Profile
Susan Galvin
For our latest installment in our series Women in Horology we are again hitting a new milestone, so to speak. Thus far we’ve delved deep into the stories of many successful women who are leaving unique marks on the industry and are contributing something singular to our niche world of horological wonder and enthusiasm. From influencers (though one might despise the noun) and journalists to heads of marketing department and business owners. The more women we interview, the broader the scope of their impact is shaping itself and the clearer it is becoming for us to see how important their role is. (Women have played major roles in all aspects of humanity since the dawn of time—literally— yet we fail to see it or refuse vehemently to accept it.) As the saying goes, behind every great man there is a great woman, a quote attributed to not one single human being, but in fact, behind every great brand there are many outstanding women. Something we started to look into in the previous installment of this series when we chatted about Rossella Baldi and Alice Christian.
So today’s milestone is that we’re going to talk about a woman who trained and worked as a professional watchmaker (which is already uncommon as it were) and who started her own watch brand six years ago. Both of which we had yet to put together in an article but, believe it or not, things get even better: today’s protagonist not only designs her collections but also assembles and tests them in-house, raising the stakes in our exploration of the role of women in the watch industry. This information goes to show that women are indeed playing many crucial roles in yet another male dominated industry—watchmaking—and though today’s hero is the only to do what she does, we hope that her story and success will inspire other members of the strongest gender to follow in her pioneering footsteps. And we’ve talked about the brand before when exploring the Loimu Tundra a few moons past. Indeed, this installment in the series dedicated to women in horology focuses dead center on Susan Galvin from the brand of the same name, Galvin Watches based in Sydney, Australia.
Susan Galvin
It Started with a "What If?"
The question of how someone got started in doing anything is always a fascinating one, and figuring out how women get into horology is even more so the case. For example, Olivia Blakstad fell into it because she has a particular talent for striking random conversations with about anyone, which made her the perfect candidate to do marketing for Christopher Ward even though she knew nothing about watches. Kristin Lam, for her part, was exposed to her husband’s horological entrepreneurial meanderings during the COVID lockdowns and couldn’t escape the topic and decided to jump into it. But besides these two incredible women, most I have interviewed thus far came to this world by way of another man—a father, best friend, co-worker—who introduced them to watchmaking and the particularities of this hobby which make us instant nerds. Susan’s path into it was a little different but no less fascinating: upon returning from a trip to Southeast Asia to her birth country of Finland, and pondering which professional direction to take, her father shared an article about the Finnish School of Watchmaking.
He told her about it because he wanted to help Susan find her path in life and because she always had a knack for and interest in craft-driven work. So at the beginning watchmaking was as good a profession as any other, so she signed up and quickly got into it. From what I understand, the Finnish School of Watchmaking is structured like traditional Swiss watchmaking schools like Wostep in the sense that students take all of their classes on campus and learn to do everything themselves over the course of three years. She first learned how to use the basic tools of the trade, for example things seemingly as simple as becoming comfortable wearing and using an eye glass, using small tools of different shapes and functions to do many different things, to then fabricating her own tools to become a watchmaker before learning about the various parts of mechanical movements and their inner workings. Slowly she progressed to working with more and more complex movements and finished by modifying bridges and adjusting key components such as the balance hairspring and learned certain engraving techniques such as polishing bridge bevels.
She gifted the watch after she completed her three-year education in watchmaking to her father who still proudly wears it.
From School to Tag Heuer to Galvin
After completing her education, Susan moved to Manchester in the United Kingdom to work for Tag Heuer’s repair center. She spent about three years there learning all she could from more experienced watchmakers before she flew 10,500 miles (16,900km) to Sydney where she got transferred as part of the brand’s internal exchange program. There she worked another couple of years for Tag until she moved on to Omega, again in a repair center, where she worked for four years. As fate would have it, Omega’s repair center was then moved to Melbourne in 2020 and she lost her job because she didn’t want to displace her family and found herself in a unique situation: the work she did and the experience she gained in the industry gave her the foundation and confidence to one day creating her own brand. An idea she tinkered with whilst being on maternity leave and out of work and which was encouraged by her husband who suggested that perhaps it was time for her to design her own watches. After all, she knew watches inside and out which gave her an edge over many, many other micro and independent brand founders.
In the nearly ten years she spent in service centers she learned a lot about mechanical movements and tooling but she was also exposed to a great many brands and watches some of which left a deep impression on her. Working for Omega she also got very much interested in vintage timepieces and this is where she would find the inspiration to design her first collection. However, having the idea of creating a brand is one thing and creating the brand is yet another. She made the bold decision that she didn’t want to begin her business with a debt which she would have acquired by taking out a bank loan to jumpstart the brand. Instead, she chose the path of doing a Kickstarter campaign which made it possible for her to “only” have to pay for the prototypes of her first collection and to be able to invest the proceeds from the campaign to not only start the production of the parts, but to also to outfit a watchmaker’s studio in her own house. Something she wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing going the old-school way of borrowing money from a financial institution. All of this took place in 2020.
Her first collection was called “Alku” which translates to “Beginning” in Finnish. She found inspiration for this model in a 1950s Omega Bumper Automatic she purchased probably more than second-hand which had classic design with a domed dial. And so Susan felt compelled to create a first collection which would have a classic aesthetic but feel modern by having an elegant but colorful dial, which is a key characteristic of all Galvin collections to this day. Although she is from Finland, her husband being British, she had gotten used to going by his surname which she therefore opted for for the brand name as it not only represents who she is but also because it rolls off the tongue quite easily. The Alku fared well on Kickstarter and she felt comfortable after a first successful launch to start an e-commerce website and to enlist the help of a friend to manage the PR side of the brand at the beginning. That is when, therefore, she officially started the brand and at the time of writing this article, Susan has been running the brand full time for the past five years.
