How To Succeed In Watches Without Being Rolex: British Watchmakers Edition

Forbes

16-04-2025

'Ready to start your watchmaking journey?" the flyer read. "Use the code below for a 10% discount on your first kit.' I stared at it incredulously, the flyer taunting my 20+ years of watch industry experience while challenging my expectations of British watchmakers.
During a March business trip to London, I made a detour to Lindley Hall for British Watchmakers' Day, expecting to discover the British equivalent of Watches & Wonders—that grand Swiss spectacle which recently ended with Rolex causing a stir by finally introducing its first new collection in decades. Instead, I found very early-stage startups, DIY watchmaking kits, and an energy more Coachella than the classical symphonies of the Palexpo Genève's exhibiting watchmakers.
I'll admit, my initial reaction came from a particular brand of snobbery that develops after spending too much time with watchmaking traditionalists. When I shared my disenchantment with master watchmaker Roger Smith, a co-founder of the Alliance of British Watch & Clock Makers and a future candidate for this series (his ingenuity is on par with Louis Moinet), he made me realize I was looking at things the wrong way.
I wasn't here to find the next Jaeger-LeCoultre or Vacheron Constantin – although Smith's own work offered me exactly what I was looking for. Instead, I was bearing witness to the birth of an entirely new watchmaking culture—one that eschews the traditional Swiss mold for something uniquely and irreverently British. British watchmakers are succeeding without being Rolex, and here was my opportunity to discover how.
'I'm from marketing, not watchmaking,' Alistair Audsley, co-founder and CEO of the Alliance of British Watch & Clock Makers, told me when I asked how he became the unlikely architect of the British watchmaker renaissance. After producing The Watchmaker's Apprentice, a documentary on the late master watchmaker George Daniels and his apprentice, Roger Smith, Audsley became corporate affairs and marketing consultant for Smith.
When Britain's premiere luxury watch event SalonQP ceased operations in 2018, Audsley, Smith and Christopher Ward co-founder, Mike France, recognized there were still signs of life in a British horology industry that hadn't quite found its modern-day footing. They commissioned a study, which confirmed a quiet renaissance was indeed brewing, but one that needed a guiding hand. A unifying trade body was necessary to help nurture the fledgling industry back into its glorious heyday, where British watchmakers created 60-70% of fundamental innovations found in today's mechanical watches.
During Britain's 17th and 18th century 'Golden Age' of watchmaking, pioneers like Robert Hooke (who developed the balance spring in 1657), Thomas Mudge (inventor of the lever escapement in 1754), and John Harrison (creator of the marine chronometer) revolutionized timekeeping with inventions still essential to current day mechanical watches. By 1800, Britain dominated global production, manufacturing approximately 200,000 watches annually—about half the world's output—before gradually losing ground to Swiss and American mass-production techniques in the 19th century.
Enter Smith, France, Nicholas Bowman-Scargill of Fears, Bob Ray of Sinclair Harding, and Crispin Jones of Mr. Jones Watches, the founding fathers, along with Audsley, of what was becoming a British watchmakers' movement.
'To our astonishment, we thought there might be about 15 brands out there,' Audsley shared. 'Within about a month of launching [the Alliance of British Watch & Clock Makers] in November 2020, we had 30 members already on board.' Five years later, the Alliance counts 110 brands in its diverse membership of catalog producers and upper echelon independents across 24 countries.
To demonstrate the existence and vibrancy of the British watch sector, Audsley proposed one day per year where British watchmakers would release a special edition watch available exclusively on that date and at a special venue. The first British Watchmakers' Day was launched in 2024 with 21 brands, each introducing a special limited edition. The sequel event this year included 44 British watchmakers, 26 of which produced special limited editions only purchasable that day. The second time around proved to be the charm, with consumer attendance well exceeding the initial event.
'By about 5 in the morning, our security guy texted me and sent a picture with about five or six people waiting outside the door,' Audsley marveled. 'By 9 AM, it was literally around the block.'
While the first year was an inaugural triumph, the challenge for the second year was keeping the momentum going. So for the following event, the team pursued a longer promotional lead time, with activations occurring well before the event to build anticipation and excitement across a wider audience. There was an early announcement in late January revealing 'The List' – the 26 brands offering special limited edition watches exclusively for the event.
This strategic pre-event reveal, complete with detailed photographs and descriptions, gave media outlets and influencers substantial content to generate buzz months before the event itself and delivered far more media presence, both in social media and traditional outlets, than the previous year. General admission tickets sold out in 15 hours.
When Audsley and Smith went to welcome those first in line, they discovered just how far the British watchmaking message had spurred the passionate pursuits of watch enthusiasts worldwide. 'I met a guy from New York. There was a couple from Korea. There was a guy who'd flown over from Singapore.'
Many came to secure one of the limited-edition timepieces that could only be acquired on that one day; and others, to celebrate the stirrings of the British watch industry.
