Design and engineering
The Strayer watch was designed and engineered in Sweden in deep collaboration with the most skilled watchmakers and craftsmen in the heart of the high end watchmaking world, close to the Jura mountains, Switzerland. Spending a relentless amount of hours developing the initial idea for a proof of concept eventually lead to the design of the Strayer with the pat pend STR (System-Turn-Release) mechanism.
The idea behind the STR
How do you come up with something innovative in the watch world, one of the most competitive businesses out there?
-Stray drew on his industrial design background when creating the watches, a field sharing horology’s focus on sustainability, good design and quality. The design of the classic watch itself makes a clean foil for the patented tech.
Inspired by vintage Swedish measuring instruments and the meters of classic aircrafts and cars, it nods to Stray’s own history of working with high-precision tools for both human and robotic use.
-Hannah Silver, Wallpaper
By the beginning of the millennium Ola Stray, multi-award winning industrial designer and mechanical engineer, global head of design at one of the world’s largest industrial companies, was asking himself this very question. Ola wanted to design an elegant, mechanical wristwatch with interchangeability, to enable the wearer to express multiple designs with just one time piece.
Ola Stray
In his daily work Ola works as an expert in design and innovation. Experience from working with clients globally including in the emerging electric vehicle market in California, high end sports car manufacturers in northern Italy and consumer electronics in Asia.
-Ola did several studies and workshops with us and helped us design a more ergonomic and user centered environment. He can address challenges and with his way of thinking produce new ideas. It saved us and our teams valuable time and money being more efficient and ergonomic and being able to build more vehicles.
Nick Tabak, Head of Production Tesla, Model S, X and 3
Spare time while I was in my previous role leading a design department in a global organisation was spent developing and fine tuning the watch concept, taking it from a concept to a real product. Being a parallel iterative process consisting of ideation, design, drawings and evaluating prototypes together with the best watch manufacturers in Switzerland. The unique connection between Ola Stray and high end Swiss watch manufacture is evident from the use, in assembly, of two Red Dot Award winning tools designed by Ola in 2018 – thus setting the quality bar for the Strayer watch sky-high.
The design concept
For the first series of Strayer watches the developed design enables the wearer to change the bezels with a simple 90° twist of the patented STR (Stay-Turn-Release) locking mechanism.
Finally, after more than ten years of development, the first Strayer watch was ready to launch with its pat pend interchangeble Turner-system. Allowing the wearer to express personality in a mechanical engineered way.
