Family Owned Watchmaker Repairs Wrist Watches in Digital Age

The Watchmaker has been the place to get buy a new watch of get a timepiece fixed since 1987. Started by his father, David Kurdzionak worked in the shop through high school and took over only a few years ago. “I grew up in this business here in Stoneham,” Kurdzionak said. 

The watch business is bigger than it’s ever been according to Kurdzionak, despite time telling cell phones, iPods, or anything else digital. “It is a multibillion dollar industry right now,” Kurdzionak said. “It is not going anywhere, which defies all conventional logic. How we survive specifically is we are a repair shop and work with major manufacturers as an authorized repair center.”

The Watchmaker takes watches from all over the world. “If we were strictly a local company, we would be starving,” Kurdzionak said. “But with the Internet, we take in about 10 thousand repairs a year. Nobody does what we do.” They put in batteries, overhauling mechanical pieces, polishing old pieces in high end wristwatches, pocket watches, and some specialty clocks like Atlas Clocks, with a turnover rate of about two months.

The job requires an intense amount of concentration seeing how the average watch has fifty to sixty tiny moving parts which need to be properly lubricated and put back together in the proper order. One mistake could wipe away hours worth of work. “It takes many years to get good at this job, and a lifetime to be great at it,” Kurdzionak said. “I enjoy this line of work, but it’s also all I’ve ever known.”