Interview: Giles Ellis of Schofield Watches 

Giles Ellis is exactly the man you’d expect to be at the helm of Schofield Watch Company. Ellis is confident, writes poetry instead of newsletters, and makes his own clothes. There is a boldness and surety to his persona that is clearly manifested in the bold, easily recognizable watches he makes. A lifelong tinkerer, Ellis started thinking about starting Schofield in 2007, but at a time when watchmaking resources and infrastructure were a fraction of what they are today, it took four years to finally debut his first model. As always, there’s a story to be told about both Ellis and Schofield, and we sat down to hear it.

Read on to hear Giles Ellis share about homemade amplifiers, calls from Smith & Wesson’s legal team, washer-dryer combos, brand loyalty, and how being different makes all the difference.

TF: What was your first watch?

GE: I don’t really remember, other than the first watch that I was particularly fond of. And that was the—I think it was a Casio car game watch. This one with the two—I think the yellow buttons for left and right. And you could steer your car down the road. It was really cool. Yeah, really cool.

It was that or it was a skeletonized Swatch, which I’ve still got, and I always used to strap Animal straps to my watches. Do you know brand Animal? Animal was a huge old school surf brand and the watches were nuts—I used to have an animal watch. But the Animal strap was a multicolored Velcro strap. I asked many years ago if they had any leftover Animal straps and I got sent two brand new ones. What was really hard about my Swatch is because it had four legs if you remember. So, I used to have to have a scalpel and cut away so it would fit the lug profile.

TF: That’s commitment. I had a Swatch I loved and it up and disappeared. It was a sturdy watch, my go-to beater and I went for it one day and it wasn’t there. But that’s the way it is, that’s why it’s a Swatch. You don’t need to worry about it.

GE: I got sent a—maybe it was a Casio—it’s a Space Invaders one, but it’s one of the cheap ones. You can’t play Space Invaders on it. It’s just got Space Invaders around the outside of the screen. I’ve got the same in the Pac Man. It’s just a piece of junk. It just is. A collectible piece of junk.

TF: So how did you go from a Casio Race game to graphic designer to four years in the making and you finally launch Schofield in 2011? What was that evolution?

GE: Well, there’s been many, many strange and unusual jobs in my career, and I think all of them have influenced, or certainly led me to this point, to designing watches. Setting up a design agency was a natural thing for me to do. I’ve been designing all my life, regardless of what other things I’ve been doing for money. Designing all my environments, whether they were bedrooms, to flats, to houses, you know? Designing clothes and modifying clothes; I like everything I wear to be different and unlike anybody else’s. And I’d had decent quartz watches, always led by design, naturally, led by what they look like. And it reached a point where I think I just became influenced by general marketing and felt like I deserved and needed a watch. It’s a man’s right. It’s ridiculous thing, but men feel they have a right to have a nice watch for some reason. And I was part of that.

But I couldn’t afford anything that I liked, because I have expensive taste. And it’s a curse, because I have expensive tastes not for just watches, but for every single thing that is available. That’s generally because I see the complexity in manufacturing; the design nuance and all of these things really appeal to me. And it’s not that it’s about showing off—I’ve never been about that—the story is for me, and it’s about my appreciation of refinement in design.

I realized very quickly that there wasn’t a single watch that satisfied me; I liked elements of many different watches. So, out of vanity—I have that confidence—I thought I would design my own. I had done it before with an amplifier. I wanted an amplifier and couldn’t afford it, so I built it myself and designed it. It took a year. I built four amplifiers and used one for many years and some friends and family still use theirs. It was branded “Schofield.”

TF: Tell me about that brand name, “Schofield.”

GE: Schofield is a variant of a Smith and Wesson model revolver that was modified to be top breaking. It’s a classic Civil War-era American revolver. Jesse James used a Schofield revolver because it was a very quick-loading weapon. It has an important place in history because the Battle of Little Bighorn may have been won by the Americans if the Smith and Wesson Schofield revolver could have taken both types of Colt ammo. It didn’t have a long enough chamber, so it could only take the short ammo, not the long ammo. I was very much into westerns while I was building my amplifier, and I wanted a cool name for it. I put Schofield on the front, and it had two guns that were back-to-back. Really cool it was, and the two hilts and the guns came together to form a kind of skull.

I actually contacted the Schofield family through an amazing website called FindaGrave.com, where the great grandchildren of Colonel Schofield—Major Schofield, I think it is—had left messages. They gave me their blessing to use the name, but when Schofield became commercial, I thought, “I better speak to Smith and Wesson about this.” I had seven lawyers phoned me up in seven days from Smith & Wesson. They said, “You cannot use the guns and the name together.” So, the guns went, the name stayed.

TF: So, you moved from amplifiers to watches?

