The luxury of expressing passion. I was lucky. As a kid I developed a knack of having my cake AND eating it.  Something to do with survival as the youngest child I think. Then school came and I wasn’t happy – so I negotiated to make it better – did a new course no-one had done before because I was passionate about it more than anything else.  I gained the support of those around me to make it happen. University beckoned – I went but felt like a passenger and spent my time indulging in sport because I wasn’t getting much from Engineering (except the practical parts where we made things).  It was the sport that drove a desire to work differently – to work at something which ignited the same passion.  I left early to start a business and ended up making a watchstrap made from Velcro and polypropylene webbing. That’s how Animal was born – out of passion and sport. I made watchstraps on an old sewing machine because I wanted to know how to make the best one possible – the toughest, most comfortable, best looking.  I travelled the length and breadth of the country selling them to retailers who would repeatedly say “I’m not a jeweller, why would I want to sell watchstraps” but passion won through in the end, they bought them and now they sell watches too. 

There’s no feeling in the world like the one you have when someone finally says yes and you walk away with an order and work out that the profit is more than the petrol. That’s a future. Making and selling what I was passionate about allowed me to get involved in all the sports I loved because I understood their finer details, I got to ride with the pro’s the organisers, the movers and shakers and it meant I could indulge my passion for sport and run a business.  It doesn’t take a genius to work out why I enjoyed running that business as much as I did.  Others who worked with us shared the ride and were more passionate about it than any other job they’d had too. Visitors would often ask how we got our staff to be so motivated – at the time we didn’t have the answer but looking back it’s obvious. I was accused of being too passionate more times than I can remember and was made to feel like I was doing something wrong. Then you leave and there’s a massive hole – you get another job or start a different business but it’s different… there’s a sense of only using part of your knowledge – it feels incomplete and creates a yearning to get the old feeling back.

So that’s what Alex and I have done – ditched the safety net and put all our eggs into a new basket – one that’s more fulfilling than I can possibly describe. Running Elliot Brown is the best feeling in the world. The passion is burning, it’s being poured into watches that are the essence of our talent.  We’re building a great new brand – doing things no-one else is doing, like the special motion-damped stainless steel movement casing to help our watches withstand huge shocks. You can tell when products come about as a result of undiluted obsession. They’re the ones that make the edges of your mouth curl up a little bit, they are inherently right, give great pleasure and last for years.