Paceracer is very unusual
EVERYTHING WE DO IS DIFFERENT
We pride ourselves in making watches no one else makes our way, anywhere in the world. A mystical landscape from Cape Reinga to Stuart Island, a place in the world near to Antarctica, holding an abundance of our most precious resource, water. Right here we create something new that honours something equally as important, and that is time.
Starting with the obvious, our location, & the not so obvious, our design process. Beginning through appreciation for the art & geography of watch making. Now we're adding to it.
In summary, we design, engineer & manufacture watches for architects, doctors, surfers, adventurers & those with a minimalist taste that has distilled over many years.
The design ethos is to achieve beauty in raw simplicity, through every corner of the brand. From of course the dial & watch cases, down to the design of our packaging.
We design every detail to every 100th of a millimeter from inception, & handcraft every watch in Auckland, New Zealand. Almost every step of the process uses custom tools designed for the particular task.
In 2018 Paceracer became known to the public through a design award at the Best Awards.
The design process
ALWAYS BEGINS WITH A SKETCH
Our secret sauce.
Precision tools are used to create the bespoke components & finally artisanal techniques complete each watch by hand. Priding ourselves in being a boutique watch designer, a manufacturer in New Zealand.
Our pursuit in time began from a moment of nostalgia.
Values we practice in design, theory & execution are etiquette's we find in the creative arts. Progress, originality & technique. We believe its not what you do, but how you do it.
The ethos of our name is drawn from the event known as a pace race, where the objective is not to finish the fastest, but to finish in the best condition.
Founded by
A FORMER INDUSTRIAL DESIGNER
Discovered by Brett Band, a former Industrial Designer.
“Brett's mother was a dressmaker, and his father a bridge engineer, which explains the wonderful balance between detail and robustness in his watches.“ - Everyday-Needs Design Store
Prior to design, he spent close to 15 years following his passion, traveling and filming for sponsorships as an ambassador.
Leading to a series of lifetime memories that began Paceracer Watch Company. His passion for watches grew from an early fascination with technique and originally sparked at the age of 8, when his brother gave him an old-school skateboard.
“Every watch is humbling to put together. Designing & making a watch with precise tools, putting tiny, exact in size & thoughtfully made pieces together using methods developed over centuries to produce something that someone else wears as a definition of their own life.
Hand producing it in New Zealand is just the cherry on top.”
Brett’s career in design prior to Paceracer saw over a dozen awards between Red-Dot Awards in Germany, Chicago Good Design, New Zealand’s Best Awards, Good Design Australia & more. Having developed a career at some of New Zealand’s top brands & consultancies, his interest in design craft & manufacture was honed by the challenging change of Globalisation & constraints of making a product from start to finish in New Zealand.
Design perspective in film
Making a custom watch
