Yuen's Lair: Blessed Beads Watches

Blessed Beads Watches,

Continuing on my previous post , remember that I told you all that this Buddhist monastery "Fo Guang Shan" organizes these annual events in order to generate funds.

It would be absurd to charge the flock of devotees an entry fee to the temple (this ain't a theme park after all), so in order to generate funds, the temple sells a plethora of Buddhist related merchandize, ranging from books, dvd's, blessed amulets, stationary and etcetera.....too many to name.

A few of you might know that I was previously working in the watch manufacturing industry, OEM & ODM, co-ordinating design and sales departments respectively,.....so why not kill two birds with one stone then. Thus this particular project kickstarted last year July.

The monastery order was very receptive to my proposal of developing a combination of prayer beads and accompanying watch head and thus the gears were put into motion of drawing/sampling and producing several beads watches. Below are just 2 drawings out of a plethora that we presented to the monastery order.

Taking a camera picture of the Buddha statue, located in the main praying hall, and sending it over for rendering to the design boys in China. My guys in China somehow managed to emboss it on the watch dial.....much to the delight of the monks and nuns and myself included.....nothing is impossible nowadays.

Credit has to go to my former colleagues in China, who helped me tremendously with the manufacturing process, and mind you, don't even think it's made out of cheap stuff.....we're talking stainless steel components, Japanese quartz watch movements and etcetera.....it's the real deal I'm talking about.

With the Buddhist temple buying price set, we duly made the first batch of samples, presenting an assortiment of different beads and watches for them to choose from. The choice of beads were so huge that the temple ordered additional beads bracelets on top of that :)

And then it was just a matter of jotting down the details of the purchase order (quantity, colours, sizes, packaging)........The order was only for 1.000 pieces, just testing the 'market', and hopefully in time to come, other chapters worldwide of this Buddhist order might place a similar purchase order themselves. Then "dzing, dzing"....(fingers crossed)

The watches arrived just in the nick of time for Fo Guang Shan's annual event.....

Have to admit that I felt kinda proud to witness all the efforts spent on this particular project coming to a fruitful conclusion. More than a dozen boxes were flown in by courier, and a bunch of temple volunteers were checking and counting each single piece :p

And then the final hurdle : the abbess of the temple (= superior of the nuns), gave her blessing, ...... that means the watches are 'blessed' with good Karma powers :).

Ofcourse, not before she and her fellow nuns tried the watches and beads bracelets out themselves :p

So in the end when I was doing my rounds as security cum traffic volunteer on Fo Guang Shan's temple grounds not long after the delivery of the goods in question.....I wasn't surprised to see it displayed and up for sale among all the other Buddhist paraphernalia.