2026 · FOUNDER, LEAD DESIGNER
Square
The Made-to-Measure Watch
Quick Facts
Founded Studio Plural in 2024 - identified market gap, defined brand, built operations from scratch
End-to-end product development from concept through commission and delivery
Designed 3D-printed titanium components, CNC-machined core, and fully integrated watch system
Sourced and coordinated printing, anodizing, and watchmaker assembly partners
Developed iterative customer co-design process and deposit system
Built for scale toward fully web-based configuration
Opportunity
The watch industry offers customization at two extremes: mass-produced pieces with cosmetic options, or fully bespoke commissions priced beyond reach. Neither gives the fashion-forward customer genuine agency over what they wear.
3D printing in metal promised a middle path - but most companies using it still CNC the printed parts into submission afterward, negating much of what makes printing valuable. Studio Plural started from a different question: what if you designed the watch around what printing is actually good at?
Brief
Make It Yours
Designed Around Its Limits
Built to Evolve
Make It Yours
I wanted to give customers genuine agency over their watch, not a menu of cosmetic options. That meant deciding early what was fixed and what wasn't. The movement - a Sellita SW-200 - I locked in from the start. It's a workhorse caliber that any watchmaker can service, which matters when someone is commissioning a completely unique piece. I didn't want a customer to end up with a watch that only one person in the world knows how to maintain.
Everything else I opened up. Case proportions, side treatment, color, dial construction, crown insert - each one a real decision, not a dropdown. The bezel insert I designed specifically to be user-swappable with a single screw, so a customer could own a few and change the character of the watch without sending it anywhere. The dial I split into two layers so the face could be as considered as the case around it: a traditionally painted lower section for color, a printed upper layer for indices and surface detail.
The rectangular form I chose deliberately. Circular watches are the default - rectangular reads as a statement before a single customization is made, which felt right for a customer who's already choosing to commission something entirely their own.
Designed Around Its Limits
Early prototyping made one thing clear: 3D printing titanium is not precise. The parts came back with variance that made conventional watch construction impossible - movement fit, crystal seating, crown tube alignment all require tolerances that printing simply can't hit consistently. The obvious response would have been to CNC the critical surfaces after printing, which is what most companies doing printed watch cases actually do. I tried that direction and didn't like what it produced. It felt like fighting the material to make it behave like a different one.
So I reframed the problem. Instead of trying to make the printed part precise, I separated the case into two zones with completely different requirements. The core - the part that actually holds the movement, manages ingress, and does all the structural work - I designed to be CNC-machined. The shell - the outer surface the customer sees and touches — I designed to carry none of those requirements. It doesn't need to be watertight. It doesn't need to hold a tolerance. It just needs to be expressive.
That separation unlocked everything. A surface with no structural obligations can have open lattices, skeletal voids, organic textures, forms that casting and milling can't produce. The printed part isn't compensating for what it can't do - it's doing exactly what it's good at.
The watchmaker I work with in Ohio pushed this thinking further. Early dial designs required removing the crystal for movement servicing - a custom disassembly process every time. Working through that together, I split the dial into a printed upper layer and a traditional lower section, so the movement could be removed from the back in the conventional way. The ingress protection strategy evolved the same way: through real feedback on real prototypes, not assumptions made at a desk.
Built to Evolve
Every commission will begin face-to-face. A customer works through each decision with me, then receives a plastic print - exact geometry, different material - to wear and evaluate before anything is cut in titanium. That print serves as a deposit, typically 5–10% of the final price. If something needs to change, another round follows.
I arrived at this process deliberately. Commissioning a custom watch from a screen is hard - proportions read differently on a wrist than in a render, and I'd rather spend a few rounds in plastic than deliver a finished piece that doesn't feel right. Most customers will go through one to three iterations. The prototypes don't disappear afterward either. A customer ends up with a small physical record of their own decision-making, which I think adds to the sense of ownership rather than being waste.
The production chain - print, anodize if specified, assemble in Ohio - is structured to scale without restructuring. A fully web-based configuration interface is the natural next step, and something I've kept in mind throughout the design of the system. The goal from the start was a process that works at one commission and also at a hundred.
Outcome
Wee Stand launched on Kickstarter, raising $260k+ before going on to sell 8,000+ units globally and generating over $800k in revenue. The design was awarded the Red Dot Design Award in 2022 and patented the same year.