship building, we dropped some and went ahead with others.

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