Letter from the Founder
Time for a change
By the time you’re reading this, The Rake will have embarked on the next chapter of its e-commerce evolution: watches. Why watches? Well, to begin with, everyone at The Rake, yours truly in particular, adores them. Amusingly, I was speaking to my friend William Roberts — who I believe is not just a consummate gentleman but also the world’s most knowledgeable and accomplished Omega Speedmaster collector (his website, Speedmaster101.com, is an invaluable resource) — and his 92-year-old mother at their farm in Surrey, and Mrs. Roberts posited the question why it is the two of us love watches so much.
For me it is because there is no object thatdogs as faithful companions, but my dachshund would have to wake me up in the morning with a doppio macchiato and drive me to work in my 600hp AMG 63 while performing higher mathematical algorithms in her head to come close to what my watches do. Add to that the conscientiousness of the synergistic relationship between human and watch — they consume only the energy we give them by winding them or wearing them — and you’ll understand that buying and wearing a mechanical watch is not so much a choice as a moral imperative.
