Startup: Kids keeping time with Blok Watches

It was his wife’s idea first.

“One day she said to me, ‘You know what’s annoying? Every kid’s accessory is basically disposable. There’s so much plastic junk.’ It’s just assumed that these things are breakable,” said Neil Ferrier, owner of Greenville-based Blok Watches.

Their son fancied watches, and she noted that it’d be cool to make a little grown-up-like kids watch for him. Ferrier owns Discommon, an industrial design company based at Hampton Station; so although he, too, loves watches (“I’m massively nerdy about the fact that you can basically capture a lifetime’s engineering in a little 40 millimeter thing,” he said), he couldn’t just copy something that already existed.

Kids, he noted, are challenged by the concept of time. Tell your kids you’ll be off to grandpa’s house in 30 minutes, and it means nothing to them.

“If you tell them to play outside for 15 minutes, you made a statement that’s logical to us, because we’ve experienced that passage of time. But you just gave them a statement that had no value to them,” Ferrier said.

With the launch of Blok watches, Ferrier created a premium product that checked all the right boxes. Its biopolymer components are durable and sustainable, unlike plastic. Its sapphire crystal face is scratch and shatter resistant. It’s watertight up to 100 meters — not that most kids are venturing that deep. Plus, it’s Swiss-made, as many high-quality watches are.

Bloks carry a price tag of $179. Sure, the battery will last 10 years, it can be passed down, and the company plans to start selling longer bands soon, but even Ferrier can see that it seems steep for kidswear.

The U.S. children’s fashion industry was worth $40 billion in 2021. –Mordor Intelligence

“Nobody needs a $220 Stella McCartney kids sweatshirt, yet her company got acquired,” Ferrier said. “The millennial generation is spending more on good items for children. Sustainable, quality and things that have good stories to them – that they can invest in. Does a kid really need a $179 watch? I don’t really have that answer. But that’s why you start a company.”

A chance meeting with James Walker brought Blok to life. Walker was at the time global head of investments at J.P. Morgan Private Bank, and Ferrier met him in Europe on a trip related to Discommon’s design work. When Walker pulled out his wallet — a wallet that, unbeknownst to him, Ferrier had helped design — Ferrier transitioned the “holy cow” moment into a reason to pitch his idea. It checked out with Walker’s mantra, “Purpose before product; product before profit,” and he joined Ferrier as Blok’s official co-founder.

Perhaps the coolest facet of a Blok watch is that the perimeter of the face rotates, and kids can align the minute hand with one of four blocks of time — 5, 10, 15, or 30 minutes. Where Ferrier’s daughter Isla used to say, “are we there yet?” on the way to grandpa’s, she now says, “We’re halfway there” because she can see it on her wrist.

“One of the coolest things is it’s actually improved my relationships with my kids. We do these 30-minute block activities,” he said. “[And] once you get to 5, 6, 7 years old, a kid does understand responsibility. That helps with growth. My kids lay theirs down on the table when they sleep, and now they’re timing everything with them. They’re timing the 15 minutes before school. They’re timing hikes. They’re timing everything.”