Dear friends,
Time to close off what’s been a challenging year for all of us with a few updates and some good news.
I want to first apologize for the slight delays we’ve had from COVID’s impact this year. A watch needs a complex ecosystem and we and our partners are doing our best while things remain unpredictable. We appreciate the patience of customers impacted by some of these delays.
Regrettably, we’ve also had to bid farewell to Sandra, probably the most familiar name to our customers. For the last few months she has endured one too many rude (and sometimes abusive messages) sent to us via @mingwatches and hello@ming.watch. We are sad to see her go, but understand why and wish her all the best. This chain of events has lead us to rethink our distribution philosophy.
Simply, we want our watches to go to nice people - which fortunately is most of our supporters. But for the rest: no manners, no service. Going forward we reserve the right to ignore abusive messages and antisocial behaviour, cancel/refund associated orders and blacklist any such individuals. I'm sure we won't have to do this too often.
On to more positive things:
The 2020 Concept Set exceeded expectations in the Phillips x Blackbird Retrospective auction - a huge thanks to the successful bidder and everyone who made this possible. For those who have asked about a production chronograph, we want to make one, but honestly can’t commit given the present state of the world, and inability to tour with the watch.
Thank you also for the strong response to 19.05 - when we placed production orders 12 months ago, we honestly didn’t think demand would be as high given volumes for 19.01 and 19.02. As further appreciation, we have given everybody on the 19.05 waitlist priority access to our new flagship launching next year.
The 17.06 and 18.01 H41 are officially retired as open market ETA2824 costs are all over the place for smaller brands, meaning we can’t hold original pricing. And given we have more ideas than resources, it makes sense not to repeat ourselves. However, all hope is not lost as 2021 will bring:
- The final chapter of the 17-series, in several variants, with a movement unique to us
- A final run of 27.01s
- The production 27.02
- Our first collaboration piece
- The production Mosaic and flagship (finally!)
- The MING Special Projects Cave, debuting with a few historical surprises and...
- ...probably the world’s lightest mechanical watch. No plastic, no carbon, no exotic movement, sensibly sized, automatic, and plenty of crazy engineering. And it won’t cost six figures.
More details on each launch will follow via our newsletter in due course. You can subscribe at the end of this page.
Finally, we'd like to officially welcome a new team member - Sarah Tan - who has taken over from Sandra as the first point of contact at hello@ming.watch.
Happy holidays and stay safe, everybody.
-MT
Published: December 2020