Jessica Vuocolo remembers the day she asked her husband, Scott, why the couple didn’t have more nice photos of their three daughters.
His reply, she recalls, was that they probably would, if they had a good camera to take them with. The kids were little then. Today Gabby is 10, and Sienna and Alyssa are 8.
Next thing she knew, he was online researching cameras and photography equipment. “I’ve known him since he was in high school,” she said. “He’s always been interested in different things. Something will spark his interest and he just goes full speed ahead.”
And how. Scott Vuocolo didn’t buy a good camera. He bought a great camera and great equipment and learned how to take great photos. He got so good that he turned his newfound hobby into a business, called SCV Imagery. From 2010 until this year, he worked as a professional photographer, frequently shooting weddings in addition to his full-time job as a communications director for Pfizer.
“My wife kind of makes fun of me because I kind of get obsessive about things,” Vuocolo said.
For the past 15 months, Vuocolo has had a new obsession: watches. He’s long been fascinated by automatic watches—watches that are powered by mechanical movements inside. Most watches today are powered by quartz and batteries, but automatic watches use gears and the tension of their mainsprings to keep on ticking.
In the market for a new watch a few years ago, Vuocolo was impressed by a number of newer companies, many based in the U.S., that were marketing high quality mechanical timepieces. Less impressive were their high prices. He thought: if they could succeed in the watchmaking industry, maybe he could too.
And with that, Mercer Watch Company was born.
The company, with Vuocolo as its only employee, has had a successful first year. Its’ line of watches including his first design, the Brigadier, have sold well. (The others are the Voyager, the Privateer and the Wayfarer.) Vuocolo says he’s moved $265,000 of inventory since production began.
But it’s Mercer Watch Co.’s next watch, the Airfoil—set to hit the market later this summer—that could make or break the company. Where the first few watches sell for somewhere between $299 and $449, the Airfoil, which will be the first of the line to be assembled in the U.S., is currently offered for presale on the mercerwatch.com website for $849.
Vuocolo, 39, said he feels that making the jump in quality and price point is necessary to ensure the company has a future. “The microbrand market is getting crowded,” he said. “The movement choices are getting quite limited. I wanted to try to make one that would stand out.”
With the Airfoil, Vuocolo will be competing with growing brands like Bremont, based in England, and Shinola, based in Detroit, which are among those selling automatic watches in the Airfoil’s price range.
Vuocolo began learning about the business of watchmaking in the same place he taught himself about photography: the internet. Online, he found a community of entrepreneurs, some who had been in business a decade or more and some just starting up, who were using the power of home computing and the web’s global reach to allow them to do the same things he wanted to do with Mercer Watch Co.
“The hard part is figuring out how to find someone who could help you build it. Nobody who has done it really wants to share that information, for obvious reasons,” he said.
A watch has three basic parts: the strap, the case, and the movement. Vuocolo was always going to be starting with an automatic movement. “I’m drawn to the mechanical nature of things, and the fact that a properly maintained mechanical watch from 1950 can still keep excellent time today,” he said.
Swiss movements are often seen as the most prestigious, but Vuocolo found companies based in China and Japan, like Miyota, that made good quality movements. He began by obtaining samples to gauge quality and style.
Watch enthusiasts like Vuocolo prize well-made movements, but they also value their aesthetic qualities. The type of watch he wanted to make usually has a transparent back so the inner workings are exposed.
He also learned how to use computer-aided design software to spec out the case, face, hands and strap. Design was a matter of trial and error, but he knew what he was generally going for. “My preference in watches is for clean design, nothing gaudy or chunky or super busy,” he said. “The designs that have persisted over the years in the watch world have been the ones that are attractive and subtle.”
The sophistication of modern technology is a major boon for small businesses, making things possible that would have been unimaginable not that long ago. CAD software and video cards are so powerful today that a watch designer can readily render a lifelike illustration of a design. (For example, the picture of the Airfoil watch, above on the right, is not a photograph but a computer rendering.)
