This is the story of a birth. The birth of a wristwatch. But not just any watch.
The story is that of Canvas Watch Co., a Detroit-area venture that somehow has become a real thing, alive like the baby that is born to parents who knew just nine months earlier that the life inside was real yet still a promise.
And now that the first 500 watches have been finished, 200 of them sold and in the hands (and on the wrists) of the people that caught the vision of its founder, the story too is somehow more reality than hope or promise.
It begins with that young entrepreneur, Shaun Reinhold, a native of Novi, Mich., and a 2010 graduate of Michigan State University. Having earned his degree in supply chain management and entrepreneurship, Reinhold did what any graduate will do when the ink is still drying on the piece of paper that proves they had what it took to meet the school’s requirements.
He got his first job (not counting the internship he did at GE Aviation) heading to Washington, D.C., where he discovered the world of government consulting, in this case at IBM where there was work helping the departments of Defense and Interior implement their enterprise software infrastructure.
As is the case with a lot of “first jobs,” the experience was valuable, if for no other reason than they helped Reinhold discover what he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life doing.
In May 2011, electric vehicle maker Tesla Motors hired Reinhold, presumably for his supply chain expertise, to work on a team creating the interior and exterior trim of the firm’s Model S.
But a year and a half later, the lure of his home state of Michigan became irresistible, and not just for the fact that Reinhold’s girlfriend, now his wife, was in the Great Lakes state.
“This is home,” says Reinhold. “My family is here, yes, but it’s the place I was born, raised and educated. And I knew there were some resources available that would help me with the idea of starting my own company.”
Source: Corp! Magazine
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