GE: A watch was not a tricky undertaking. When I realized that a lot of these companies are using ubiquitous movements, it was not something that was daunting at all. However, the details are, and I had to learn the language of watches. I had to learn what it was that made a watch classic, make it stand up to time, and not be a fashion watch. A fashion watch would be, say, a Diesel watch or a Fossil watch, in some respects. And I wanted to steer away from that.

The issue you have making watches in small numbers is obviously tooling and minimum order quantities, right? And the whole thing got out of hand in the respect that my one watch for me couldn’t be realized. You can’t make a one-off watch. I wanted this classical look but also, the other thing I wanted to get right was it would be a dress watch and a sports watch, in the same go, but not a compromise in either category. You buy a washer-dryer, and it’s a compromise of a washer and it’s a compromise of a dryer. There’s trouble with things that are out of category. But I wanted something that could work for both. And I think we nailed it and the Signalman watch [seen below] was launched based on that very fact, that it could fulfill both those ideals elegantly. And it became a business because of those minimum orders.

And so therefore, I had to sell the other 99 watches. The business model in year one was actually three watches in year one, maybe if we’re lucky; 20 watches in year two; and maybe 100 watches in year three. But we sold over 100 watches in the first four months or so. It was very exciting. It was very different.

TF: Those watches were the Schofield Signalman, essentially the same design as is available now.

GE: No, actually. Yes, to the case, but no to the complexity of the dial and the movement. We were using a Soprod movement there that has the complications of a date, a power reserve, and a GMT. From that point, we actually made a number of much simpler watches, including two-handers. The Blacklamp followed, again, a three hander. And then the Beater followed, which was a two hander. I really like watches built for legibility, on the most part. I like the de-emphasis on accurate timekeeping with a mechanical watch, which is why going back to two-handers really appeals to me. We don’t muck about with complications. There’s enough other companies doing that. And the same is true of fancified movements, whether they’re in-house, partially in-house, or highly decorated. We use generally off-the-shelf—ETAs, STPs, Unitas movements—because we are design-led, we’re about what the item looks like. The ETA movements and Unitas and STPs are still amazing movements. They just get usurped because of highly-decorated variants and in-house nonsense. For us that would finish us off. That’s not something that we ever aspire to do.

So, I’m happy doing that, and making our little modifications to those as we go. But we are design-led. The case is a patented design. It’s a round watch, tells the time, right? It’s nothing super fancy there. But the design is iconic, and it can be spotted from across the room. And as a designer, I am immensely proud. In fact, that’s probably one of the best things as a designer you could wish for, is to have something that’s recognizably something. And you can even recognize it from under a cuff, you know. To be able to do that, and make something that is so obviously ours, recognizable from across the room, is so cool. That’s super exciting.

TF: If anything, you usually see a case that expands as it comes up, not as it goes down, like on many Schofields.

GE: Yeah, and nobody’s copied it or done it, because it’s an absolute pig to do. And in my naivety, it’s something I stuck with. But from a manufacturing point of view, it’s really hard to make, it’s expensive. They have to be machined wholly from billet. 100% machining on five-axis mills. And to get the intersection between the bevel and the case and the lugs—because the lugs go up for three portions of the case, the case is set into three sections, and the lugs intersect all three sections—it’s really complicated and incredibly demanding of the machine. It’s taken us years to do it. The other issue we have is that the tools that do the machining are incredibly small. And they have long shaft lengths to be able to get down far enough down the case and do their passes. So, we have a lot of tool breakages, which raises the price—and this is partly why the watches are expensive is because of that case, but I love it, and so do the watch owners. And so that’s something that’s not going to be compromised.

TF: Yours is a story that I’ve heard before in independent watches: I could not find the watch I wanted and so I decided to make the watch I wanted. And then the realities of doing that often force the creation of a brand. In 2007, when you started off, the infrastructure for you to easily and quickly create a watch was not there. Now if I want to create a watch, I can make my own watch, even fully customized, in a week. Get my order out, have a prototype back in a couple months—I can start a watch brand. That’s thanks to the internet mostly, and the proliferation of choice. What was it like in those early days when there really weren’t people making their own watches?

GE: Yes, you could make a watch company in seconds flat nowadays, but you’re gonna need some money to do it. I had no money. I had absolutely nothing. I sold a bunch of musical instruments and two mountain bikes to get my company going, borrowed a bit off my mother-in-law. And that was it. It really was from nothing. As the watch company started, I look back and, you know, it costs way more than the Panerai that I should have probably bought—in fact, ten of them! Setting up a watch business back in 2007 was an extremely expensive project: paying for a hundred dials, a hundred handsets, 50 boxes, 50 movements, and then another 50 movements. And then of course, all the crystals and crowns and stems and all the other bits and pieces that you need to go with it. So yeah, expensive endeavor.

