The Big Interview Recent projects
Choice Brands UK boasts an impressive portfolio of projects, working on everything from football club collections to projects celebrating signifi cant historical moments. James said: “We reach out to everybody. We have reached out to all the football clubs, all the cricket clubs all the rugby clubs. “Our job is to reach out to as many people as possible. We produce bespoke watches for museums, and charities. No organisation cannot take a bespoke watch.”
On that note, here is a look at a few recent projects by Choice Brands.
Retirement from Ice Hockey GB
James delved into what it was like crafting a bespoke watch for the retirement of ice hockey player, Matthew Myers, of Ice Hockey GB.
80th anniversary of the D-Day landings Choice Brands, together with Knight Sportswear, crafted and designed a watch to specially commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings of World War II in Normandy, France. Upon the release of the watch, the company stated the watch: “Encompasses British design and craftsmanship which not only admires those brave men and women but lets us continually remind ourselves of their sacrifi ce.”
The watch is particularly unique because of its engraving of different beaches, along with their names. I asked James about what spurred the creative decisions, to which he answered: “What sells really well, especially with veterans or people in the military is if you create a military watch and if you can add the veteran’s name or the soldier’s name and maybe their battalion or their service number, it works really well. Because we did quite an intricate design, we could only print the name of
the serviceman on the watch. It was quite diffi cult to get space for the name as well as have the map of the fi ve beaches on the engraving.
“There are very few veterans alive from D-Day but their children and grandchildren are alive. The personalised watches make great presents. You can gift a D-Day watch with your father’s name or your grandfather’s name on it. People keep it, and that’s the important part. They wear it with pride.”
The watch, commemorative of Mr Myers’s dedication to the sport for just shy of two decades, incorporates a personalised engraving of Mr Myer’s jersey number, as well as the years he had spent playing for Great Britain. The watch face epitomises the less is more mantra, encompassing a sleek look with its white watch face an identifi able GB Ice Hockey logo front and centre and ‘GB Ice Hockey’ displayed beneath the dials. James had explained that the company had built a working relationship with GB. He said: “We’ve been doing producing the GB watches for ice hockey for a number of years. We manufacture the GB watches for the supporters, the players (for the players they are individually named), for different tournaments.
“We also create them for some of the marshals or referees as gifts. They’ve got their name on it, and the date of the tournament.”
Choice Brands was contacted by a supplier of GB Ice Hockey who asked if a bespoke watch could be made for Matthew’s retirement.
James added: “Matthew’s provided a great service to ice hockey over the years so it was a pleasure to do it for him.”
Blackbushe Heritage Trust timepieces Choice Brands was approached to create a special collection of timepieces for supporters of the Blackbushe Heritage Trust.
The collection is split in two parts: the fi rst part is motivated by Patrick Marchant of RPM Aviation, as a thank you to volunteers who recovered the Vickers Viking 1B G-AGRW aircraft from Bad
Vöslau, Austria in April 2023. The second part was then created to sell directly to supporters and visitors to the Blackbushe Airport Heritage Centre in Surrey.
James explained that the uniqueness of the collection is foregrounded in individualisation. He declared that: “What’s special about that watch and keyring set is they’re individually numbered and there’s a short history on the inside of the lid of the airport, of the plane they brought back from Austria and what they are doing with the plane. We put the silhouette behind it the history and it was really quite popular. Because they’re numbered and because they have that little bit of history on it, they sold out.”
www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk
September 2024 |53 |
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