CwW Spotlight Chris Vail

Chris Vail
Owner, Lew & Huey Watch Company

When Chris "Doc" Vail became frustrated at the lack of affordable automatic chronograph watches on the market, he decided to design his own. Vail is provocative, straight forward, and assertive, and he is our latest CwW Spotlight.

Q: Tell us a bit about your background. How did you decide you wanted to design watches?

A: Long story, but to try to make it short...I spent my career in sales. I was a rock star early on, but took a wrong turn, then the recession started, and it's been one long rough patch ever since. I lost a lot of what I once had. I ended up in a job I absolutely hated, when a friend of mine told me about his brother in law, who started an ecommerce business out of his basement, and is now raking in millions. It sounded better than working for people I despised who treated me like shit and paid me even worse.

I was actually looking into a completely different industry and product when I got fired. The next day, the water heater broke, and a day later my watch stopped. It was sort of a "Eureka!" moment. I never really "wanted to design watches". What I wanted was to do something I enjoyed doing, and it just turned out to be starting a watch brand. I'd never designed anything before.

Q: What was your first watch?

A: Pretty sure I had a Mickey Mouse watch as a kid. Think it was a Timex. 

I'm sure I had a bunch of crap watches along the way, but the first watch I remember wanting and buying was the Casio AMW 320. I was in the Army, and a lot of the guys in my unit wore them, or G-Shocks, but I always preferred the thinner case and the simpler, mostly analog face on the AMW. I've had two of them, and still think they're one of the best bang-for-the-buck watches you can own. I just did a giveaway with one to celebrate 5,000 posts on Watchuseek.com. $50 worth of awesome on a strap. Ya can't beat it with a stick.

Lew and Huey Riccardo Automatic

Q: What is the origin of the brand and its interesting logo?

A: A lot of things - it's complicated...

I've been involved in other businesses, and found it can be really hard to pick a great name that isn't already being used, the domain isn't already taken, etc. Case in point, I was going to call the brand "Lucky Star", but there's a guy in California who'd trademarked that name for a line of children's watches. He wasn't even using it any more, but when I called him to see if he'd give up the trademark so I could use it, he threatened to sue and hung up on me. 

When I first started looking into the watch biz, I noticed all the online chatter about "Germasian" and "Mushroom" brands - watches made in Asia, mostly China, with Chinese components, yet the brands pretend to be European. I found it funny. I thought, "Screw it, I'm not going to do something fake. I'm going to do something different. I'll come up with a name that embraces the fact I'm doing final assembly in China, rather than have people call BS". 

Even though I was getting WAY ahead of myself, it also occurred to me that the brand could end up being BIG - I mean, why not? And if it did get big, it could be pirated, so I wanted to find a name with an easy Chinese translation, in order to make it easier to enforce the trademarks I'd be filing in China. 

So I'm sitting there struggling to figure out a name, and at the same time I'm reading the criticism of Germasian brands, and I'm figuring out I'll have to do Chinese assembly if I want to keep the prices affordable. It just seemed obvious to start looking for a Chinese phrase, but if I was going to do that I should find one with a positive meaning. You don't want your factory workers assembling "Flaming Turd" or "Dead Tooth" watches. And as long as I was looking for something with a positive meaning, why not find something that has some meaning for me?

I spent a couple of days searching Chinese translations for various English phrases. My idea was to find a phrase in Chinese that sounded like a couple of names in English, like my take on "Baume et Mercier" or "Johnston & Murphy", or whatever. And then I found it - luen huey - "Lew & Huey".

Sure, people make jokes about the ducks, or Huey Lewis, but It means reincarnation. I don't believe in it literally, but my life has been a series of second acts - me constantly having to figure out a "plan B", attempting to reinvent myself after a setback - and I planned to make this my ultimate, in your face, kiss my ass plan B. 

You're firing me? Fine, I'm gonna show you I not only know how to sell, I know how to run a business and have happy customers. Your company sucks. It's a complete train wreck. Go fuck yourself. I'm out! I was really angry about the way things were going, so I just said, "Fuck it, let it all hang out."

Why a barking dog? Is he a robot? Is that tail picking up WIFI or is it just wagging? I dunno. I want people to make up their own stories to explain it.

I like dogs, better than most people actually. I have a real way with them, and it's gotten to the point where I just tell people I was a dog in a former life, I'm the dog whisperer, whatever. In my head, that dog is "Sparky" - he's a robot dog, but he's got a real dog's soul. He's every dog I've ever had that I eventually had to put down when they got sick or old. I brought 'em all back. Reincarnated, for a second act, just like I'm doing. 