But you’re exactly right. The other difficulty was there was absolutely no infrastructure and nothing that I could use as a resource. Absolutely nothing at all. And so, it was a question of breaking it down, chunking it down into single items. The business wasn’t built, it was just the watch that needed to be made. And through the internet, I found a company in Germany that do pretty much everything for you. Being very fussy as I am, that wasn’t how it was going to roll. So even though we had a manufacturer in Germany, I still had so much work to do when it came to straps to buckles, and all of that stuff. To deliver a Beater watch, we’re looking at 34 suppliers just for one watch.

TF: Have you been able to consolidate that array of suppliers and manufacturers?

GE: I don’t want to, because it’s what differentiates us from so many other watch brands. There is no homogeny with us and our product. I don’t want to have the same box as so and so. I don’t want to have the same straps and buckles as so and so. By seeking out my own alternatives, I am distanced from all the other ubiquity within the watch industry. That’s a really important point to us. You have way more to adhere to if there’s a stronger narrative behind every single element of the business. If you know the boxes are made in the UK, predominantly with British timber, and they’re laser engraved down the road from us. We try and do as much as we can in the UK. There’s a lot more to adhere to than it just being a Chinese-made, quadrant-hinged black lacquer box.

TF: I’m actually looking at a site’s 2013 post with a very dramatic photo of you in a shawl collar cardigan and a dress shirt and a tie. And the headline is “My First Grail Watch: Giles Ellis of Schofield Watches.”

GE: You know, the comments are just so nasty that I don’t read. I stay away, because there is so much more to my watch brand. You don’t get my watches on first pass; you don’t get my brand on first pass. Our sales funnel is generally over a year long, you know, and these guys are signed up to the Six Pips and they’re reading poetry, they’re not seeing pictures of watches. It’s about the vibe, not about the hard sell. It’s never been about the hard sell. I hate selling. I’m not good at the marketing side of things. I’m a designer and I’m best left alone in front of the computer designing stuff, right? That’s where I’m happiest. That’s where I get flow. That’s where I disappear for hours on end. Selling for me, it’s really tricky. I don’t like it at all.

That’s why we’re still a really small company. That’s really important because I don’t need lots. I just need enough to pay my mortgage. That’s it for me. I’m not after anything grander than that and having very happy, satisfied customers that adhere to the brand. Our guys have Schofield corners, they keep all of the paperwork, they keep everything because there is a narrative behind every single decision that I make. Take Rolex, for example. When you get a Rolex, you know what it’s going to be like before you get it. There are no surprises. There’s no hidden charm. There is nothing to adhere to, really, other than you’ve got a Rolex. But with a Schofield that’s not true, it’s very different. It doesn’t matter which Schofield you’ve got; it’s about just having a Schofield. It’s about showing off the fact that you need more from your purchases than just a quick High Street satisfaction. Which is why our funnel so long and when you’re into it, you’re well and properly into it. That’s how it works, right? If you don’t get it, you will never get it.

TF: I imagine any changes you might make to the any element are all decisions you’re making that are in a sense manifestations of you. It’s not about sales and it’s not about marketing, because when those things come in, what happens is you start designing for other people.

GE: Absolutely right. You know, the gold Treasure watch is a classic example of that. I predominantly wear all black, and the gold watch just looked absolutely cracking, you know, with what I was wearing, and I’m like, “That’s the watch I want to wear, so I’m going to make it. But how can I make it Schofield?” How can I make a gold-plated watch that everybody isn’t going to ask to replate or ask why it’s scratched? So, it’s done over a brass body, which nobody does anymore. As it dents and scratches it’s going to oxidize the brass underneath and you start to get a lovely, tinted gold case with personal character. It’s no different to a patinated bronze, it’s the same way, you know, you’re gonna go through that patination and start to make it your own.

TF: I’m sure there are people who follow the brand, know the brand, and saw this and were like, “Whoa, this came out of left field!” The silhouette doesn’t naturally say, “Plate me in gold!”

GE: No, you’re absolutely right. But those curveballs, we’ve always done. The second watch we did after the Signalman was a carbon fiber watch called the Blacklamp, it cost 10,000 quid with a Unitas movement in it. It was limited to 100 watches, and I think we ended up selling about 87 of those. We pulled the pin just before it reached its end because the invoicing got pretty scary for the manufacturer. But it was a very unusual watch. We actually developed the carbon fiber for it. It was just a phenomenal watch and it sold well and it’s a very well-loved watch. It’s super cool. It was the watch that started the lume craze that happened afterwards with people doing concept lume ideas. That was the watch that started it because of the glowing ring around the outside. We released that in 2012 or 2013.

Then we launched three Beaters. These were the bomb-proof versions of our prior designs, but all made in the UK. UK made cases—I finished all of the cases by hand. We cooked the titanium to make it blue, in the kiln. I was the first to patinate bronze watches, nobody had done that before, to force the patination chemically. We developed our own way of doing that. So, curveballs for us are a natural way of doing it. And that’s just the shifts in my tastes, under the umbrella of Schofield. So that’s what happens there.

