a matter of balances

For us, the creation of any watch is an extremely complicated affair. From choosing the right inspiration, to designing the watch, to encompassing the correct elements in a complimentary way, rethinking the design, making the necessary changes, amendments, even scrapping design elements altogether, the process is demanding, tiring and time consuming, albeit thoroughly exciting and fulfilling.

And this is only to get the design right – then follows the planning nightmare of actually producing it. Not to mention the number of working samples made in-between to ensure that everything works as its supposed to. 

The more original the design, the more work it takes to perfect and make a watch, taking also into account that a watch is made out of a plethora of parts, most of which move and are essential to the operation of the watch as well. 

Couple that with the fact that in order to produce such watch, one has to source each component from a different supplier, test each component, make sure they work together to create a high-quality timepiece, the challenges faced are evident. 

It is a daunting task and one that we would like to undertake on an annual or bi-annual basis, depending on the complexity of the endeavour. 

We also firmly believe that the stories we want to tell deserve our utmost attention and care in order for them to be told in a beautiful, elegant and respectable way. 

We will never pump out version after version of the same watch as we would never want to re-tell a story many times over. Greek history, legacy and myth would never forgive us for it and neither would we forgive ourselves.

For this reason, we have decided to work on a single watch each time, producing a number of pieces that we are comfortable of producing in a timely manner and in our own way, abiding by our self-set high standards.

Though we would like to put an Ianos on each wrist willing to wear one, we recognize that we cannot do that at the moment and stay true to our values of high quality and inspirational design if we do. 

Making a watch takes us years in advance, and we make them based on the facts we have at the time regarding client interest, production schedules and our timeline. 

For us, this is the only method that works and will allow us to proceed with our course. 

This means effectively that each watch will be a “limited edition” in that once we finish it we will proceed on the next design and then the next and so on, each watch with its own design, character and personality. 

Of course, we aspire for the watches that we produce to be part of the same family and possess a common Ianos DNA and way of thinking but they will each be manifestly different than the others. 

This does not go to say that we may not revisit a design, it just means that if we do, it will also be different than the design we first made, our experience, maturity and change throughout the years having an effect on our design concept and language.

It may also be the case that we increase production numbers as we get more comfortable in what we are doing, employ more people and so on, in order to maintain a balance of high quality productivity and demand.