A friend of mine has been shopping for a watch from Switzerland’s most famous brand as a college graduation present for months with no success, as stores are empty—even in Switzerland. Other top luxury brands of mechanical watches have also been disrupted by supply chain issues dating back to the pandemic.
But there is no supply chain in watchmaking quite like the one Vortic Watches relies on. The Colorado-based company has been on my personal watch lover radar for years, but I just got to tour their headquarters and manufacturing facility in Ft. Collins, outside Denver, and it was eye opening. The current facility just opened in 2022, and this intimate experience is offered to anyone, not limited to journalists as some watchmakers are. Also, Ft. Collins is an awesome small city, an amazing weekend getaway and vibrant college town famed for its craft beer, craft distilleries and farm to table cuisine. I’ll be doing an in-depth travel piece on Ft. Collins here at Forbes shortly, but Vortic was impressive enough to warrant its own story, and unlike some other brands they actually have watches you can buy—including an all-new lower priced line, launching shorty.
The Vortic story goes back a century, to the golden age of domestic watch production, in the early to mid-1900s, when several companies in the United States led the world in the manufacture of mechanical pocket watches, often with cases made of precious metals and sometimes bejeweled. These were the watches our grandfathers and great grandfathers got as their graduation gifts, or wedding presents, the watches that kept railroads on time and helped keep American industry chugging along. More than a hundred million watches were produced, and many survive to this day, while others were dismantled so their cases could be sold for gold or silver, leaving the mechanical innards as throwaways many considered worthless. But not R.T. Custer and Tyler Wolfe, classmates at Penn State, who came up with the idea of reviving the domestic mechanical watch industry. After some research, they decided the best way to do this would be to “upcycle” these millions of existing examples of fine craftsmanship, repairing the movements and putting them in new cases to be worn on the wrist.
In the beginning Vortic used 3D printers to craft new cases, but today they do ultra-precise machining and make cases out of titanium or bronzed stainless steel, and you can see the meticulous process in person in Ft. Collins. In a watchmaking lab like those in Switzerland, behind glass and specially sealed and filtered for dust, you can see the watchmakers at their benches restoring the movements, almost of all which are unique, even if they come from the same series once produced by companies such as Waltham, Elgin and Hamilton. These restored movements (all manual) are tested (water resistant to 2 atmospheres and accurate to 5 seconds per day), installed in new cases and mounted on watch straps, with a variety of options available. Typically, the former “pocket” watches are mounted with their distinctive crowns up at the top, and the cases have transparent skeleton backs so you can see the movement at work. The watches are on the larger side, but not as big as you might think when you think pocket watches (I was surprised). Watch sizing back then was on a scale of 0-20 and most of the models Vortic sells are 10, 12 or 16 size, something for every wrist.
Once in a while they are able to produce a series of similar watches and this is the case for their Military Edition, made from watches produced under contract to identical standards for the United States Army Air Corp in WWII. Because these timepieces were installed in the gimbal systems of aircraft such as the B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator bombers for navigation proposes, a large number were made, and they have been able to source multiple units. A new batch is released for sale every Veteran’s Day (the current 2023 edition is sold out). In what is likely the company’s most successful product placement to date, Hollywood star John Krasinski wore one on his wrist while playing CIA officer Jack Ryan in the series of the same name for Amazon Pime Video, adapted from Tom Clancy bestsellers such as The Hunt For Red October.
In addition, one unique aspect of Vortic is that they do conversions of watches for customers who have acquired or inherited a pocket watch of their own, often a family heirloom no longer used. If you have one of these at home, you can send it to them, choose the case color and strap, and have it refurbished and turned into a wristwatch, an increasingly large portion of their business as word spreads. They have a link to a pocket watch database on their site so if you have a watch, you can learn more about its provenance and history.
Vortic can produce about 25 watches each month, which go on sale on their website as one-of-a-kind offerings, and most run between $3-$5,000 though they go up to around $7,000 based on rarity of the movement. There are typically a handful of models available at any time, and you can sign up for email notifications when new models drop if you are waiting for the perfect match. The special Military Edition goes for $12,000 and restoration of customer watches is typically around $3-$4,000.
Because of the limits to painstaking production and hand restoration, Vortic recently launched a sub-brand, Colorado Watch Company, with the goal of making more affordable, new mechanical watches domestically. However, there are certain parts they have not yet been able to source here, and according to the company the models are currently about 90% made in the U.S. They buy mechanical movements from a company in Arizona, make the cases and other parts, and started with two models, a Field Watch at $1,000 and a military-style CGT model with black dial for $1,500. They raised $300,000 on Kickstarter and are currently filling those pre-production orders, with the plan to begin direct online sales to the general public this June (2024).
As a watch fan who has toured factories in Switzerland, I really enjoyed visiting Vortic and seeing both its ultra-modern facilities and classic posters and advertisements for the watches it sources, a historic reminder that “America wasn’t assembled, it was built.” They are currently turning one room at the facility, right in the heart of Ft. Collins’ very walkable Old Town, into a mini-museum. While all slightly different, the watches have a similar look that is like nothing else I have seen in the industry, and which I personally love. I recommend visiting when near Ft. Collins (you can schedule tours online) even if you have no interest in buying, because you will learn a lot—and then you can go for one of the many standout local beers or whiskies (there’s a lot more tourism info on the city’s visitors’ bureau website).