Hokuto Ueda, CEO of Quiet Club, is based in Seattle and comes from an automotive engineering background, while the brand’s third partner, Johnny Ting, is in tech and based in San Francisco.”My background is in automotive engineering,” Ueda says. “I worked at Tesla Motors during its early years, helping launch the Model S. Then, around 2014, I co-founded my own automotive software company, Drivemode—and Johnny was our first hire, joining as Head of Design.”
On the surface, the move from cars to watches is anything but obvious. “I was surprised when Hokuto first asked me about watches,” Ting admits. “I’d never really thought of it as something I would pursue.” But as their conversations evolved, so did the idea. “After years working in software, developing a physical product started to feel like the perfect next step,” he says. “I could never find the right watch for myself. As a user experience designer, I wanted something I could wear every day, but the traditional categories—divers, pilots, chronographs—just didn’t fit my life.”