Home-grown timepieces

The beginning: The Heirloom series, in both white and black watch faces, mark the start of TravisLeon as a watch company.

KAMPAR-born pilot Travis Tan first became interested in mechanical watches during a working trip to Milan, where he came across many major luxury watch brands and was fascinated by the manifold functions of the mechanical watch.

It so happened that his friend and former classmate, Leong Chee Hong, who was working as a software developer in Singapore, also had an interest in watches and had a collection of Casio’s iconic G-Shock line.

“I still collect G-Shocks by the way; it’s just that the interest has somewhat expanded to mechanical watches as well, after Tan introduced me to them,” said Leong.

The two friends were classmates while studying in Singapore and had even worked together before, hence it was no real surprise when they became partners and started their own eponymous mechanical watch company – TravisLeon.

However, before they could embark on manufacturing watches, the two friends had to learn how to assemble the different moving parts in a mechanical watch, familiarise themselves with the terminology and delve into watch design.

“It was a steep learning process, but we were lucky. My relative is a second-generation watchmaker in Hong Kong, and we were guided by him,” said Tan, who along with Leon, went through a gruelling nine-month learning process.

“We sat down to discuss the feel and direction of the watch we wanted to produce, and also listed down the emotion and styling we wanted to showcase in the timepiece,” recalled Leong.

After that, the duo drew out the initial concepts for the envisioned watch, made subsequent rounds of tweaks, and discussed their design and its limitations with the chosen manufacturer.

“The process was long and tedious, given that we were rookie watch designers, but it was definitely rewarding,” Tan said.

The outcome of that learning process is TravisLeon’s first product – the Heirloom watch which comes in two colours.

“The timepieces are meant to reflect the founders’ aim of designing a luxury wristwatch for a young professional, but without the steep price tag.

What is notable is that the Heirloom combines a Japanese movement with Swiss aesthetics.

The founders, in particular, acknowledge the huge influence Patek Philippe’s “Calatrava” timepieces from the 1930s played in their design.

“We selected the extremely smooth Japanese movement (Miyota 9015) for its extreme reliability, and also cost, because licensing a Swiss watch movement would immediately price it beyond our original intentions,” the founders explained.

The Heirloom is built in a 40mm, 316L stainless steel case or rose-gold plating, and buyers can choose either a white or black face. The whole thing is hand-assembled.

During their kickstarter funding campaign in February, the watches were specially offered from C$279 (Canadian dollar) to those who made pledges.

The duo is in discussion with retailers in Singapore to start selling the Heirloom series, and following that, they will expand into Malaysia.

“We are actually planning an aviation-style watch in the future, maybe something in the spirit of the Bell&Ross 01-03,” says Tan.

To learn more about the Heirloom series produced by TravisLeon, you can visit http://travisleon.com/.