For some time now, High-end analog watch makers have considered the rise in smartwatches as a threat to their business and the art of classic watchmaking. As a contradiction to this, a German based luxury watchmaker- Manufaktur Waldhoff have now partnered with popular smartwatch watch face maker Little Labs (widely known for their Facer watchfaces) to recreate the watchfaces of some of their upcoming Luxury watches for smartwatches based on Android Wear and Tizen Wearable platforms.
The experiment is already working well as according to a blogpost by Ariel Vardi, CEO of Little Labs, Waldhoff watchfaces were an instant hit taking them to top charts within 24 hours and Waldhoff’s Kickstarter campaign for the actual watches has already crossed 300% of their initial funding goal. You can try three of Waldhoff’s watchfaces namely Renaissance, Regent and Multimatic using facer right now on your Tizen based Gear S2 and Gear S3 by following these steps-
- Download & Install “Facer” app from the Google Play App store
- Make sure your Gear S3 or Gear S2 is connected with your smartphone through the “Samsung Gear” app & bluetooth is turned on for both your phone and smartwatch
- Download & Install “Facer Companion for Gear S2 & S3” from the Samsung Galaxy App Store
- Long press on your Gear S2/S3 smartwatch and scroll to select “Facer” as your chosen watchface
- Open the Facer App from your phone and search for Waldhoff’s watchfaces.
Waldhoff hopes that this effort will give smartwatch users a glimpse into their timepieces before making a judgement into buying the real thing. Other bigger names in the Luxury watch market such as Louis Vuitton, Tag Heuer, Montblanc, Movado, Hugo Boss, Diesel, Emporio Armani, Michael Kors, and Tommy Hilfiger have taken the radical step of manufacturing their own smartwatches. Waldhoff being a new brand in the industry (founded in 2015 by a Swiss watch designer-Nicolas Lehotzky) are taking a different approach to market analog watches in the smartwatch platform rather than the other way around.