The name, the dog logo - it's my way of expressing an idea - you want people to think you're special because of your watch? Get over it. This watch isn't about that. No one's looking at your watch besides you anyway. I want people to look at it and smile. In a small way, I want the message to be life-affirming. Don't take it too seriously, it's just a watch. Have fun with it. How can you look at your watch, see a robot dog with a wifi tail and not smile a little? Screw being all serious. Life should be fun.

Lew and Huey Acionna

Q: At CwW, we have a phrase we use for the watch we go to when no other piece in our collection works. We call this watch our 'Daily Default' or DD. What is your daily default?

A: Honestly, I don't really have one. I wear whatever I feel like after staring at my watchbox for 10 seconds. 

I think I'll have 15 watches in my collection by the end of this year, which includes all the L&H prototypes. Most days I'm wearing something I designed. If I wasn't the owner of a micro-brand with 9 of my own designs in my watch box, and you put a gun to my head and said "pick one" - it'd be tough, but I'd probably pick my Certina DS-1. I wouldn't say it's my favorite watch, but sometimes I have to pretend I'm a grown-up, and it's the only one that can pull it off. But it's not a watch you'll wear mowing the lawn or at the gym. If I never needed to look presentable, I'd probably go for the Seiko SKX007 - that's a badass mofo, and also a helluva lot of watch for under $200. 

Someday I won't give a shit about looking presentable.

Q: Lew & Huey has a unique style and philosophy, tell us about both.

A: Some people say they can see a "Lew & Huey Style" emerging when they look at my designs. I don't see it. The only thing I know for sure they have in common is that in each case, when I started designing I was trying to answer a question. Like, "why aren't there many (any) affordable mechanical chronographs?" That was a big one, and answering it was as much a math problem as it was a design challenge. It also made me focus on the economics of the business before I started thinking about what the watch would look like, which I think is a big pitfall for other would-be micro-brand founders. Too many start designing with no idea what their costs are going to be, what the final retail price target is, etc. They do it backwards, from a business perspective. I do it backwards, from a watch-nerd perspective. I don't design anything before I know the numbers.

With the Acionna, I had a general idea of what I wanted, it was "what would the ultimate all-arounder look like?", but I couldn't really get my hands around it. I ran a design contest on Watchuseek, when I saw something I liked I grabbed at it and massaged it until I had the Acionna. The design started with a guy named Bill Cunningham, who's like a mad genius. He's made his own custom chronograph case out of raw steel, and he's laser printing his own dials. His design rendering was one of the roughest submissions, but I saw the potential in it. I wanted the angular shape of a Stowa Seatime, but with an internal bezel and the 3-6-9-12 numbering of a Pilot. Bill's design was a real tool-watch, it looked very industrial, I thought if I could smooth it out and polish it up, it would rock. People seem to really like the result.

With the Spectre, and this kinda starts to get into the philosophy, I just got bored looking at all the Fliegers - they all looked the same! You look at all the Rolex Sub homages - all the same! PAM homages, all the same! It goes on and on. But the Fliegers always made me scratch my head, because so many people seem to love 'em, and I can barely tell them apart. I wanted to do something pilot-y, but blend in elements of the new and the old. I took the Flieger B dial layout, replaced the simpler markers with Tag Carrera chrono-style numbers, added a retro-70's barrel-shaped case, radial brushing, sunburst pattern, notched strap - BOOM! - Spectre.

Maybe that's the L&H style - grab a bunch of stuff I like from other designs, and re-combine it in a way that holds together and looks cohesive, rather than just being a Franken-design. In every model, there's a "tip of the hat" to other designs I like and admire, but I'm trying to take those flavors and blend them into my own brew.

Sounds corny, doesn't it?

Let me try again. What's the style? Sporty-casual. Fun. Not too serious. What's the philosophy? You're not the boss of me. I'm gonna sell a kick ass watch for not a lot of money. You don't like it? Go pound sand. You don't like the name or the logo? Fine, don't buy my watches. Go buy a Rolex if brand names mean so much to you.

Q: where do you think the watch industry is headed? Design, branding, etc.

A: I think the future is bright, honestly. 

In the macro, I see upward price pressure driven by ETA and the Swiss. That's a rising tide that lifts all ships. Miyota just raised its prices. Why? Because they can. Why? Because when oil goes up people switch to natural gas, and then that goes up. Same thing with ETA and the Japanese movements. They all go up together.

