Banca Transilvania recently highlighted the success story of NOAH, a Romanian startup making high-end wooden watches that has grown significantly since its launch in 2012.
 
Founded by Joseph Harasemiuc and Ruben Perju, the company offers watches with Swiss mechanisms incorporated into a minimalist design. The watches use exotic woods sourced from Mexico, Israel, Brazil and Africa, which all score more than 2,500 on the Janka hardness scale. Each watch is a custom order, put together by customers using an online simulation, and the company is promoted primarily through social media channels.
 
NOAH was named after the biblical Noah, as the company admires his drive to create something unique. It also notes the commonalities between its watches and Noah’s ark, such as its a focus on wood elements, advanced engineering and, of course, water resistance.
 
Harasemiuc and Perju started the company in 2012 with their own savings and loans from friends and family. It took them two and a half years to develop the business to a point where they could begin production, and they now receive an average of two and a half orders per day, though the end of 2016 saw them working around the clock to fill a large volume of holiday orders.