Intersect 2022 - Origins & Future
Toward the end of 2018, we hosted our first get-together - a “pick-up party” for the Avalon I, our first flagship model. It took place in the back of a dimly-lit beer bar in the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles. Half of the beer list was tapped out, the floor was sticky from the night before, and there we were - a handful of watch nerds, awkwardly huddled over a single watch roll and some Avalons. It was the first time we met our customers in the real world, and it was certainly an intimate experience, to say the least.
In 2019, we hosted our second pick-up party - and it was a significant step up from the preceding year’s event. We rented out a part of Ballast Point, a waterfront brewery in Long Beach, California. Over 35 people attended, some of which were there to pick up a Duality that they had pre-ordered, while others were there just to hang out and catch up with friends from the watch community and Instagram.
We came away from that 2019 event excited, recharged, and most importantly, connected. While we always felt that community was the most important part of our work, it didn’t really hit us until we stood there, watching the group we brought together share laughs, have conversations, and bond over these little esoteric wrist-machines.
Duality pick-up party in 2019
Hanging with old friends at Intersect 2021
We could see that our annual meet up was becoming a real thing - something that people could get excited about and look forward to. As the 2019 event was winding down, we already had ideas about the next event.
And then 2020 happened. It took a year like 2020 for us to figure out how important community was and that community was not as simple as getting our customers in a room together. It is a two-sided equation - watch enthusiasts on one side and brands with watches worth talking about on the other. We missed seeing the people who wore our watches, but we also missed seeing our friends in the industry.
We feel plenty of success and gratification from connecting with our customers and knowing them as real people instead of email addresses and invoice numbers. Likewise, we look at other brands in our space and we see them as friends - not competition.
The idea of Intersect was born in 2021, after the height of the pandemic. While we were still limited by COVID restrictions, we couldn’t wait any longer to start putting our events back on. We missed seeing people, and we knew that our friends and colleagues did too - so we decided that our event could no longer be just a Nodus thing.
Intersect 2021 at Alley Lounge
We wanted to make this event a bit more special for the people who came to our past meetups, so we called a few of our industry friends and invited them to join in on the fun. This meetup was a watch meetup, not a Nodus meetup.
Steve Laughlin from Raven Watches has been a mentor and a friend of ours for many years. We have hung out in Hong Kong, New York, San Francisco, and Kansas. He flew out to Los Angeles to attend in person, while a few other brands sent watches to put on display, including MK II / Tornek Rayville and Dryden Watches. We crafted a cocktail menu with a local cocktail specialist, Adam Stein - each cocktail was named after our watches and crafted under the same concept as each respective model. We had 45 people show up (after having to limit the RSVP list, due to COVID restrictions), and the majority of them stayed all four hours, with a handful staying well into the night!
Steve from Raven Watches at Intersect 2022
Intersect 2022 was yet another big step up from the year before. Steve flew out for the weekend again, but this year we were also joined by Everett & Christian from Foster Watches, Michael from Seals Watches, Ben from Imperial Watch Co, and Patrick from Bremoir. We had watch press, including our good friend Frank (@frendymgee on IG) from WatchClicker. MK II / Tornek Rayville and Dryden Watches both sent watches out to us for display again. Additionally, our friends from Monta, Haven, and Astor & Banks sent us watches to put on display as well. We had over 100 people show up (we had to limit capacity again due to legal building capacity restrictions).
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is worth a million, so check out the Intersect 2022 recap video below!
This log entry is an attempt to bring clarity to what Intersect is supposed to be, how and why it started, and what we want to do next. It is always going to stay small and intimate, it will always be invite-only, and above all, it will always be about bringing the watch community together. And we can guarantee that next year’s event will be bigger and better.
We are not the arbiter of what brands and watches should be invited or on display, so leave a comment below if you would like us to extend an invitation to a brand not mentioned in this entry.
Those who have been following our journey over the past five years would know that our core belief with our company is that a rising tide raises all ships. Our success has always been measured by our contribution to the industry - not the number of watches we sell. We are proud to have cultivated a culture of shared success with our fellow brands and colleagues.
Intersect is our invitation to brands to put their accomplishments on display - and it is also an invitation to the community to hang out, make friends, and appreciate the work that small watch companies do, in an intimate and meaningful setting.
