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The newly launched Exodus Watch Company is donating 10 per cent of its profits to the Waterloo Wellington chapter of the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA). Speaking with the Mercury Tribune, Wasilik said the decision to give money to assist the local association’s programming stems from his own experiences with mental health.

“Several years ago, I was at a point in my life where I really didn’t think things would get better for me. I was in a really bad state of mind, and a couple of times, I even kind of felt like, ‘This is it, this is how I’m going to spend the rest of my life,’” he said.

“I made efforts to make myself feel better, and I knew it was going to be a journey, I knew was going to be hard. And the one thing that really helped me was just the passage of time ultimately, having that desire to get better, do whatever I need to do.”

When he did come out on the other side of it, Wasilik said he wanted to give back to the community that helped him through those challenging times, including the resources he was able to tap.

“I’ve always been into watches growing up and then it just kind of dawned on me — a watch is the perfect representation of time and we could do something here,” he said.

“For people going through their own mental health struggles, the one thing that everybody has in common is that everybody has 24 hours in the day.”

While he had an idea of what he wanted his company’s first offerings to look like — “I wanted a more sleek, simplistic design” — finding the right manufacturer was easier said than done, with Wasilik and his Exodus and personal partner Aundrea Johnson going through approximately 40 different companies.

Finally, the right partner was found and the first order was made. To start, Exodus will only offer two watches — the black EON watch for men and the gold ERA watch for women — but Wasilik says he hopes that will expand in the future.

“With manufacturers, you need a minimum order quantity, which can get pretty expensive depending on how much it is,” he said.

“It was really only feasible for us to start with just one of each model, but as we scale in growth, we really want to incorporate different models, different styles.”