So doing the gold-plated one Treasure watch, wasn’t a surprise for those that know us. In a way, Schofield is a treasure company. Once you discover it, you feel like you’ve found hidden treasure. I try to make everything to be like treasure and to be treasured. And that’s why we don’t see much on eBay. We don’t see much on the secondhand market. Naturally you do. It’s a watch and they get flipped. But the pens and the clocks and the other accessories over the years, you don’t see them because they’re treasure, and they’re meant to be coveted and held on to such.

TF: It sounds like your customer base is as much made up of repeat buyers as it is new buyers, if not more so repeat buyers?

GE: Absolutely right. That’s true. They’re mostly repeat buyers. With a momentum that has built up from the last 12 years or so. We’ve got customers with more than seven watches and plural of those, serious collectors. We’ve got guys with strap collections exceeding 60-70 straps, you know, and all the accessories and everything else we do. That’s what I like, that loyalty for a brand. The new sales, they’re the hardest to come by. Schofield is currently me and a couple of other people working for me. It’s very difficult to find the time to keep blitzing it out on social media. I’d rather go home and play with my kids. So, I don’t prioritize as much of that as maybe others in the game would suggest I do. And I know that can be frustrating to some but that’s it. I have to balance what I do with my home life as well, and be around. Thankfully, I live up the road from the shop, so my commute is on foot, and I do get to pop back and come back in.

TF: Schofield was founded upon being different, not out of a desire or need to be different, but because what was there was not what you wanted. So necessarily, it is different, what you’ve created. But what do you think in the watch industry is working right now? What are the bright spots?

GE: My answer will almost certainly read as conceited. And it’s not that at all, it’s the fact that I follow the watch industry as much as I need to, which is actually the bare minimum, right? So, in the very short instances of when I actually see lots of imagery like I would if I was scrolling through Instagram or such, it’s that the independents like myself are exciting, if they’re willing to push boundaries. I’ll be looking at some of the stuff that takes risks. And it’s where the brands—even some of the big brands—when they’re willing to take risks, that’s when they’re really interesting. You know, the Omega and Swatch thing is interesting to me because it seems like a bit of a risk because it could, in some ways, damage the Omega brand. So, it’s the risk taking that really appeals to me most of all, because then we see things that are different. But there’s a caveat with that, in the fact that sometimes something looks like it’s a risk, but actually, it’s not. It’s just the same old thing. You may see some collaborations with brands that look unusual. But I don’t believe that’s risk taking, because you can hide under a collaboration.

TF: It’s almost a one off. If you’re doing a collaboration, it shouldn’t look like one of your watches. It should bring something outside in and inject that where it is recognizable, but different. To your point, I think there is, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, the ability to hide.

Where does Schofield go from here? Are there things on the horizon? I get the sense that while you do some planning, you prefer to kind of just let things happen.

GE: I’d say there’s an element of truth to that, because you plan for everything and receive something. So, you push three or four projects ahead in any one year, with all of fervor that January brings, and by now we’re down to two projects for the year. If I can see those through, then that’s great, we’ve done a launch or maybe two launches, you know, and then there’s all the other accessories. But we have to always bias watches, we always want to be a watchmaker first and all the other bits and pieces come second. But like you said, there’s a certain amount of serendipity and you get lucky, and sometimes you don’t, things fall down. So, I’ve got three watches on the go at the moment, potentially a fourth. I hope to get one out maybe next month, with another one following maybe September, and then do another one in November. And then also in the background of that, I’ve got other projects, watch projects that are kind of sketched out. And so, they’re with people now, can you do this? Can this be done? And if they come back and say, “Yes, we can do this for this much. We can get it done by this time,” then suddenly one of those may overtake or even usurp one of the other projects. And so that’s how it’s done here.

TF: So, tell me, if you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?

GE: I’ve thought about that a lot recently, because if anyone made me a really good offer for Schofield, like an offer you just couldn’t refuse, then what would I do instead? And I think I’m gonna say it almost certainly would be perfume. I would like to make something that has a lifespan that isn’t it breaking, or getting dropped, or being whacked onto a turnstile as you’re going through the tube. Perfume is something that just gets used up and if you love it, you’ll come back for more of it. So, from that point of view, designing perfume bottles would naturally be my way, but more about the narrative, you see. When you read about perfume online, if you’ve ever bought perfume online, you’re buying it based on language, which is a risk, right? But it’s extremely exciting. And language that can be used to sell perfume or to write about perfume is fascinating. And I love that. And I’m already very good at the storytelling, and with perfume that’s exaggerated to the max.

So right now, today, it would be perfume.

To find out more about Schofield Watch Company, head to the brand’s site.