Tw Steel Watches And The Family Behind The Success

TW Steel watches could be said to have gotten its start when a young Dutch boy took an interest in what his father did for a living. It was when Ton Cobelens, working as a distributor for Raymond Weil watches, that the young Jordy Coblelens took an interest in watches. His father moved on to another career, advertising. He opened his own advertising agency and was rather successful but soon Ton s passion for watches had him starting his own watch brand. Now the passion that had been kindled in the young Jordy years before, had an outlet. At first he worked on his entrepreneurial skills by selling his fathers brand of watches, to the fathers and relatives of school mates.

Jordy and his father began to work together in earnest on Ton Cobelens brand of watches. Jordy learned the trade, spending a year in Germany gaining first hand experience in the art of Horology the art and/or skill of making clocks, watches or other devices for telling time. His experience started with learning to deal with distributors and jewelers then expanded to every aspect of the watch industry.

TW Steel watches was the lure to bring Jordy into the watch business 100 , luring him from his other interest music. At the same time he was working with his father to develop his watch brand, he had also founded his own music company JC Records. With the concept of TW Steel watches on the table Jordy turned his full attention to the watch business in 2005.

Believing in the potential of the TW Steel brand Jordy chose to head up TW Steel and front the development of the TW Steel watch.

In early 2006 a Chinese manufacturer was paid to produce 400 each of 4 different designs that Ton and Jordy Cobelens had produced, just to see if there was a market for an even larger format than was currently available. All of the prototypes sold in a few weeks through Dutch distributors of fine jewelry. There did seem to be a demand for the behemoth time pieces. The demand was not gender or age specific either. Men, women, young and old snatched up the TW Steel watches.

TW Steel (The Watch in Steel) is the Cobelens take on massive, blingy timepieces. While not a luxury product they look as if they cost up to ten times more than they do. With Dutch quality control, Japanese quartz movement, the expertise of Chinese manufacturing coupled with the romantic rose and matt black of the Cobelens 45mm, 48mm or 50mm bezels gives the illusion of a luxury item.

The 4 prototype models quickly turned into 11, that have multiplied into over 100 models that are available today. With the eye for design that Ton Cobelens has and the opening of offices in Thailand, Hong Kong and Australia, the 100 models now available could jump even higher.

With a distributor base that includes names like Harrods of London, Jordy Cobelens is looking forward to seeing how far he can ride this wave of success by using his brand on everything from sunglasses to jewelry.

The TW Steel watch in not solely responsible for the young Cobelens success. There is his family and their financial backing, parental guidance along with the lessons learned from the previous failure of his fathers now defunct Vanceur watch brand. There are also the contacts that his father developed over the years as a former distributor and marketing consultant. Jordy s passion for the watch making industry and his entrepreneurial leadership at the helm has made it a family affair that has sky rocketed the TW Steel watch into the annals of watch history.