Courtesy of Aiden Tumminello

Aiden Tumminello ’28, a sophomore in Berkeley College studying architecture and mechanical engineering, didn’t expect his pandemic lockdown hobby to become a business. 

But after questions from curious classmates about the handcrafted watches on his wrist, he decided to turn his passion into Elm Street Watches — a venture that creates custom mechanical watches inspired by Yale’s campus.

“My vision for it is to have them be of very specific and personal spaces on campus. I spent a lot of time in this building, and I looked around one day and I was like, this would be super cool to make a watch design of,” Tumminello said, referring to his watch “The Rudolph,” which is based on the Yale School of Architecture — an example of his Yale-inspired designs. 

All of the Elm Street watches are familiar to Yale, drawing the geometric lines and orange carpet of Haas Family Arts Library, the nine-square grid of the New Haven Green and the industrial aesthetic of the Yale Center for Engineering Innovation and Design, or the CEID. The business — and its website — launched this semester.

So far, Elm Street Watches has had 16 sales, with each watch ranging between $300 and $400, Tumminello said. Yale students and faculty get a 20 percent discount on all watches. Though the business began development in January 2025, Tumminello said it officially launched in August. 

Throughout Tumminello’s first semester at Yale, he said he received comments from teachers and students about the design of the watches he wore. From then, he began thinking about ways he could turn this passion into a larger venture and Elm Street Watches was born. 

“Most of the design I definitely do just laying in bed, most of the prototyping I do in the CEID. I use the 3D printers a lot there to make different variations of things as I’m working,” Tumminello explained. He orders individual parts from manufacturers and assembles the watches himself in his dorm room.

Tumminello said he wouldn’t have turned his idea into a business if it weren’t for the support and encouragement of his peers.

Gusty Jothaprasert ’28, a friend of Tumminello’s and one of his first customers, said he was intrigued when he noticed Tumminello’s green watch a few weeks into their freshman year. 

“I was like, ‘Oh, this watch doesn’t have a brand. I want to know where he got it from,’” Jothaprasert said. “And he told me that he made it himself back at home, and I thought that was really cool.”

A year later, Jothaprasert bought a piece called “The Toolwatch,” based on the Becton Center, before Elm Street’s website fully launched. 

Jothaprasert said that people back at his home in Bangkok, Thailand, are “surprised” when he shares that the watches are made by a peer at Yale.

“It’s a cool conversation starter,” he said.

Elm Street Watches also recently partnered with the Veritas Search, a campus-wide scavenger hunt returning for its second year. The first three winners will receive a custom Veritas Search watch designed by Tumminello. 15 additional watches from the collaboration will be available for purchase.

Samuel Vargas ’28, one of the search team members on Veritas Search who led the watch collaboration, explained the uniqueness and quality of the Elm Street Watches, which led him to pursue a collaboration.

“We thought his work was high quality and were excited about the idea of doing a custom collaborative time piece with his craftsmanship,” Vargas said. “We knew students would be excited about this.”

Vargas added that the Veritas team reached out to Tumminello over the summer and that the team is “really happy with the results.”

Tumminello envisions Elm Street Watches remaining Yale-centric but expanding to work with more student organizations. 

“Ultimately, that’s the vision I had for the venture—to really help other groups have these really specific memorializing tools,” he said.

He said he wants to eventually reach out to alumni and other Yale-affiliated groups outside of campus, although he’s hesitant about expanding to other universities, noting that the watches’ distinctiveness comes from his personal connection to Yale.

Four designs are currently available for purchase on the Elm Street Watches website.