Availability

Hello there,

Over the last few weeks, there are people asking “where / when can I get the watch?” by E-Mail, on Facebook or Twitter, and we are very happy to see that people seem to like what we are doing So if you’re asking yourself, what’s happening right now: We are currently working on the ZERO Gravity, and also on the special edition watch, like described in that other post. There are startups who would to take pre-orders at this point, but we prefer to wait until you can see the real product, as you only have seen concept pictures so far. Anyway – right now, it looks like we are finalizing the ZERO Gravity around Oct. / Nov. 2010, and start selling it around that time. It’s possible that the other model will be finished even earlier, we don’t know yet. But we’ll update this post to let you know. Feel free to comment on this post, if there are any questions!

Development progress (A)

Being faced with plenty of good challenges for the past couple of months, we are pleased that development is going on track and the watch is currently in production. Having mentioned challenges, I thought it would be great to share with you, our readers, a glimpse at the difficulties we faced so as to build a better and much improved watch.

Before we started developing ZERO Gravity, we were crystal clear that our mission is to create a very desirable watch for our customers, both in terms of appearance and technical aspects. Starting with the latter, the biggest problem we encountered was in the technical aspects of transforming a concept product into a real product. Based on the original design, we noticed that it was not possible to attach Silicone rubber to a piece of Stainless steel metal without the use of glue, screws or other gimmicks. Using screws seems the most obvious solution for most watches but we wanted to keep & improve our original idea of having zero loose parts. Adhesive glue was not an option either since the watch strap is based on a bracelet concept.. prolonged pulling and stretching will affect the stickiness and eventually tear the rubber and metal apart. There were many other options like slipping the metal through a channel in the rubber or hiding the metal entirely inside the rubber (like wearing socks). But none of these were convincing enough because it doesn’t provide enough stability to the watch and it changes our original design notably. Even if we manage to solve all these issues, how are we going to provide an easy way for our customers to change the battery or service the watch when there are problems? We made this possible by introducing an inter-changeable concept of the clock body. Simply remove the clock body from the rubber strap and you’ll have the luxury of changing multiple color straps to match clothing on different occasions. The problem regarding battery change was also solved by implementing a snap case on the back of the removable clock body.

Going deeper into the technical details, we had to choose between different types of rubber material such as Polyurethane (PU Rubber), Silicone Rubber and other types of rubber (list goes on). Being no rubber expert, we spent plenty of time researching and going through different types of rubber samples, each having their individual advantages and disadvantages. Our factory recommended us to use PU Rubber as it is the most commonly used rubber in watches and it is much cheaper than Silicone Rubber. However, we found out that PU Rubber is not protected against UV Rays, which means it will be discolored upon exposure to sunlight and could only last for around 18 months. So we asked ourselves: Is that what our customers want? To have a watch that could only last 18 months? Can we offer something better in terms of quality and value? The answer to that is Silicone rubber, which on the other has major benefits such as 1) Resists the deterioration effects of sunlight and rainwater, 2) Odorless, tasteless and does not support growth of bacterial, 3) Excellent resistance to tear & most chemicals, etc etc.

Apart from the rubber, choosing the perfect type of stainless steel is vital to the final product. Comfort and weight are the main issues here and the choice of metal directly affects these issues. If you ask me, I would definitely prefer wearing a light-weighted watch – compared – to a heavy-weighted stone watch. We had to make sure that the metal is thin and light enough so the wearer feels comfortable, and at the same time keeping the metal strong enough to prevent damages from prolonged pulling and stretching. I must admit that finding the correct dimensions to the metal was hard, but it was worth every effort when I know it will be comfortable for the wearer. There are many other issues not mentioned yet but I will leave them for part b of this post – to be honest, because it’s already 3am now -

Feel free to leave some comments or suggestions, we always welcome them!

new app version

Hello friends of Zerowatches,

the new version of our iPhone App was just approved and can be downloaded for free. There are some big improvements like: Triple Time Zones, Screen Dimming, an Auto-lock setting, new colors, new font when using iOS 4, and last but not least iPhone 4 Display support (no, i don’t use the silly marketing expression “Retina” here) So, if you are one of the lucky ones already carrying around an iPhone 4 (no dropped calls on mine, btw ) you will experience a huge visual improvement at first sight.

new model

Recently, we started designing a special edition watch that we hope to manufacture together with ZERO Gravity. Keeping ’special’ in mind, our new model has to be bold in terms of its visual expression, yet at the same time focused on the brand’s minimal concept.

As a start, we collected samples of straps we are intending to use: Metallic Mesh / Leather (Picture below). Both materials seems to look good so we are still deciding on which to choose from. Mesh will probably have a very sleek & cool look.. leather will probably have a more ‘classic’ look. If we choose mesh, it will most likely come in 2 different strap colors (black / silver).

Business card: printed!

Our business cards as seen on previous post are finally printed! The alignment of circles are slightly changed so as to improve the visual of our cards. Now we have bigger fonts and it feels more ‘comfortable’ when you look at it. We’re loving the circular shaped cards since it strongly emphasize on our brand name ZERO and also the swirl logo. Personally, I find it easy to read the address, telephone and email. What do you guys think?

App update soon!

Hi!

lately we had been working on an update for our iPhone App, which will be out soon. This upcoming version of the App will not only support the iPhone 4 Retina Display resolution, but also contain some enhanced graphics, additional color themes, like metal, black, strawberry, pink and grape (suggested by one of the users), and it will finally have *drumroll* ..time-zones ! iOS4 will also support custom fonts, that means the app will look like it was meant to be.

It will still be free, so stay tuned for the release!

New Logo

Hi guys, as you may have noticed, we made a change on the logo. Better now before it’s too late, right? This version should look more universal, more professional, and less sportive. After some discussion we came to the conclusion that we couldn’t imagine other watch models, or even other products carrying the old logo type because it was too special in some way. We also removed the word “watches”, because who knows where all this leads to, maybe we want to produce other things than watches some day. The swirl will definately stay – not in the logo, but it will serve as an eye-catcher. Well, I hope you like the new creation! Here’s a comparison and the new logo in use on our business cards (which are not printed yet).

SAMPLE PACKAGING BOX

Hey guys!

Haven’t been posting updates recently since we are extremely busy with the progress of our watch / packaging sample and also the programming of our website.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, we received a packaging sample from the factory. The size of the box isn’t perfect since it’s too small for the watch, but its construction should be more or less the same!

The ZERO Gravity watch could be wrapped around the center stem as you can see from the picture below, and the instruction booklet will be hidden inside the compartment.

Check out the box:

ZERO Gravity IN GERMANY SIDESTEP MAGAZINE

We’re featured in the upcoming Sept/Oct edition of Germany sidestep magazine!

As our vision to develop simple, sexy and trendy watches, I can say this is a really good start for ZERO Germany

ZERO iPhone App

Our iPhone app is available in the AppStore now! I just managed to test it a couple of hours ago and everything works incredibly well.

There are a total of 6 background color themes available to choose from (Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, Orange and Black). Also, there is an option to turn the timing (Hour & Min) in the middle ON/OFF. We have a lot more ideas for functionality and interactivity, which will be added in the future updates. So consider this version to be just the beginning and the basic function of the moving ZERO swirls. There will be some more really cool features! Click the icon to get it from the store, it’s free:

Credits to Robin for helping us develop the application. You can visit his website at http://www.mairdesigns.com/