Three-dimensional printing also allowed Vuocolo to do more than visualize his prospective products. He has a 3-D printer in his home, capable of giving him prototypes of his designs to hold in his hand. For higher quality 3-D printouts, he sends specs to a facility in New York that can make him steel-infused plastic mockups for $20.
For the leather straps, he did research to determine the best and most affordable sources of rawhide. He purchases the hide wholesale and has it sent to tanneries where they are processed into straps. “I can make straps myself, but I’m slow,” he said.
The first Mercer watches were financed through Kickstarter, the crowdfunding website that connects entrepreneurs with backers. With the Airfoil, Vuocolo isn’t using Kickstarter. He’s reinvesting the profits from the sales of the other watches.
“Once you have success [with Kickstarter funding], it’s time to find yourself,” he said.
The initial Kickstarter campaign, for the Brigadier, was a failure at first. Vuocolo set a target of $30,000 in funding, but only reached $15,000 before time ran out. If a project doesn’t reach its goal on Kickstarter, then no money changes hands.
Why didn’t the first foray succeed? Vuocolo says there’s no real answer to that question, but the setback inspired him to take a fresh look at everything, especially his marketing. When he put the Brigadier concept online for a second go, the marketing was different, but the product itself was exactly the same. This time he pulled in $125,000 in backing and was able to start production.
Subsequent models didn’t generate quite that many backers, but all were successful enough to finance production runs to supply the backers plus additional inventory to be sold online.
Kickstarter offers startup businesses a way to reach customers they wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach, but it has its limitations. For one thing, Vuocolo says, it’s possible to bite off more than you can chew. “If you raise a million dollars with 2,000 backers, you immediately become larger than you had intended,” he said.
He also didn’t see Kickstarter as a good marketplace for the Airfoil given its price point. “Over $250, backers go away. They’re not comfortable going too much above that.”
Until now, Mercer watches have been manufactured in Hong Kong, but the Airfoil will be made in Ohio. Everything about the Airfoil is a step beyond the earlier watches. The straps will be made of Horween leather. The movements are Swiss, and the faces will be super luminous. The cases will be made of carbon-hardened steel.
Vuocolo sees the fate of his enterprise as riding on the potential of the Airfoil. “Either we’re going to do well or …” He pauses. “If this watch is not successful, then Mercer Watch will probably be no more. It’s exciting.”
For now, Vuocolo handles his own marketing, putting his communications and photography experience to good use in making a website that is informative and visually appealing. His watches are available online at the Touch of Modern website, but they can’t at present be found in stores, a hurdle that he hopes Airfoil will help him clear.
He believes stores will be interested in carrying it, and has also been in touch with several major watch websites that have expressed interest in seeing the finished product, which should be available sometime around September.
Vuocolo would love to see Mercer Watch grow into a full-time endeavor. “That’s the ideal goal,” he said. “It’s a big step for me, especially given the benefits that working in big pharma affords. But if it’s at all feasible, that would be great.”
Both Scott and Jessica are from Syracuse, New York, where they attended the same high school. Scott’s father, Philip, is a physician. His mother is Eileen.
He might have considered becoming a physician himself, but knew after observing one surgery that it was not for him. Instead he studied biology at Rochester Institute of Technology, eventually going on to get a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology at Temple University.
The Vuocolos moved to Philadelphia in 1998 so Scott could go to Temple, then to Lawrence in 2003. In 2006, they bought a townhouse in Hopewell Grant, and in 2012 they moved to their current house in Brandon Farms. Daughters Alyssa and Sienna attend Stony Brook Elementary School, but daughter Gabby goes to Bear Tavern Elementary School for its STEM program.
Jessica Vuocolo, who works as an interior designer for Fletcher Thompson in Somerset, isn’t surprised that her husband has taken on the challenge of starting up a business like this.
“He has never been hesitant to do things,” she said. “Like with the photography—he gets onto blogs, picks other people’s brains, talks to all kinds of people about stuff. He’s always loved watches, It kind of seemed natural.”
Mercer Watch Co. founder Scott Vuocolo, right, with wife Jessica.,
