How a flight instructor, 1,800 pilots, and a serendipitous meeting at an airshow created one of aviation’s most meaningful watch brands.

There’s a moment every pilot knows…

It’s not the first solo, It’s not the check ride, It’s the quiet moment right after…when the adrenaline settles and you realize you’ve done something you can never undo. You’ve become someone who flies. And for most pilots, nobody gives you anything to mark those moments. You just move on to the next lesson, the next rating, the next hours in the logbook.

Beau Garrett noticed that gap. Not as a businessman, but as a flight instructor.

“Pilots work incredibly hard to reach their milestones,” Garrett says, “and there’s rarely a meaningful way to commemorate that journey. Other professions have symbols: a ring, a pin, a watch. Aviation, for all its tradition, didn’t really have that. Not something designed from the cockpit up.”

That observation became a question. That question became a survey. And that survey, answered by more than 1,800 verified pilots, became Call Sign Watch Co.

Start with the People. Then Build the Watch.

Most watch brands start with a designer’s vision or a factory’s capabilities. Beau Garrett started with a Typeform survey and an iPhone.

He filmed it himself with no studio and no script, just a pilot talking to other pilots, asking for input on what they actually wanted in a watch. He built a targeted audience on Facebook based on aviation interests and real community activity, then sent the survey out. Seven weeks later, the results were in: 1,847 verified pilots had responded, and more than 1,100 of them left their email address, asking to be kept in the loop.

That’s not a market test. That’s a mandate

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The data shaped everything. Pilots wanted clean, uncluttered dials. Not the busy, instrument panel inspired designs that most aviation watches leaned into. They wanted a GMT complication for crossing time zones, but executed simply. They wanted durability without the dive watch aesthetic. And almost universally, they wanted something that felt meaningful, not just functional.

From those findings, Garrett and his team built the Discovery GMT: a 42mm watch with a crescent Zulu/GMT indicator, a legible minimalist dial, and one feature unlike anything else in the category, a case back engraved with the owner’s FAA Airmen Certificate Number.

That last detail isn’t decorative. It’s personal. Your certificate number is yours alone. It’s the number tied to every flight you’ve ever logged, every rating you’ve earned, every hour you’ve spent aloft. Putting it on the back of a watch turns a timepiece into something closer to a credential and makes it a quiet declaration of who you are and what you’ve earned.

What the Market Said Back

The aviation community is a tough audience. Pilots are detail oriented, skeptical of marketing, and quick to call out anything that feels like it was made by someone who’s never sat in a left seat. Call Sign passed that test.

The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), the largest aviation membership organization in the world, wrote an editorial about the brand that was, in Garrett’s words, “very favorable.” The piece ran in Q4 of 2024 and drove a significant lift in sales. Coming from AOPA, an organization that’s been the standard bearer for general aviation since 1939, that kind of editorial endorsement is the aviation equivalent of a standing ovation.

But the moment Garrett points to most often isn’t a sales figure or a press mention, it’s a message he received from an active-duty Air Force instructor pilot who’d bought a Discovery GMT. The message praised the watch’s clean design, its function in the cockpit, and specifically, the meaning it carried. “It’s hard to pick just one,” Garrett admits. “There are so many of those messages. But the ones that come from career aviators, people who’ve spent their lives in the air and know exactly what they’re looking for, those hit different.”

Beyond the pilot community, something else happened that Garrett didn’t fully anticipate, people who’d never been in a cockpit started wearing Call Sign watches.

The minimalist design, it turned out, translated. The brand’s understated aesthetic with clean dials, purposeful construction and no unnecessary flourishes, appealed to anyone who valued things made with intention. The FAA engraving became a conversation starter rather than an inside reference. The GMT complication, useful for anyone who travels across time zones, found an audience well beyond aviation circles.

Call Sign’s tagline, “For those who move with purpose”, turned out to be more universal than its origins. The brand had started by pilots, for pilots. But purpose, it turns out, isn’t a pilot only concept.

A Legacy That Found Them

By the time Call Sign made its way to Sun 'n Fun, one of the largest fly-ins in the world held every spring in Lakeland, Florida, the brand had already earned something most young watch companies spend years chasing: genuine credibility within the community it was built to serve.

But what happened next wasn’t something any marketing plan could have engineered.

The week before the show, Garrett’s son had finished a school project. His assignment was to research an American historical figure, write a report, and present his findings. He chose the Wright Brothers. He spent two months going deep on their story: the bicycle shop in Dayton, the years of failed glider tests, the correspondence with the Smithsonian, the 12 seconds at Kitty Hawk that changed everything. By the time he was done, he knew the Wright family’s story the way most kids know their favorite athletes.

