Skip to main content

Breaking: Argon Watches Gets the Boot from Kickstarter?

Argon Watches search result on Instagram.
I just received a DM from IG @timesnewroman because he noticed that a project by Argon Watches is no longer available on Kickstarter's page. By way of background, Argon's Spaceone is a partnership between highly accomplished watchmaker Théo Auffret and watch businessman Guillaume Laidet. The watches are extremely creative, employing a jump mechanism, and have been very well received (you can see a compilation of their press coverage here).

Kickstarters "404 not available" screen as of right now.
There is a rather stark message on Kickstarter right now reading "Argon Watches is the subject of an intellectual property dispute and is currently unavailable." A screengrab is to the right. This has got to be a gut punch for the brand and for collectors who were looking forward to receiving these watches.

I reached out to Argon for an update and received the following statement:

+++
Hello there,

As of today, you might have received a message from the Kickstarter Trust & Safety Team concerning our recently closed SPACEONE project that you have backed.

We are surprised by this message from the Kickstarter team and have not received any advanced warning about this issue. This Intellectual Property Dispute concern our trademarks.

As a precaution, it seems that Kickstarter has frozen the project for the time being automatically while we provide the relevant documentation to their team.

The funds are currently still with Kickstarter - we have not received them yet and we will make sure that we stand right by you, the backer.

On our side - we want to confirm with you that we have indeed registered the trademark MONTRES ARGON in france in 2018 and extended to all EUROPE, USA & JAPAN.

We remain available for any other questions and will make sure to keep in close contact with you about the situation, the funds & the watches!

Best Regards, Guillaume, Theo and the Argon team
+++

Let's keep fingers crossed that this all gets ironed out sooner rather than later. A recent post suggests there are more than €1 million at stake!
My book on the history of Rolex marketing is now available on Amazon! It debuted as the #1 New Release in its category. You can find it here.

You can subscribe to Horolonomics updates here.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hot Take: Preowned + Vintage are the Greenest

I applaud the effort by watch manufacturers to minimize their contributions to climate change. Globally, we've made some progress towards "bending the curve" of greenhouse gas emissions, which is the good news. This figure from climateactiontracker.org shows that, even under an optimistic scenario, some increase in global temperatures is unavoidable. The bad news is that we clearly need to do a whole lot more to get to a point where we halt the growing cost of environmental degradation. As the graph I've presented here shows, existing policies are not enough to ensure a healthy planet for our children, their children, and all future generations. As Elizabeth Doer's outstanding coverage on Quill and Pad shows, the watch industry is discussing the challenges ahead and developing contributions to the fight against climate change. These include the use of recycled and recovered materials in manufacturing as well as requiring transparency in how raw materials are

Closet Currency: Let's Keep It Real

Today, I learned a new term from an Instagram post by @ebaywatches. That term is "closet currency." No, this doesn't refer to someone stacking bills in some dark corner of their wardrobe. Instead, closet currency is the value that is stored in items that you put in your closet. At least, that's what I think it means. I arrived at this conclusion since eBay's post featured YouTuber Jose Zeniga describing the monetary value of different luxury watches. Zeniga also described a "luxury exchange" that eBay set up in NYC. In essence, you could take something out of your closet, go to the exchange, get an appraisal value, and then use your item and its appraisal to purchase another item that was available on the exchange. The formal definition of money is anything that is generally accepted as payment. In essense, eBay set up a NYC micro-economy in which almost any closet item could be used as money. Money is actually a pretty complex topic. It took a lo

Scabby the Rat Visits His AD

An inflatable rat in front of a Rolex property in New York City, source: Google Maps. While following up on a recent Instagram post, I spent some time reviewing properties owned by Rolex in the New York City metropolitan area. One property, in particular, caught my interest because it seemed to be "off the beaten track." In order to learn more about it, I used street view in Google Maps to access some pictures of the building. As I virtually strolled down the middle of the street, I approached the building's main entrance. Surprise doesn't even begin to describe my reaction when I saw an inflatible rat positioned on the sidewalk facing the door. This thing was big, maybe 12 feet tall. A carnival-esque rodent was the last thing I expected to see near the entrance to a Rolex building. There were three people standing nearby, one wearing something like a construction hat. Having seen a number of labor-related demonstrations in the recent past, my gut told me th