We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Angel Ovalles. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Angel below.

Angel, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

In a time when you can check the hour with just a swipe on your phone, you might ask why we would start a watch company. But for my partners and I, Turbion Carrera is more than just a brand. It’s a sign of our determination, a symbol of our strength, and a tribute to our beginnings. It’s our way of honoring those who want a watch that’s high-quality, attractive, and reasonably priced.

Our inspiration comes from our own roots – two of us are from Dyckman – New York City and our other co-founder is from the Bay Area. The hustle culture of these places, their non-stop energy, and the will to ‘make it by any means’ fueled the spirit of Turbion Carrera. Born during the unpredictable times of the COVID pandemic, our brand is a symbol of turning struggle into triumph.

Growing up in these iconic cities, we saw success all around us. Although signs of wealth were everywhere, figuring out how to achieve it was like solving a puzzle. This sparked our desire to succeed, guided by lessons we learned from both good and bad influences. Driven to succeed, we were inspired to make our own way and earn luxuries on our own terms. This journey and struggle are reflected in our brand name. “Turbion” meaning a violent storm in Spanish, represents our ongoing marathon towards the ever-elusive ‘finish line’ of success.

This mission isn’t just about us; it connects with our customers too. We believe they are also in this race, facing the same challenges, battling against similar obstacles. As we take this journey together, Turbion Carrera is committed to offering the best value through every watch we create.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have no formal business background, my love for business grew from observing my environment as a kid. In NYC everyone has a hustle, you go outside in my old neighborhood and everywhere you look someone is selling something, so it becomes part of you.

Over the past decade, I’ve started numerous business ventures. Some of them tasted some success, while the majority did not. I attended the business school of hard knocks lol, but every time I started a business I would at least pick up a new skill or get better at an old one before I ended it. I would also learn from YouTube, online courses, and audiobooks and try to apply what I thought world work. I had eBay stores, did affiliate marketing, built websites for people, started a nootropics supplement brand etc..

I would go on sites that where selling profitable online e-commerce sites and see how much the were making in revenue then tried to launch my own version of that business. I didn’t care what it was, if I saw others made money, I would dive right in and start the cycle all over again.

It wasn’t until my wife and I had a conversation that things began to change. She suggested that I should focus my efforts on an industry that knew about and loved. Her words struck a chord with me, I’ve always been fascinated by watches. As a teen, I’d find myself wide awake until 2 am, entranced by those QVC Invicta watch infomercials.

One day I was doing research on my next business venture and came across a site that was 2 million dollars in sales selling car themed watches, I saw how the had first built an Instagram following in the car niche and then launched a watch brand around it. I was about to dive in and to try to replicate it but my wife’s words popped into my head “do something you love”.

So instead I pivoted and along with my partners launched a premium watch brand for people that love watches but didn’t like the selection available to the average guy grinding to make his dreams come true. Since then we have launched a line of premium sunglasses and coming in September genuine leather backpacks.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

We started our watch brand in the middle of covid 2020. At first it was just my parter Ronny and I. We had already spent $2k on watch samples, we would contact watch manufactures and tell them to send us their highest quality models and all of them were horrible. I remember I would get the watches and start cracking jokes on the looks and quality with Ronny on FaceTime.

Once we saw how fast those 2k went I thought we need another partner to spread the risk, so I contacted the only other person I could think of was as into starting a business as me and Ronny, my friend Tim. Soon after we found a manufacture that we believed had great quality samples, good communication, and experience. We I was really into skeleton watches at the time so I found the coolest looking movement and designed our watch around that center piece.

At the time we weren’t going out sending money of things like bars and restaurants and we had saved some of our stimulus checks, between my partners and I were able came up with 7k to start to manufacture or first watch collection.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

At first it was very hard getting consistent followers, we tried everything from software to tactics from gurus but were very firm about having a page that had real only followers because only real people convert in to customer.

We had people in our DMs all the time telling us they could get us real and consistent followers and for the most part we ignored them, but one day we got a message from a guy that explained his strategy and sounded like he knew what he was talking about so we took a chance and paid him $500 for a weeks worth of his services.

Needless to say we got scammed we had 500 followers and he drove 2000 fake accounts to our page on the first day. We told him to stop and asked for a refund but he disappeared and we were left -$500 and deleting 2000 followers one by one.

Since then our formula has been to focus on designing great looking watches and creating content that resonates with our target audience. When we see our followers react quickly and positively to a post and engagement is high, we boost the post and have instagram find people like our current followers to show it to and have the ad lead them directly to our profile page instead of the website. That’s our way of warming up cold prospects. they read our profile, so our post, see our customers highlighted in our stories and thats how we convert them in to followers and eventually customers.    

Contact Info:

• Website: https://turbioncarrera.com
• Instagram: @turbion_carrera
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/turbioncarrera/
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@turbion_carrera