At Sun ‘n Fun, the Wright family had a booth.

Garrett’s son walked straight over.

What followed was the kind of conversation that happens when genuine knowledge meets genuine curiosity. Ken and JoAnn Botts, who manage licensing opportunities on behalf of the Wright family, were accustomed to the usual mix of reverence and small talk that most airshow visitors brought to their booth. This was different. The boy wasn't reciting facts. He was asking questions. Real ones. The kind that only come from two months of actual study. They were enamored.

And then he said something that changed the trajectory of Call Sign Watch Co.- “You have to meet my Dad.”

They walked over to the Call Sign booth. They saw the watches. They held them. They asked about the FAA engraving, the GMT complication, the thinking behind the design. And then they said something Garrett hadn’t expected… they wanted to work together.

“I describe it as a serendipitous, ordained moment,” Garrett says. “We weren’t at Sun ‘n Fun looking for a partnership with the Wright family, we were just there to share the brand with the aviation community. And then this happened. A school report led to a collaboration that I genuinely consider one of the most significant things this brand has ever done.”

Going to Dayton. Holding History.

After Sun ‘n Fun, the relationship deepened.

Garrett traveled to Dayton, Ohio, the city where the Wright Brothers grew up, ran their bicycle business, and conducted much of the experimental work that preceded powered flight. There, he was given access to the family’s private collection of artifacts: notebooks, family albums, personal correspondence, and medals accumulated across generations. Among them, the French Legion of Honor medals awarded to the brothers and to Katharine, their sister, for their contributions to aviation.

Then he was handed Bishop Milton Wright’s personal diary.

He opened it to December 17, 1903.

“That’s a moment I can’t fully put into words,” Garrett says. “You’re holding this man’s handwriting, his thoughts from that morning, and you know what he didn’t fully know yet. What that day was going to mean for the entire history of human civilization. As a pilot, as a watch maker, as a human being, it reset my sense of what we were building and why.”

From those artifacts, the Wright Brothers Collection was born. Three watches, each named for a member of the family: The Brothers, The Katharine, and The Bishop. Each piece incorporates archival engravings sourced directly from the Wright family’s historical records, imagery drawn from the actual documents and photographs held in that private collection.

These aren’t licensed watches in the commercial sense. They are, as much as a manufactured object can be, a continuation of a legacy. The Wright family understood the distinction, and Stephen Wright said so directly:

" The innovative use of existing technology was a hallmark of the Wright brothers’ quest to solve the problem of powered flight. They truly thought ‘outside of the box.’ The same can be said for the watches designed by Call Sign.”

For a brand that started with a survey and an iPhone video, that endorsement represents a long way to travel in a short time.

Where Call Sign Is Heading

The Wright Brothers Collection isn’t a chapter that closes. It’s one that compounds.

The sell through on the series has validated what the collaboration demonstrated: there is a real market for watches that carry genuine meaning. Not manufactured meaning, not a celebrity’s name on a dial or a lifestyle brand’s logo on a buckle. Actual provenance. Actual story. Actual history.

Call Sign is building on that foundation with new collections designed to extend the brand’s reach without diluting its core. The Cadre GMT, a 40mm automatic with a native true GMT complication, targets the enthusiast tier that wants mechanical depth alongside the brand’s signature design restraint. The Discovery line continues to evolve, with new colorways and strap options expanding accessibility. And strategic partnerships with platforms like Watch Gang are bringing the brand to audiences who might never have found it through aviation channels alone.

The longer vision is more ambitious still. Garrett has been engaged with members of Congress toward a framework for reviving domestic American watchmaking, a manufacturing initiative that would restore a capability that effectively disappeared when Hamilton ceased American production in 1969. 

Call Sign is also expanding its retail footprint, with plans for a flagship boutique in Franklin, Tennessee, a concept that will showcase the brand alongside other independents who share its commitment to design and craft.

Through all of it, the guiding principle stays the same as it was the day Garrett filmed himself asking pilots what they wanted in a watch.

Make something with intention. Make something that carries meaning. Make it for people who understand the difference.

“For those who move with purpose.”

That’s the tagline. But it’s also the operating principle, for a brand that started in a cockpit, found its footing with 1,800 pilots, and discovered its defining chapter through a boy’s school report and a family’s extraordinary legacy.

Explore the Wright Brothers Collection and the full Call Sign lineup on Watch Gang here!