Undone Watch X ABTW: Honest to a Fault?

5
2055

Undone watch ABTW collaboration on wristI was kinda sorta maybe surprised to see a recent article on ablogtowatch.com (ABTW) from founding editor Ariel Adams that reads like a puff piece. It described Mr. Adams’ underwater frolics with Undone’s We All Live In A Yellow Submarine dive watch. Then I discovered Mr. Adams was the man who “imagined” the Undone watch. To his credit, commercial self-interest couldn’t completely subsume journalistic integrity . . .

undone watch ad

Mr. Adams “review” of his company’s daisy yellow dive watch contains a remarkable admission about the Undone watch case’s potential degradation [paragraph breaks inserted for sanity’s sake]:

The lack of availability of yellow ceramic as a case material, as well as the inability to coat or color metal, has made yellow cases unavailable. If you want a yellow case, you need to make one out of ABS plastic (which honestly wouldn’t be the end of the world – though it wouldn’t be very durable). For the Undone Aqua BLK + YLW, we took a sort of shortcut to get the 200-meter water resistant thick steel case in yellow — each was given a Cerakote application.

undone watch casebackCerakote is an industrial coating that happens to come in a lot of colors. While it is very durable by coating standards, it is of medium coating strength by watch standards. That means Cerakote – with enough hits and scuffs – will begin to chip off. It is just the nature of the beast and, frankly, it makes me want to tell people that in order to enjoy the Aqua BLK + YLW watches the most, get two — one you can wear and abuse, and another that you can keep in pristine condition. Come on, watch collectors have done far weirder things.

That’s not gonna fly; not for a Swatch and not for a $585 piece. Undone’s gonna get a lot of returns. What CRM experts call unhappy customers. Especially when Undone’s website proclaims: “H-126 DeWalt Yellow Cerakote is applied onto a sandblasted AQUA case, which is abrasion and corrosion resistant.”

Undone would do well to adopt Ernest & Julio Gallo’s motto: we sell no wine before its time. But in any case (so to speak), mega-props to Mr. Adams for telling the truth about the fruit of his horological imagination.

5 COMMENTS

  1. I bought one of Oris’s Williams F1 timepieces with black PVD coating about 10 years ago. I wear it daily. The coating on edges of the case have worn off. But not ugly flaking, just, uh, patina? Character?

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