DIVING INTO LUXURY Sustainable Business Magazine speaks to Sean Clements, founder and CEO of exciting new watch brand SDC Watches. He explains exactly what creativity and hard work it takes to create a watch that is not only stylish but also ecologically sustainable. SDC Watches is a luxury watch brand created with a vision to make the diving industry more sustainable. Although it first appears to be an unusual pairing, founder and CEO Sean realised that he could upcycle discarded wetsuits into durable, attractive watch straps. “I wanted to create a dive watch brand and do something a bit different and incorporate the idea of upcycling into the brand and into the mission,” Sean explains. “At first I struggled a little bit with what I wanted to do but took a step back to look at what I enjoy doing in life. I’m both a big watch fan and a scuba diver. As a result, I landed on creating a dive watch brand that incorporated everything that I was interested in – but with a difference.” Sean set out in 2020 to look at the process of transforming old wetsuits into new watch straps. However, he found it challenging:
“Believe it or not, it was actually one of the most challenging parts of the brand to accomplish. I’ll explain why: it’s never been done before. I think people have tried to do it in the past but I don’t think they’ve been able to create a product that fits the bill. It took us a long time to go through the R&D process, finding the right materials, securing suppliers, then bringing it all together. Now that we’ve done it, though, we’re super happy about it.” The first designs were publicly available in 2021 but getting there wasn’t an easy job. THE BIG, HORRIBLE ISSUE SDC Watches’s model is so important for sustainability because wetsuit material is almost always destined for landfill. “There’s a really big issue with wetsuits,” says Sean. “They are made from neoprene which fundamentally is a really horrible material in the sense you can’t do SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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