Mickey Brown came to watchmaking from a very different world.
A mechanical aerospace engineer by training, Mickey spent years working with additive manufacturing and designing lattice structures for aerospace applications. At the same time, watches had always been deeply personal to him, tied to a family tradition shared with his father and brother.
Eventually, those two worlds came together to create Parivas.
In this episode of The Micro Collector, Mickey shares the six-year journey behind the Exo.1 and why the team had to wait years for additive manufacturing technology to reach the level of refinement they believed watchmaking demanded.
We go deep into how the Exo.1 is actually made, from its monolithic lattice case and integrated indices to the subtractive machining that follows the printing process. We also explore the customized movement and precision program developed with the Horological Society of New York, the unexpected Solar Dusted finish, and why Mickey and the team assemble and test the watches themselves.
We also talk about what it means to enter watchmaking without knowing the traditional rules, how Parivas is building trust around a $7,500 watch from a new brand, and why Mickey believes additive manufacturing could open up an entirely new design landscape for watches.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
01:23 Meet Mickey Brown and Parivas
03:12 Mickey’s personal connection to watches
05:24 From aerospace engineering to Parivas
09:48 Why the Exo.1 took six years to develop
12:49 Building the Parivas founding team
15:58 Additive manufacturing and how the Exo.1 is made
21:56 The movement and precision chronometer program
26:53 Discovering the Solar Dusted finish
31:05 Why Parivas assembles and tests watches in-house
33:27 The advantage of not knowing the rules
38:23 Building trust around a $7,500 watch
42:06 The era of additive watchmaking
Learn More About Parivas
Website: https://parivas.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/parivas_watches/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/parivaswatches
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@parivas
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@parivas_watches
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