2024: Mid-Year Checkpoint!

It's often said that people over-estimate how much can be achieved in a day, but under-estimate how much can be achieved in a year. For that reason, I like to do these stock-take of where Delugs has been, to remind ourselves on the progress that we’ve made, and how far we’ve come. That being said, it’s been a while since we last did a review of where the business is at – back at the end of 2022!

With every 6-12 months that passes, Delugs feels like an entirely new company. And this is absolutely true when we look at where we are now, Jul 2024, compared to where we were at the start of this year.

The year started off pretty mild, but in February the tempo turned up a few notches with the whole Ed Sheeran episode, and then exhibiting in Geneva during Watches and Wonders in April brought it up a few more levels. All in a positive way! Without further ado, let’s recap some of the key happenings of the past six months (non-chronological order), and then I’ll attempt to gaze into my crystal ball to see what the next six months might bring.

Ed Sheeran wore our CTS strap on his piece unique Patek?!

17 Feb 2024, the day Ed Sheeran turned 33, but more significantly, the day we helped size his CTS rubber strap for his piece unique Patek Philippe 5230G, and watched him perform live on stage with our strap on his wrist! It all started with an idea to get some straps to Ed after watching his Hodinkee Talking Watches episode with John Mayer, because he was not only a watch enthusiast, but someone who also thought a lot about the straps he wore! Our team made a video, we enlisted the help of the watch community, and two weeks later we were backstage meeting Ed Sheeran and his team. What an experience!

We truly think this will be one of the seminal moments of the Delugs journey. Not just because of the publicity that we got from this event (which led to other opportunities), but more so because it demonstrated the power of belief, and the power of this watch community. Such a surreal and powerful moment!

Thank you to the various publications for covering about the Ed Sheeran story (Channel News Asia, Straits Times, Tatler), and for giving us a platform to share our brand story (Tatler)!

The Start of our Ambassador Program

On 1 Jan 2024 we launched the Delugs Ambassador Program, featuring watch enthusiasts from all around the world who are trusted voices within the online and local watch community, and have also been long-time customers and fans of Delugs! The development journey of Delugs has always been shaped by our community, and we hope to establish a network of enthusiasts who are not merely consumers but active contributors to our brand's evolution, and ultimately we hope to cultivate and build a community of watch accessories lover.

We’re extremely grateful to our first cohort of Ambassadors for taking a leap and trusting us enough to embark on this journey with us! It’s only been 6 months, but we’ve already seen our Ambassadors hosting trunk shows, contributing to our product launch, and just being wonderful ambassadors of Delugs, and of strap changing, across social media and in their respective spheres of influence!

Our First International Exhibition, and It’s in Geneva during Watches and Wonders!

We exhibited at Hotel Beau-Rivage from 8 to 14 April 2024, together with Sartory Billard, during the period of Watches and Wonders when it seemed like everyone who worked in the watch industry was in Geneva. Delugs has always been known amongst the watch enthusiast community, and being in Geneva made us feel like we’re now also a brand that’s part of the luxury watch industry.

It was great meeting with so many people whom we’ve interacted with online but never in-person, and it was definitely a good opportunity for us to build relationships with various brands, retailers and publications. A huge thank you to Armand from Sartory Billard for inviting us to exhibit together with them, as their strap partner!

Shortly after Geneva, from 3 to 5 May, we found ourselves in San Francisco for Windup Watch Fair! This was our first time exhibiting with Windup, and it was a blast! We got the chance to meet with many of our customers in the Bay Area, and also chatted with the various brand owners who were also exhibiting. We’ll definitely be back in San Francisco, and also for other editions of Windup Watch Fair!

A MASSIVE Product Launch to Get Summer Started!

On 20 Jun 2024 we had our very first multi-product launch campaign, releasing a total of 10 different products all at once! Launching one product alone is tough, and launching all 10 together (plus organising a launch event at our HQ) is as crazy as it sounds. The entire team put in a lot of work to get the summer-themed launch running, and we were really proud of how it all went down.

