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Daedalus Watches, a small company located in Buffalo, New York, is releasing their first watch – a new Swiss made dive watch called the Daedalus Dae-Diver. The watch is available now direct through their website for $1,550 USD as part of their pre-order launch campaign.

Daedalus Watches was born out of the frustrations and desires of two fellow watch enthusiasts. Being avid fans of the watch industry and specifically of watches in general, we found ourselves growing increasingly frustrated by where things were trending with watches, towards extremes in both design and price points. Designs tended to be either fairly basic, or incredibly complex. Prices seemed to follow the same extremes, with the most alarming trend being towards ever increasing prices. In addition, brands have become more conservative and less willing to take risks – reluctant to release new designs and products, and rather turning to re-releases and retro pieces. Taken together, there appeared to be a hole that was created in the market, with a lack of new, uniquely designed products at a fair price.

This lead to what seemed like just a crazy statement at the time: “we should start our own watch company and make the kinds of watches that enthusiasts like us want.” High-quality Swiss watches with good movements, original designs, and fair prices. The key to us was to find that perfect balance – that balance between the extremes: not simple but also not overly-complex. Not cheap, yet not expensive, something new and different, but not outlandishly so. This is why we chose the name Daedalus, from Greek mythology. In the most famous story, Daedalus instructs his son not to fly too close to the sun, or too close to the sea, as either would destroy the wings that he had made for him. To us, the story speaks of avoiding hubris and striking the right balance between extremes.

In designing the watch, that idea of striking the right balance was again at the forefront of every decision we made. Overall sport watches, and in particular dive watches, are by and large the most sought after and popular watches on the market. They are the most iconic, and the most versatile for business, casual, dress, and for sport. We chose to release a dive watch first because, while not avid divers, we loved that idea of a go anywhere, do anything, “take on the world” type of watch. And to us, that is the epitome of what the modern dive watch has become, that balanced watch that can do anything.

Once we knew that we wanted to create a dive watch, we set out to ensure that it would be a robust, functional, and capable instrument. So we included all the prerequisite features that go along with making a professional dive watch including 316L stainless steel for the case, 500m of water resistance, easy to grip screw down crowns, integrated crown guards, a screw-down case back, an automatic helium release valve, luminous running seconds, an AR-coated crystal, and a settable elapsed time bezel. But that was only half of the equation. The balance of the design needed to really set it apart, to make it original and special.

We started with an elegant face, one that draws you in with its depth and multiple layers. The lowest level, in the center of the face, has a recessed vertical stripe design. The second layer of the dial is matte black and contrasts nicely with the polished applied hour markers. In the center you have angled and semi-skeletonized hands, with a light blue second hand that has a unique luminous counter-balance. The length of each hand highlights the various layers, particularly the minute and second hands that sweep over the hour markers and under the dive time marker.

The internal bidirectional rotating bezel forms the minute track, and mirrors the light blue from the seconds hand on the 0-15 minute markings. The signature floating dive time marker is affixed to the internal bezel and actually moves with the bezel so that where the start time (or “zero marker”) is set, is always the most prominent visual element. Lastly, to emphasize all of this depth we chose to have a domed sapphire crystal. Together the face of the watch is beautiful with its restrained symmetry.

If the face is a study in symmetry, the prominent features of the case are the counterbalance in asymmetry, with the asymmetrical placement of the screws that affix the bezel to the case, the dual offset crowns opposed by the centered automatic helium release valve, and the three part crown guards opposed by the dual guards on the valve side. But there’s more to the case than just playful asymmetry, as there are small elements of complexity to be found at every turn.

The lugs are angled and tapered, and the case actually wraps underneath them as if the lugs were pouring over the side of the case. From the top down you see the simple circular shape of the bezel offset by the complex polygon underneath that is the mid part of the case. Every twist and turn reveals either another small nuance of the design, or a playful catch of the light from a polished surface or bevel, all of which is punctuated by the custom engraved case back depicting the sun and sea from the Daedalus myth.

The final piece of the design puzzle for us was to have the watch be of the highest quality, which to us meant it had to be Swiss made and powered by a high quality Swiss movement. So we set out to find a Swiss manufacturing partner who had the ability and competency to help us transform this vision into a reality. We are proud to be able to say that we accomplished all of this without needing to make any compromises, the Daedalus Dae-Diver is a high quality Swiss made dive watch that is powered by a Swiss ETA 2892 series movement. The Dae-Diver is truly just as capable as it is good looking.

Perhaps one the most important features that we wanted to offer was a reasonable price. High quality Swiss watches are typically very expensive, but we wanted to create a company that was focused on our customers and delivering an exceptional value to them, not on high margins or profits. That’s why we are initially launching the watch through a pre-order campaign selling direct to our customers so that we can accomplish that. The Daedalus Dae-Diver retails for $1,550 USD and is available for pre-order now direct from our website. Order yours now and be one of the initial pre-orders which will be recognized as “Founder’s Edition” orders. Included with those orders will be a limited edition “First Flight” screen print that will be personally signed by the artist himself and the Daedalus team, and will be numbered to correspond to your watch. daedaluswatches.com

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