Sponsored Post by Mark Carson

Being a Sponsored Post, this is where the usual marketing hype goes. However, regular readers of aBlogtoWatch may know me (Mark Carson/Individual Design) from my many comments or from the series on retailers, and marketing hype is not my thing. So I will cut to the chase.

As an introductory/holiday special, I’m offering my new Mark Carson Ka La Sport watches at 20% off now through January 4th, 2016. The price includes 2 Infinity Straps in your choice of colors (leather straps cost very slight more). Sale prices start at $1,040 USD.

To back up a bit, I wanted to make a sportier rendition of my Ka La (“The Sun” in Hawaiian) watches with a high-legibility set of hands and dial along with a high-security strap system. Many of you are no doubt familiar with so called NATO straps (actually the British MOD G10 specification, but commonly called “NATO” straps). With a strap under a watch’s case back, if a single spring bar were to break, the watch might flop around on your wrist, but it would not go missing in action with a NATO strap.

About a year ago, I designed the dial and hands for what would become my Mark Carson Ka La Sport watch, but no particular thought was given to the strap at that time. When I returned home from BaselWorld 2015, I sat down with the single goal of designing a high security strap system that could take advantage of the curved metal “lugs” on my Mark Carson Ka La cases to provide even more security than a NATO strap and provide a distinctive tool/macho look.

Running a single nylon (or leather) strap though the curved lugs on a Mark Carson Ka La case would bypass the spring bars and provide a high degree of security. However, a general drawback of a NATO strap is that they tend to cover up the view of the movement if a watch has an exhibition back. Plus, a 20mm strap is not a natural fit through the curved opening on my cases. So my design goal was to retain a conventionally mounted strap but add redundancy and unique looks to it. The result of a lot of paper and leather prototyping was to use a continuous loop which secures to the conventional strap via a pair of so called “Zulu” steel loops. While the resulting strap has a lot of “visual density,” the actual system is technically simple to produce and mount on the watch. Conceptually, a challenge to design, but simple to implement, which is as it should be. With the extreme redundancy and continuous secondary loop, the name “Infinity Strap” made sense (to me, anyway).

The continuous loop is 5mm wide, and its two traversals under the case back still leave a view of the movement. In the event that even both spring bars were to fail, the Infinity Strap system will keep the watch attached to the conventional strap sections. So the watch becomes a bit looser but remains attached at two points to the strap and remains on your wrist.

How often do spring bars fail? Not often, but if they do, it’s a bad day for your watch with a normal two-piece strap. Plus, part of a sporty watch is that is looks, well, sporty. So the Infinity Strap system scores on both counts. They are available in nylon or leather and a variety of colors from the bold red, blue, and yellow ones, to the stealthy black nylon or leather versions.

Enough about the strap; onto the watch itself. Like other Mark Carson Ka La watches, the case is 316L stainless steel (43mm by 12.7mm tall) and is topped with a slightly domed sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating on the underside. The cases are available in brushed stainless steel or PVD black over stainless finishes. The movement is the nearly unstoppable ETA 2824-2 automatic. In the interests of better timekeeping and appearance, I outfit my Mark Carson Ka La watches with the Elabore grade of this well-known Swiss automatic movement.

The dial and hands are more or less dive watch-inspired but are integrated into the Mark Carson Ka La design theme of circular shapes to the greatest degree possible. The date indication at 6 o’clock was a design consideration from the start, so it’s no accident that it is well integrated with the hour marker at 6. The hands play on the shape of the hour markers and provide a harmonious look along with great legibility. During the design phase, I referred to these as “hotdog on a stick” hands, which Ariel found amusing. The center circle on the seconds hand is a design reference to my previous Mark Carson Ka La watches (the “Classic” and “Roman” references) and the counterweight on the seconds hand matches the Honu (Turtle in Hawaiian) petroglyph on the dial. Even a simple-looking dial and handset can have thoughtful detailing and design – such as the use of dots, not batons, for minute markers.

The dial has a white finish over a metallic silver “sun ray” base. This gives the dial an opaline look and breaks up the light to minimize reflections. The applied hour markers have a gunmetal finish and, along with the hands, are filled with C3 SuperLuminova. The hands in particular have great visibility in the dark.

Bottom line: buy one of my watches and save a bunch – you know you deserve it. You’ve been good all year haven’t you? Well, pretty good perhaps. Happy Holiday wishes to all of my friends out there. Again, the Mark Carson Ka La Sport is being offered at special holiday introductory pricing from $1,040 and after January 4, 2016, it will be priced from $1,300. markcarson.com

Sponsored Posts are a form of advertising that allows sponsors to share useful news, messages, and offers to aBlogtoWatch readers in a way traditional display advertising is often not best suited to. All Sponsored Posts are subject to editorial guidelines with the intent that they offer readers useful news, promotions, or stories. The viewpoints and opinions expressed in Sponsored Posts are those of the advertiser and not necessarily those of aBlogtoWatch or its writers.