Next month it will be fifteen years since I made my very first watch strap. It’s astonishing to realise that I’ve been making straps for so long, but it was back in August 2006 that I decided to “have a go” at making a strap for a watch for the first time. I bought some leather and a few cheap tools from eBay and over the course of a weekend I made the very first Toshi Strap. The leather I’d bought turned out to be a bit cheap and nasty, I had some major problems cutting the leather to the correct width for the watch, my stitching wasn’t even remotely straight, and I had absolutely no idea how to burnish the edges. Truth be told, that first strap was pretty dreadful, but I remember at the time being impressed that I had made it myself and I wore it with pride.
Over the next few months I continued to make watch straps for myself in my spare time. I found I enjoyed the process – I actually found it relaxing. With practice I gradually improved my stitching, and I made my first expensive purchase – a proper round knife (I learned quickly that a sharp knife is an essential tool when working with leather). I read a lot of books about leatherworking and experimented. Towards the end of 2006 a friend asked me to make him a strap for his Panerai – this was my first true commision.
Then in 2007 I was made redundant from my job and, as I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands, I decided to take a leatherworking course. I had absolutely no plans to start a business making watch straps for a living, the course was simply something I wanted to do to improve my leatherwork. I found a course being run by a master saddlemaker and signed up. I learned a huge amount from that course, and not surprisingly the quality of the straps I was making improved greatly as a result. By the end of the year I was surprised to find that my straps were getting a lot of interest and so I decided to take a leap of faith. I stopped looking for work (!), I taught myself how to build a basic website from a book, and gave myself 6 months to see if I could turn my hobby into a business. Toshi Straps was launched in January 2008 and I was delighted (and more than a little surprised) that within those first 6 months I realised it was a business and it could sustain me. I knew that being a strap maker would never make me rich, but I’d decided after years working in a stressful industry that my happiness was more important than money, and working for myself doing something I truly loved seemed enough.
Fifteen years on and I’m still enjoying making watch straps as much now as I did at the beginning. There have been many changes in my life over that fifteen years, but I still work alone, having made the decision many years ago not to take on staff and grow the business (I like making straps and I don’t like managing people, so taking on staff to make the straps for me didn’t seem like a great idea). I love the process of making a watch strap as much now as I ever did, and so I continue to do everything myself. Every aspect of the strap build is done by hand, and although this can mean that at busy times my customers have to wait several weeks for their straps, I’m thankful that the general consensus seems to be that my straps are worth waiting for. I take a huge pride in the straps that I make, and I’m often humbled by the feedback I get from customers when they receive their straps.
Now I get to the point of this blog post. Fifteen years of making watch straps seems like a big deal to me, and I want to take a moment to say a huge thank you to everyone who has ever ordered a strap from me. The truth is that regardless of how much I love what I do, it has only been possible for me to keep doing this because of my customers. I consider myself very lucky to have been able to make a living doing something I love for so long. I may not be rich, but I wake up every morning looking forward to working, and that’s worth so much in my opinion. Thank you!