The Volmax OKEHA and a Watch Komrade's meltdown...

Craig Hester gets cranky with his own potential costumers at WUS...

The "Final Edition" OKEHA was/is an LE of 300 , agreed to be made and offered by Volmax to a watch forum in Europe (some are WUS members as well), as I get a bit deeper into this shit and aside from the original WUS whining (I would too BTW), I starting to realized that it is a sustancial amount of this watches across Europe for trade/sale....
http://forums.watchuseek.com/f10/oke...on-761006.html

I remember when Hester was just venturing into the forum world back in my BDWF days. I think the TV crap turned him-he initially seemed like a knowledgeable guy with a small ,niche watch business.

I've been through my Russian watch phase and done a little business with Hester--and he's a good guy.

However, anybody who collects the Russian stuff and believes anything these makers say is either a naive noob or a fucking imbecile. If there's possibly a worse market for business ethics than the TV watch crap it's the Russian watch shit.

When they first started appearing on ShopAtHome some years back, they were relatively reasonably priced trinkets, hyped by a weird nostalgia for the old Cold War duck-and-cover mindset. People capitalized on this and they became somewhat popular. Vostok Europe went from making kind of cool watches to the Invicter route, making larger cases, cheap (and non-Russian) movements, and jacking their prices way up. They also pretended to make "limited edition" runs, and I don't think I've ever seen a modern Russian watch that wasn't a "LE" model.

Interestingly, the one company in Russia that seemed to be making pretty decent watches was Volmax. Now that seems suspect as well.

I think Hester got jammed up in this WUS thread, which he really didn't deserve. On the other hand, you do business with jagoffs, some of it is bound to rub off on your reputation.

Not Russian to judgment, but something stinks worse than week-old kapusta

Hester should never have responded............he would have been much better off. This is Volmax's baby.

conjurer wrote:I've been through my Russian watch phase and done a little business with Hester--and he's a good guy.
I think Hester got jammed up in this WUS thread, which he really didn't deserve. On the other hand, you do business with jagoffs, some of it is bound to rub off on your reputation.

I was surprised too, never heard an ethics or business related complaint about him, till now ... personally, his "friendship" with Temple (even long before Shop) and his high prices were always a deterrent for me...

bigedsurf wrote:Hester should never have responded............he would have been much better off. This is Volmax's baby.

I think the perception of the folks at WUS is, that Hester knew about the WUS project (was on for a year or so)and should have stay hands off the Volmax cookie jar deal, out of respect for the WUS members (lots of them also Hester's costumers) that put the effort to make it happen, not that he did anything wrong legally.

Understood..........

Hester's defense sounds a little shifty to me. Offering the watches by private e-mail to individuals is one thing, but then to say "and to our Shop NBC customers" rather takes away from his assertion that these were not intended to be advertised to a mass audience. Guess he must have really meant "not intended to be advertised on a forum where they may be questioned by a knowledgeable membership."

Further, in one of his later posts, he begins "I assumed...." - a far cry from his original statements as to his full knowledge and assurance of the watches' provenance.

As others have said, a nice enough guy, but that may just have been "Watch Komrade 1.0". Version 2.0 may have begun to drink the Lalo juice.

Falstaff wrote:Hester's defense sounds a little shifty to me. Offering the watches by private e-mail to individuals is one thing, but then to say "and to our Shop NBC customers" rather takes away from his assertion that these were not intended to be advertised to a mass audience. Guess he must have really meant "not intended to be advertised on a forum where they may be questioned by a knowledgeable membership."

Further, in one of his later posts, he begins "I assumed...." - a far cry from his original statements as to his full knowledge and assurance of the watches' provenance.

As others have said, a nice enough guy, but that may just have been "Watch Komrade 1.0". Version 2.0 may have begun to drink the Lalo juice.

I don't know if you could call Shop's viewership a mass audience.

conjurer wrote:

Falstaff wrote:Hester's defense sounds a little shifty to me. Offering the watches by private e-mail to individuals is one thing, but then to say "and to our Shop NBC customers" rather takes away from his assertion that these were not intended to be advertised to a mass audience. Guess he must have really meant "not intended to be advertised on a forum where they may be questioned by a knowledgeable membership."

Further, in one of his later posts, he begins "I assumed...." - a far cry from his original statements as to his full knowledge and assurance of the watches' provenance.

As others have said, a nice enough guy, but that may just have been "Watch Komrade 1.0". Version 2.0 may have begun to drink the Lalo juice.

I don't know if you could call Shop's viewership a mass audience.

"Mass" in the sense that anyone who has the ability to receive Shop broadcasts can purchase one - a non-select group as opposed to a dedicated e-mail sent to an individual.

Falstaff wrote:

conjurer wrote:

Falstaff wrote:Hester's defense sounds a little shifty to me. Offering the watches by private e-mail to individuals is one thing, but then to say "and to our Shop NBC customers" rather takes away from his assertion that these were not intended to be advertised to a mass audience. Guess he must have really meant "not intended to be advertised on a forum where they may be questioned by a knowledgeable membership."

Further, in one of his later posts, he begins "I assumed...." - a far cry from his original statements as to his full knowledge and assurance of the watches' provenance.

As others have said, a nice enough guy, but that may just have been "Watch Komrade 1.0". Version 2.0 may have begun to drink the Lalo juice.

I don't know if you could call Shop's viewership a mass audience.

"Mass" in the sense that anyone who has the ability to receive Shop broadcasts can purchase one - a non-select group as opposed to a dedicated e-mail sent to an individual.

It was, like, a joke, Falstaff.

conjurer wrote:

Falstaff wrote:

conjurer wrote:

Falstaff wrote:Hester's defense sounds a little shifty to me. Offering the watches by private e-mail to individuals is one thing, but then to say "and to our Shop NBC customers" rather takes away from his assertion that these were not intended to be advertised to a mass audience. Guess he must have really meant "not intended to be advertised on a forum where they may be questioned by a knowledgeable membership."

Further, in one of his later posts, he begins "I assumed...." - a far cry from his original statements as to his full knowledge and assurance of the watches' provenance.

As others have said, a nice enough guy, but that may just have been "Watch Komrade 1.0". Version 2.0 may have begun to drink the Lalo juice.

I don't know if you could call Shop's viewership a mass audience.

"Mass" in the sense that anyone who has the ability to receive Shop broadcasts can purchase one - a non-select group as opposed to a dedicated e-mail sent to an individual.

It was, like, a joke, Falstaff.

Ah, I see. Sometimes sophisticated humor escapes me, naif that I am - color me chagrined.