Since we retired the MING 17.03 GMT earlier this year, we’ve received a steady stream of e-mails, messages, Instagram DM’s asking: “When’s the next 17 series watch coming out?” We’ve even been accused more than once of pulling a bait-and-switch and abandoning the 17-series entirely. Well, I can assure everyone waiting with bated breath that this is not the case. The 17-series lives on and the next watch is in production as you read this post.
While we pored over the designs for the next watch; got into shouting matches over radial flips and the merits of matching the pouch stitching to the dial colour; and drove our production partners up the wall, we also looked over feedback on the 17.01 and 17.03 GMT and asked ourselves how we could improve the overall product and ownership experience across the board. Here’s some of the changes that are a result of this introspection.
Straps: We provided multiple straps with the 17.01 and 17.03 in order to provide versatility and the ability to change things up to suit wardrobe choice/wearing occasion. However, this meant that we couldn’t ship each 17-series watch with Jean Rousseau Paris straps and had to look elsewhere.
Discussions with 17-series owners has shown us that most are happy to trade versatility for wearing comfort and we’ve listened: from here on out, all 17-series watches will ship with a handmade Jean Rousseau Paris strap as standard. We’ve taken extra care to curate the best strap possible for each watch but you can always pick up one of our seasonal specials if you want to change things up later.
Packaging: As collectors, our biggest pain point is managing the logistics and warehousing of all our watch boxes and packaging. This is why we strive to make packaging at MING as minimal and eco-friendly as possible; no pleather or foam for us. With the 17.03 GMT, we experimented with recycled wood for our outer packaging but the boxes seemed to have a very short half-life in the hands of DHL and while this did not affect the safety of the watches themselves, we also want our customers to enjoy their unboxing experience.
The next 17-series watch will feature redesigned packaging that is minimal and eco-friendly but far more resilient than recycled wood. In fact, we've moved away from wood entirely to further reduce carbon footprint. The new packaging is intended to provide the best unboxing experience we can, short of having a retail store and delivering the watches ourselves.
Warranty: This one is simple – each watch will now come with a 2-year limited mechanical warranty. As always, this covers any mechanical issue that occurs during normal use and operations and not wear and tear or damage due to abnormal use.
Warranty Card: Our watches may be mechanical, but all our records and infrastructure is as digital as possible. This means that all warranty information is stored digitally, at least until the coverage period lapses. Our metal warranty cards were included with each watch simply because they’re cool and we didn’t have a good enough answer to “Why not?”; until now.
We’ve had a few reports of warranty cards coming into contact with watches and leaving marks and scratches. While these were accidents resulting from hastily packing or storing the watch and its accessories, it’s still painful. To completely eliminate the risk of these accidents repeating, future watches will no longer ship with a metal warranty card. Warranty information will now be included in the thank you note and operation instructions and as always, we will continue to hold digital records.
I’m sure some of you are wondering if the next 17-series is a time-only or has a complication, if it's dressy like 17.01 or sporty like 17.03, or if there will be a blue dial etc, but we don’t want to spoil the fun just yet. These details and more will follow at launch; just keeping watching this space and our social media pages for more updates.
- PRS
Published: May 2019