The Spring Deployant Clasp was a crowd favourite amongst all the new releases, as it was the first deployant clasp we’ve made for leather straps, and definitely one of the best aftermarket deployant clasp out there today. The MAD1 CTS strap was unique in that it featured a mosaic pattern that was extremely eye-catching, in fact, so eye-catching that even the MAD Team at MB&F sent out an email to all MAD1 owners to share about this new strap! And to those that were looking for integrated rubber straps for their Tudor, Omega and Rolex, we now have something available.

We learnt a lot from this entire launch experience, and we’re excited to bring our learnings to our next product launch happening in October – stay tuned for what’s to come!

Other products that we released since the start of 2024 include:

Integrated CTS Rubber Strap for Tudor Black Bay 58 (26 Jan 2024)
Essentials Kit and Bracelet Removal Tool (1 Mar 2024)
Alligator Flank collection (15 Mar 2024)

Opening Our Delugs Showroom with Retail Hours

What was once just a showroom at our HQ for people visiting Delugs, has now become our first “retail store” with typical retail hours and retail staff since 12 Mar 2024. After speaking to many customers based in Singapore, we realised that while our website is very informative and extensive, nothing beats seeing and feeling the straps and material in person. And in-person interaction and engagement with our customers provide the best form of feedback on how we can do better as a brand, and helps to build up the community of strap and accessories lovers here in Singapore.

And that’s why we decided to have a dedicated team to support retail operations at our showroom! Since then, hundreds of customers have visited our little strap haven to find the perfect strap for their watch, with many overseas customers who come here while on the way to the airport. The showroom also allows us to better understand what it takes to run and support a retail store, and gives us a good experience should we wish to open a standalone retail store in future.

The showroom also serves as a great space to host events and meet-ups! This first half of the year alone, we’ve:

Held a launch event for the Tudor BB58 CTS straps (25 Jan 2024)
Organised a meet-up with Watchstudies when he was in Singapore (3 Feb 2024)
Supported the female watch community with a get-together with TickTockBelles on International Women’s Day (8 Mar 2024)
Held our in-store sales event to celebrate the opening of our showroom (16 Mar 2024)
Organised the summer product launch event (20 Jun 2024)

A New B2B Website to Support and Expand on our Partnerships

On 22 Feb 2024, our new B2B website went live! While Delugs is still pre-dominantly a direct-to-consumer brand selling through our online website, we do have retailers around the world that stock our products, and allow customers in those regions to see and feel our products in person. The B2B website provides for a different shopping experience for our retailers, with more features that support how our retailers purchase, and also information about Delugs that would be more pertinent to prospective retailers.

The B2B website is also a platform for watch brands who wish to partner with Delugs to find out more about how we work with watch brands, and to also see past collaborations that we’ve done.

Speaking of watch brand partnerships, we’ve had a few collaborations that launched in the past six months:

If you’re a part of a watch retailer or watch brand, do head over to our B2B website and check it out!

We’ve also made a bunch of smaller improvements to our main website over this period, such as adding new features and information to our product pages, and also opening up Split Size Ordering for some straps. Most of our customers still shop for Delugs products through our website, so it’s essential to make sure that our website is always kept updated and refreshed.

What's to Come

And that’s only all the things that we’ve announced! There’s a lot more that went on behind-the-scenes, which we’ll be able to share in due time. We’ve certainly done a lot in the past six month, but there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done, on our way to making strap changing a lifestyle for everyone.

The second half of 2024 will see our participation in more events in different cities around the world to engage with our international community, even more products being launched, a new program for creating your own custom straps, and collaborations with even more watch brands. At the backend, we’re also working on improving our website with new features (including a new tool that will help anyone shopping for straps), and working on improving our supply chain and logistics, to bring Delugs closer to you.

As always, thank you to all of our customers, fans and community for the strong support for Delugs, both our products and our team. It’s truly an honour to be able to serve the watch community in our own little way, and we will continue to innovate and bring our A game to the watch straps and accessories space!