Vincent Degani remembers the day he got his diploma from watchmaking school. “I felt really proud,” said the 82-year-old watchmaker. It was June 30, 1939 and Degani was following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. Degani is still in the watchmaking game. The business may have changed a little, but every weekday Degani is at his Vincent Canoga Park Jewelers, the store he opened in 1960 on Sherman Way near Owensmouth Avenue, next to the old El Madrid Theater. One day last week, Degani was the model of concentration as he sat, bent over his worktable, patiently and delicately disassembling a small pocket watch. His hands were as steady as ever as he gazed intently through a special eyepiece attached to his wire-rimmed glasses. “For me, it’s fun work,” he said. “I can’t think of anything else I could be doing that’s as fun.” Repairing watches and clocks requires the skill of a micro-surgeon and the patience of a saint, he said. A native of Detroit, Degani grew up with a watchmaker father who encouraged his son even at the age of 5 to try his hand at the business. “I was always hanging around the shop puttering with watches, and my dad enjoyed that,” he recalled. After high school, Degani entered the Chicago School of Watchmaking where he later earned his diploma and joined his father in the family trade. But with the onset of World War II, by 1942 Degani was in the U.S. Navy. His return in 1945 was bittersweet. His father had died during his absence and the once-bustling family shop was shuttered for good. “I came back, my dad was gone and his shop was gone too. It was pretty sad,” he said. Undaunted, Degani pursued his career, eventually marrying and moving to California in 1948 where he accepted a job in a Reseda watch repair shop. By 1960, Degani had bought out the owner and started his own shop next to El Madrid Theater where movie fans would often come in with their damaged watches. When the Madrid became an adult movie theater in 1978, Degani moved a block over to Sherman Way, to a space with room enough for larger display cases and wider work tables. But the business was rapidly changing and watchmaking was already on its way to becoming a lost art. The advent of electronic timepieces and cheaply made, throwaway watches ate into his business. “People would bring in a watch and it would cost more to fix it than it was worth, so what could you do?” he asked. “You lost business.” Others in his profession threw in the towel, deciding they were too old or too stubborn to learn much about electronic watches. Degani said he tried to make the best of a tough situation. He learned how to fix the more expensive electronic watches, to clean them and replace their batteries. But as fast as they had gone out of style in the late 1970s, relatively expensive mechanical watches made a comeback in the late 1980s. “It was back in style all of a sudden. Who expected that?” he asked. As his sales increased, so did orders for repairs. Collectors in particular became his regular customers, with their 80- and 100-year-old watches. Degani today says he averages about 50 customers a day, many longtime friends such as Wendi Finch Hull, 36, of Woodland Hills. “We trust him. He’s nice, he knows what he’s doing and he has a good reputation,” said Hull, whose family have been regular customers since 1986. Degani’s situation, it seems, is not an isolated experience. According to the American Watchmakers and Clockmakers Institute in Cincinnati, there are 71 million mechanical and quartz watches in circulation in the U.S. today. Thirty percent will need to be repaired by 2003. Nancy Connelly, executive director of the National Association of Watchmakers and Clockmakers, said that is a growing demand that is not being met. “There are only about 6,000 watchmakers in the U.S., and there will be a need for 26,000 by 2003,” she said. Connelly explained that there are only 10 certified trade schools left in the U.S. that train watchmakers, not nearly enough to meet the demand. What’s worse, the average age of a watchmaker now is about 60 and their ranks have dwindled from 44,300 in 1953 to 15,500 in 1983 and to 6,500 in 2000, according to Institute figures. Those are statistics not lost on Degani, whose own son shunned the family store to work in Van Nuys’ Anheuser-Busch brewery. “But my grandson Greg loves the business,” he said. With or without Greg, the bespectacled Degani said he can’t imagine retiring. “They’ll have to bury me first.”
