Tom Kartsotis, the co-founder of FOSSIL and founder of Shinola, spoke with Lee Woodruff of The New York Times about the motivation behind Shinola, a watch and bicycle manufacturer which was launched in 2011.
The startup’s line of watches was an almost immediate success and led to the establishment of its own company brand, rather than serving merely as a manufacturing contractor, as originally planned.
“The original plan was to build a factory that would employ 100 people and make watches for other companies,” Kartsotis explained during a June 2 discussion that included Katia Beauchamp, co-founder of Birchbox, during Venture for America’s 5th Annual Summer Celebration.
“We bought parts for 2,500 of our first watch that was called the Rumwell, and we ran an ad in the newspaper…asking customers to pay $550 in advance for a watch that nobody had ever seen before,” Kartsotis explained. “The watches sold out in a week!”
“So we abandoned the idea of making watches for other companies,” said Kartsotis. Thus, Shinola was born.
Kartsotis’s path to Shinola began at the end of his 26 years with FOSSIL, which he co-founded. Upon leaving the company at the height of the 2008 recession, he was motivated to find and invest in innovations and ventures that would create jobs in the U.S. At one point, Kartsotis found himself in Arizona working on a project to help bring food to Native American reservations.
“There was a guy who worked with me and he was from Detroit,” Kartsotis explained. “We were flying back and he asked me, ‘Do you have any ideas for Detroit? I have 100 guys who would roll up their sleeves and help you.’”
With that spurring his thinking, Kartsotis came up with the idea to start the watch manufacturing company that would be a supplier to potential clients with notable brand names like Tiffany & Co. The success of the introductory watch line put Kartsotis on a different course that now includes an American made bicycle line and their own retail stores.
Shinola is now part of Detroit’s rising startup community, actively contributing to the creation of jobs important to both the national and local economies.
