Listen to this articleAffinity Bands is a wearable tech accessory company specializing in licensed bands for Apple watches and other smartwatches and Airpod case covers. Below is our recent interview with David Schowalter, CEO at Affinity Bands:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Affinity Bands?
A: We have a patented dual-pin silicone sport band, combined with a growing portfolio of licenses that enable us to offer products for brands consumers love to support.
Q: How do you make them? Can you walk us through the process?
A: We offer a variety of substrates such as silicone, leather and steel. Let’s talk about our most popular product, which is the silicone sport band. The initial design phase lasted about a year and included concept drawings, patent applications, pre-production samples and finally, production samples. Once the design for the blank band was complete, we moved on to the marking phase. Silicone is a material designed so nothing that will stick to it, and this presented a problem. Working with the developers of silicone inks, we found that the only thing that will effectively stick to silicone is silicone. The final formulation of the marking recipe took another eight months. Considering the proprietary nature of the marking process I can’t share the details; however, it would most closely resemble the process for printing garments.
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Q: There’s even an option to design or customize your own band. How does it work?
A: The process is relatively easy on the consumer-facing side. A customer uploads a graphic in the custom module on our website, views the resulting image and, if everything looks good, places an order. At that point, the order is electronically directed to either our silicone, leather, or steel production areas for processing and manufacturing. Currently, we are capable of marking and shipping custom orders with a 48-hour window.
Q: What’s the best thing about your bands that people should know?
A: Our patented dual-pin and tuck clasp. Since this band is designed for an active lifestyle, it was essential to us that we develop a product that is both secure and functional. The last thing anybody wants is for their smartwatch to either fall off or snag when being used. The dual pin clasp helps prevent the fall off and the pin and tuck eliminate snagging. This combination is perfect for the active lifestyle.
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Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: With so many different smartwatches, activity trackers and traditional watches in the market, we are developing bands that can be used on most of them. Apple is the one who made changing a band simple and we want to bring that idea to all the other brands people love to wear.
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