Alku
Growing Galvin and Developing the Collections
After the successful launch of the Alku, Susan developed two other collections which she also Kickstarted: the Loimu which translates to “Blaze from the Northern Light” in Finnish (she grew up in the northern part of the country) which is characterized by a muscular case and guilloché-style dial, and the Suvi which means “Summer”, which is her first rectangular collection which also displays an intricate dial work and the now classic Galvin timeless elegance married to a certain boldness in design. She released the second and third collections a couple of years apart which indicates that Susan is running a marathon and not a race, as she likes to take her time to get things right and that her very own process requires that she does so. Indeed, Susan not only designs her own watches but also assembles them to order and regulates them in-house. This is a time-consuming process but one which no other brand in her price range can claim to offer—at least as far as she and I know. Because on top of running her own brand, Susan also continues to service watches one in a while and to raise two kids.
Loimu
Suvi
As soon as she launched the Alku, Susan accidentally experimented with various dial colors whilst prototyping the collection, because, as she puts it, once she got a case design down she sticks to it for a while because designing and getting prototypes of new ones is expensive and time-consuming and so creating several versions of a collection through the exploration of new colors was her best way to create vibrancy and optionality within it. Suddenly, Susan had created five versions of the Alku and the brand became immediately known for her color symphonies. The other reason why Galvin progresses slowly but surely is the fact that developing new collections takes time, energy, and an almost-endless back-and-forth between her and the manufacturing partners she works with. It takes roughly one year (and sometimes more) to go from a first sketch to a sellable product, as Susan first explores various design ideas for the case, dial, and hands, and for each duplicates the first sketches into different colors. The next step involves getting technical drawings of the watch done and her manufacturing partners to prototype each component.
What Makes Galvin Unique
What outsiders like myself will never be able to fully fathom is the complexity of creating a watch brand, developing collections, and to eventually build up the business into a viable commercial enterprise. Even though Susan has been running Galvin Watches for five years, it wasn’t until she had launched her first three collections through Kickstarter that she was able to employ herself—meaning pay herself a decent salary. It took her this long—and I do not claim to know how long it generally takes a microbrand owner to reach that point—because she does most of the work herself and because, through her decade of being a professional watchmaker, she never takes shortcuts. As she explained, Susan got used to evaluating the quality of all the parts which make up a timepiece and she can instantly recognize whenever a manufacturer—whether it be dials, cases, hands, or even movements—doesn’t go all the way into making a fine product. She notices for example the not-so perfect finishing of a customized rotor and the rough edges of a seconds hand, and thus she’s particular about who she works with.
Because we need to keep in mind that Susan is the same person who creates the designs, spec’s out the watches, finds the manufacturing partners and who will then assemble the watches looking at each component under an eye glass and a loupe, then tests and regulates the calibers over a period of three days. Again I cannot claim to know how other watchmakers work but we will assume that they are all good and serious in their work, but what is sure is that most microbrands which exist today never had, and never will, have the same approach to watchmaking as Susan does. Indeed, in most cases, the brand sends out the technical drawings, receives prototypes which they evaluate and send back, then weeks or months later receive a finished product which they will most likely not quality control themselves before shipping out to the customer. So Galvin Watches is truly unique in the microbrand industry because she has set high standards for herself, because she works artisanally, one watch at-a-time, and because she knows what goes into making a good watch.
As we saw earlier, the other element of the brand which makes it unique is Susan’s dual cultural heritage which transpires through each collection she releases. On the one hand, she tries to link her horological creations to her native Finnish culture and finds in it inspiration not only to name her collections but also to design them. Whilst at the same time, as being a professionally trained and experienced watchmaker, she has been exposed to and inspired by classic timepieces she’s worked on for a decade through her careers at Tag Heuer and Omega, and by continuing to repair watches concurrently to running Galvin Watches. On the one hand therefore she likes to design classic, simple, and timeless watches, which can be seen in her use of rectangular cases and Breguet numerals. On the other hand she likes to add a bit of singularity and dynamism to these classic designs by playing with dial textures and colors, indeed adding vibrancy to them which has become her brand’s visual trademark. As unique as her background is, so are her watches.
Conclusion
It is true that with each new installment in the series Women in Horology we broaden our understanding of women’s crucial impact in our niche world of watchmaking today. Each new article sheds some light on the numerous ways in which they have become an integral part of the industry and how it is mandatory that we all look into their unique contributions, talent, and expertise. In fact, as I hope to soon be able to tell you, women have always played important roles in horology as early as the 18th century, but that their work and contributions have always been purposely kept under wraps and deleted from official records. They were watchmakers, designers, office clerks, and also supply chain managers and even general managers of historical brands. But we will come back to this later on although this conversation leads up again to the main reason why this series of profiles came to be in the first place: yesterday, today, and tomorrow, women played, play, and will play key roles in horology and their contributions are as unique as their experiences are.
As we saw in this article, Susan Galvin is unique and the work she does is not only exemplary—running her own brand, servicing watches, and being a mother and wife all at the same time is anything but easy—but also extremely attainable as her high-quality and singular-looking creations retail well below the $1,000 stress-inducing threshold which is little money to pay for what you get: watches designed in-house and assembled-to-order by hand by Susan and regulated to the highest degree of watchmaking professionalism. Indeed, Susan and Galvin Watches are unique and we hope that they will inspire more women to follow in her singular footsteps.
Thanks for reading.