But the Chinese are constantly upgrading their capabilities and their QC. And they don't mind selling you a watch for $100 that should really be $500 if it were Swiss or Japanese. So that puts downward price pressure on the market.

I think there's a golden age coming, during which you'll see unbelievable bargains with surprising quality. Either that, or we might have just seen the end of it (yes, I know I'm contradicting what I just said). Seagull is sending out some funny signals, screwing their smaller customers, and starting to look like the ETA of China. We'll have to wait and see how it all shakes out. Getting the Riccardo made with the Seagull ST19 was less fun than wrestling a badger out of your underwear drawer.

Right now, the most exciting trend - to me - is the emergence of so many micro-brands. There's just so much going on in the under $1000 space, or even the under $600 space. There are a lot of brands offering fantastic designs that are also fantastic bargains - G.Gerlach, Bernhardt, Obris Morgan, Maranez, Helson, Halios, and there are more coming on line, Aevig, Melbourne, Boston Watch Company, Makara - too many to name, and I know I'm forgetting some notables. 

I've gotten to know a handful of these guys - I talk to Fred at Bernhardt, Krys from G.Gerlach, Suj from Melbourne and Chip from Aevig. It's like a little informal fraternity I'm in, with no initiation or crazy shit with paddles. Some of these guys actually bought my watch - it's unbelievable to me sometimes. A year ago I knew almost nothing about watches. Now guys who own watch companies are telling me they love what I've done. It's unreal.

Q: It seems everyone has their 'holy grail' watch, so what one watch, that you don't already own, is YOUR 'holy grail'?

A: I keep coming back to the Omega Planet Ocean 42mm with Orange bezel and what look to me like pink numbers. It's the first watch I ever went ga-ga for. There's just something about it. I tried to convince myself I didn't like that helium valve at 10, but I've seen them in AD's, and every time I do I get all gooey inside. It's love. I can't help it. 

But I own a brand that doesn't plan to break the $1000 barrier, at least not anytime soon, so I can't wear a $3,000-$4,000 watch. Can you imagine?

"Oh, you own a watch company, is that one of yours on your wrist?"

"This? Oh, no, this costs as much as your mortgage. My watches cost much less."

So my new grail is a watch I haven't designed or even conceived of yet. It'll be better looking than the PO, and retail for less than $1k. When I figure out what it'll look like and when I can make it, you'll probably here me laughing from wherever you are.

Q: You are very open about being known as somewhat of a hooligan within the industry: Why? 
 

A: I'm not trying to manufacture a reputation for myself, but I think that's how people see me. 

I've found life is full of people who want to tell you, "Sit down, keep quiet, stay in line, wait your turn, don't stand out, follow the rules." But I tried that. It got me nowhere, and it was boring as hell. At times I was down, and once I realized I wasn't out, and that I could get back up, it was liberating. I realized "the rules" are written not so you can win or lose, but to keep us in line, to get us to conform, to play nice in the sandbox. Don't rock the boat. Don't upset anyone's apple cart. Don't challenge the status quo.

Lew and Huey Spectre Pilot

I don't live that way. And I don't act that way. Screw that. You say I can't play? I don't deserve to be in the game? I say I can, and I do. Try to stop me from playing. Better bring your friends. You're gonna know you were in a fight. Just sayin'.

I speak my mind. Sometimes I'll say something, and someone will get their pants in a twist. It cracks me up. Somewhere there's a little girl in a wheelchair who dreams of dancing, and you're getting wrapped around the axle because some guy you don't know said something you don't agree with - on the internet??? 

C'mon bro, grow a set. Grow up. Don't think you can get me to behave the way you want because you remind me I'm the "brand ambassador" - my brand doesn't need an ambassador, but if it did, I'm doing EXACTLY what I'd want the ambassador to be doing - living life on my terms. This is what the brand is about. 

Final Thoughts: 

Some people are going to read this and think I'm out of my mind, or full of shit. For some reason it pisses people off that I had the balls to be here and do what I'm doing. 

What's stopping you? You get one ticket for this ride, and you don't know how long it will last. No one ever wrote a song about the people who stayed in line and waited their turn. 

I lost a really close friend who dropped dead of a heart attack at 37. The day before he went to work, came home, ate dinner, and watched TV. 

You're gonna die, maybe tomorrow. Forget who or what you were yesterday. How you live today is up to you. 

Check out CwW's review on the Lew and Huey Riccardo Automatic

Thank you much, Chris!