Vortic Watch Company & Colorado Watch Company’s time is now

By Kyle Kirves

On a cold, early February day in southern England, a bright sun reflects off the fuselages of a squadron of bombers, B-17s, the fabled Flying Fortresses of the U.S. Army Air Forces. On this day in 1944, these planes will lift off on a dangerous and heroic mission to bomb a submarine installation in occupied France that some, sadly, will not return from. Inside the cockpit of each plane, in a metal canister with a sliding dial and suspended on a cradle of springs to preserve the mechanics and movements inside, is a watch – a pocket watch. Crystal-less and with faces of matted black to prevent giveaway reflection, the watches’ numbers run from 1 to 24 – military time. They are precision instruments, tools the crews will lean on to time their run and synchronize their raid.

Learn more
Vortic Watch Company and the Colorado Watch Company are headquartered at 324 Jefferson St. in Fort Collins. Click here to check out their restorations or schedule a tour. See a Military Edition in action on John Krasinski’s wrist in the Amazon Prime series “Jack Ryan.” And look for Colorado Watch Company watches on Colorado Music Hall of Fame inductees.

These watches, like the planes and the men that crew them, are all American made … and among the best in the world.

“America used to be the Switzerland of the world when it came to watchmaking,” says RT Custer, founder and CEO of Fort Collins-based Vortic Watch Company. “Before World War II and for a few decades that followed, the United States was the most prolific and best producer of watches anywhere on earth.”

It’s a tradition and heritage that Custer’s Vortic both celebrates for what it is and reinvents into something new. See, Vortic takes vintage pocket watches from historic American producers, names you know from your grandfather’s watch like Hamilton, Elgin, Ball, Waltham, and converts them into magnificent, museum-worthy, yet wrist-ready renditions. That old watch that has been sitting in a sock drawer for years emerges as something you can memorialize grandpa with as everyday wear.

“Our customers want something no one else can have; a one-of-a-kind story they wear on their wrist,” Custer explains. And because few possessions say as much about a person as a watch, the statement a Vortic watch makes is clear. Custer says, “A Vortic watch says you care about American history, quality, and standing out from the crowd.”

As for those tens of thousands of watches produced for the B-17 crews over Europe? Reconditioning and repurposing those models is one of Vortic’s specialties. Their GCT model, limited to just over a dozen for each annual release, takes those cockpit-carries and converts them into the Military Edition – a kind of timeless timekeeping.

America and American watchmaking come up often when you talk with RT or go on one of Vortic’s factory tours (details below). It is part of the mission and vision of the company to support American manufacturing and job creation and prove that high-quality products like watches can be made right here in America generally, and Colorado specifically.

“We don’t just say ‘Made in USA,’ we show it. Our doors are open. Come take a tour,” Custer says.

If you think this is an offer extended only to a select few, think again. He wants Vortic to be a destination tour, a can’t-miss appointment for visitors to Fort Collins.

“My dream is to be the next New Belgium (brewing) — a place people come to experience something real. See things up close and personal.”

So on a Friday afternoon, I drove up to Fort Collins to see what makes the watchmakers at Vortic tick.

Tour of duties

Pushing through the doors at Vortic, I expected a scene out of some Hollywood version of what a watch and clock shop would look like – standing grandfather clocks and men with loupe lenses in their eyes poring over tiny gears with intricate tools. Instead, the interior is a much cooler take. Something of mid-20th century modern, accented with collected antiques from the history of horology in the United States, part Smithsonian Institute and part “Mad Men.”

Resident watch enthusiast and corporate ambassador Matt Risely greets me in the lobby, escorting me into the interior of Vortic for a proper tour. A few spoilers lie ahead – but know the tour is worth the trip to FoCo and anything I write here would be like describing a Van Gogh over the radio. The tour is a unique lens on the history of watchmaking in the United States and Vortic’s mission to preserve that history, both national and personal.

"The original idea was never to just buy a bunch of pocket watches randomly off of eBay,” Risely says. “It was to help people who had old heritage pieces – family heirlooms – turn them into something they can now use functionally."

To describe the back office of Vortic HQ as a “factory” seems a little off. First, because Vortic produces only a limited number of restored watches per year – fewer than four hundred. Also, because there is a much more of a craftsperson-like approach to almost everything they do. Even those places where the pieces are fine tuned are much more lab than assembly line. “The restoration and recreation of these watches is incredibly hard,” Risely says. “There just aren’t a lot of watchmakers left who can work on these old American pocket watch movements.”

A rarity in the modern world, and especially in the U.S., Vortic’s master watchmakers and restorers are a rare breed. "Alex, our master watchmaker, can build a watch from a block of metal,” Risely says, gesturing to where Alex is sitting at a table behind glass that allows us to watch him work without disturbing the pristine environment required for delicate work. “He hand-lathes parts, makes his own balance staffs – he’s worked on some of the most expensive watches ever produced."

The complete tour lasts an hour or so, and I get to see all the inner workings of the company, from the lab to the place where the next breed of American-made watches is coming online with Colorado Watch Company.

Home front

While Vortic’s inception is tied to the watches of the past, their future is coupled to a noble idea that is as American as it gets – the Colorado Watch Company.

“We’re here to prove that you can have a watch that is almost entirely made in America, produced at scale, at a price comparable to what you might pay for some Swiss watches,” Custer says.

Under the Colorado Watch Company brand, Vortic machines watches from scratch. Their current offerings are limited to two select models. But you can clearly see the shared DNA between the Military Edition and the GCT field watch from CWC – a similar face, luminescence, and the same 12 o’clock crown, but modernized (and sized) for everyday use and wear, rendered in standard 12-hour time (an inner dial shows 24-hour correlation).

It's worth noting that the field watch features a small oblong just below the hands, with a word that is both the company name and its state of origin: COLORADO.

“What the Swiss did to us, we’re doing in reverse,” Custer says. “We’re starting small, building something new, and creating something very special for the watch enthusiast. We’re creating watches that are achievable and affordable.”

Vortic Watch Company and Colorado Watch Company aren’t just marking time – they’re preserving it, one handcrafted piece at a time. It is a legacy handed down from the American horological tradition, one Vortic keeps and honors well. Vortic values the stories behind timepieces, and the enduring spirit of American innovation, and their time is now – reinventing and upcycling the old while creating new heirloom quality pieces from scratch that are … among the best in the world.