Luminox makes watches. And they make watch straps. And now, they’re making an offer you can’t refuse.
Well, not THAT offer. They’re not going to put you into the Mafia, or have you sleep with the fishes. But they’re offering something potentially even more enticing… and maybe just as fatal. Although like I said, probably not. Probably.
The LSOC is the Luminox Special Operations Challenge. By taking them up on it, you are given the opportunity to train like a Navy SEAL for a day. (U.S. Navy SEALs are the navy’s special forces unit, designated thusly for Sea, Air and Land operations. SEALs are considered an elite unit, one the the American military’s best.)
Details are limited. (Though I prefer the phrase “on a need-to-know basis.”) But it seems Luminox, which has built up a relationship with both active-duty SEALs and former SEALS, has decided to use that association to offer an extremely unusual side attraction when you buy one of their special Colormark watches.
It seems that 20 years ago, Luminox attracted the attention of the U.S. Navy SEAL teams when the SEALs discovered the extreme illumination that the brand gave to their watches. The SEALs apparently asked that Luminox make a series of watches for them. Luminox agreed, because that’s a great endorsement, and because no one in their right mind would tick off a SEAL.
Luminox is offering something that deepens the experience a little further.
Ever since then, Luminox has continued to update that watch line, and this has resulted in the Navy SEAL Colormark series. In 2013, Luminox refined the line under the collaboration of SEALs both active and retired, and the ANU (Authorized for Navy Use) line was born. That series featured a stainless steel case, a screw crown and screw case back, and a ten-year lithium battery.
Now, however, Luminox is offering something that deepens the experience a little further. If you purchase either the 4223 SOC set, or the 3053 SOC set, you not only get a black PVD-plated watch, a storage box, and an extra fabric strap. You ALSO get the chance to “train like a SEAL for a day.” There are no details given beyond that, so I can only speculate. But I’m guessing that Luminox is contacting some of their associates who are former SEALs, and asking them to set up sessions that incorporate the training that they underwent to become SEALs. (That training may have been a long time ago, but I doubt it’s the kind of thing you forget.)
The Christophe Claret X-Treme 1 first came out four years ago, and the brand has decided to extend the collection by adding a pair of watches in an extremely limited edition. Each of the two watches will be available in eight pieces. The two new watches are functionally identical; one incorporates red gold, and the other white gold.
The X-Treme 1 is one of those watches that rewards you more the more you look at it. It’s fascinating from the very surface material all the way to the invisible fields that it uses to tell you the time.
Those fields are magnetism, by the way, and that may be the finest miracle of the Christophe Claret X-Treme 1: that it uses the traditional bane of mechanical watches to tell you what time it is. Talk about harnessing the weapons of the enemy. For hundreds of years, magnetism has been anathema to timekeeping. Magnetic fields adversely affect clockworks, throwing them off kilter. Generations of watchmakers knew this, and accepted it as gospel. Now the books are being rewritten, and the X-Treme 1 will have a chapter in them.
