After one year of planning and coordinating with our Russian counterparts at K.Chaykin and endless logistical nightmares to be able to collect our watches – we finally are able to reveal the latest Arab Watch Club Joker edition – the toughest project of them all.
In 2018, during Baselworld, strolling around the majestic booths of the big brands, I encounter one of my good friends from Zurich wearing a K Chaykin original Joker however with a special case back engraved for him and a piece unique written on its case back.. I asked him, does the brand custom make special orders to collectors – and the answer was Yes.
The idea stuck to my head and a few months later I contacted the company asking them for a piece unique for myself – however I wanted to change the face of the Joker and his expressions. When I received the first render, I decided to share it with some of the collectors of the club – not really knowing whether this is something that would interest them or not – I just wanted their opinion about my piece unique – the reaction was very unexpected as they all decided they wanted to be part of this project.
I got back to Chaykin, this time asking for 5 watches and a totally different facelift of the Joker with the colors Green. Purple and black dominating the look – since these are the colors of the Real Joker after all.
One thing was bothering me; the fact that most of Chaykin Joker at that time were either in Steel or Titanium; I wanted the case to look different and not been produced before. So I asked him to propose something different to us; this is when we came up with the black coating on the steel case that supports the newly designed black dial and complements the full colors of the joker.
From there, the special edition started to shape up – we were 5 at the time and decided to share the entire project with the rest of the team; little did we know, we will reach 20 in the next hour.
As a final design tweak, we asked Chaykin to engrave our logo at the case back with everyone’s initials, or name. This is as personalized as it gets.
Only one issue – our contract stated that we will need to wait for a full year to receive the watches! that was like giving a candy to a kid and then taking it right away!! but since we were very excited with the project, we decided to get on with it and hope the excitement remains the same until 2019.
A year later, May 2019, we started receiving pictures and videos of the final work in progress of our watches; the project was shaping up and we seemed very close to the end.
However, we have faced one major hik up that we didn’t expect at all!!! Our watches were hostages in Moscow and there was no way to get them back home without us flying there in person to collect the watches – seems there was some difficulties with shipping abroad as we were advised by the brand.
Would you imagine we had to spend almost 2 months coordinating the pick ups of our 20 watches and finding the time for several collectors to travel to Moscow and have their watches collected. It was the most difficult project logistically for the club since inception.
But eventually we received the watches and started enjoying them after the excitement around them was almost going to fade away from all the hassle and struggles to have them on our wrists.
With this final release, we close our Special Editions for 2019 .. however, we will soon have a mega announcement of the most exciting and unique project ever made to date from any watch club worldwide, with one of the most prestigious brands in the industry today!!
Stay tune, this is going to be big!!!