The Alliance cultivates this enthusiastic global community of approximately 1,200 members by ensuring each event maintains an intimate, accessible atmosphere that distinguishes British watchmaking from its Swiss counterparts. 'We're all fans of watchmaking,' Audsley emphasized, capturing the essence of what made the event feel less like a commercial exhibition and more like a family reunion, where founders, collectors, and media all shared equal footing in their passion for British horology.
'I've had a few comments from people in the media saying it's kind of not as slick as, you know, pressing your nose up at a glass fish tank at Watches & Wonders,' Audsley noted. 'For me, that's a huge compliment. That's exactly what we're trying to achieve.'
At British Watchmakers' Day, the boundaries between brand founder, collector, and media blur into irrelevance. 'When you're there, there are times when you can't tell who the brand founder is from the collector, from the media people. Everyone's an enthusiast.'
Erasing traditional industry hierarchies represents the most profound difference between the British and Swiss approach. Where Swiss brands often maintain a reverential distance between creator and consumer, the Brits actively collapse this space.
'The accessibility is a massive draw for our collectors,' Audsley explained. 'It's the founders who are standing behind those tables. It's not a sales executive.' Guests can chat directly with Jonny Garrett of William Wood, Richard Benc of Studio Underd0g, or Simon Mottram of Bremont. This direct connection forges a sense of acceptance and emotional bonds transcending the products themselves.
The community extends even to brands that should logically be fierce competitors. Audsley cited an example of Sidereus Watches and Schofield Watch Company, two brands at similar price points with similar product offerings. Rather than rivalry, there exists genuine warmth and mutual support. For the event, their stands were placed side by side in a physical representation of what Audsley terms 'coopetition,' competing but cooperating simultaneously.
In another act of coopetition, Audsley saw staff from one company aiding another to set up their stand the night before. 'There is a natural friendliness and a natural willingness to share information,' he added. This understanding, that they're stronger together, is a defining principle in the resurgence of British watchmakers and is actively encouraged by the Alliance to create a stronger, more resilient watchmaking ecosystem.
While Swiss watchmaking excels at marketing heritage and precision, modern-day British watchmaking is still defining itself. What's emerging, according to Audsley, is a blend of technical skill and a quintessentially British sauciness. 'There is a design ethos that's starting to coalesce around our brands. There is a slightly irreverent wit that is very British.'
Swiss formality is replaced with fun, personality, and occasionally outright subversion of horology's conservative world. 'What influenced brands like Mr. Jones and Studio Underd0g was this kind of boldness,' he continued. 'It's Monty Python, it's David Bowie, it's the art school tradition we've always brought to music.'
How could I sustain my usual highbrow demand to know what's under the movement hood in the face of such artistic audacity? I stood down from my search for haute horology to embrace a British perspective of design and creativity, finding three brands in the process who are launching entirely new conversations around watchmaking.
Mr. Jones Watches offered a collection that immediately transferred me back to my first watch acquisition at age 8 – a Swatch watch. A Christmas/birthday present that didn't stir my usual ire from getting a combination gift (the curse of every late December baby), I loved that watch and stored it in its original case to this day. Mr. Jones Watches successfully capture that same Swatch playful essence while elevating it for the adult collector and sophisticated wit – making my childhood nostalgia simultaneously obsolete.
Founded in 2007 by Crispin Jones, the brand specializes in 'affordable art pieces that are fun to wear.' Their bestseller, 'Perfectly Useless Afternoon,' features a man lazing in a pool, with his foot indicating hours and a rubber duck floating around to mark minutes. 'The Accurate' has an hour hand that reads 'remember' and a minute hand that warns 'you will die' – a memento mori designed to help you carpe diem. Another design, the blue dialed 'Blueberry Late!' and pink version 'Berry Late Again!,' show a jumble of letters – until the hour and minute hands align to spell out a decidedly adult message of exactly what time is (and also what time it is).
'The world of watches is weirdly quite easy to stand out in because it's such a conservative industry,' Jones told me at British Watchmakers' Day. 'A lot of people are happy making versions of the Swiss archetype designs. We absolutely don't go down that road.'
Richard Benc's delightfully colorful brand embodies that irreverent British attitude Audsley described. With models like 'Go0fy Panda,' 'Watermel0n' and 'Mint Ch0c Chip' featuring dials reflecting their namesakes, Studio Underd0g refuses to take itself too seriously while still appealing to the aficionados who do.
'Most of our customers are collectors of high-end pieces and your Rolexes, but they also come to Studio Underd0g,' Benc told me. 'We'll often get sent photos of someone's watch box where they have these well-known Swiss houses, of high-end independents. But then they [the customers]
Benc recently secured what may be the ultimate validation of Studio Underd0g's approach – a collaboration with Swiss manufacturer H. Moser & Cie for the H. Moser & Cie. Endeavour Perpetual Calendar Passion Fruit and the Studio Underd0g 03SERIES Passi0n Fruit timepiece pair, produced in a limited quantity of 100 and priced at 59,000 Swiss Francs or about $72,000 USD. The watch duo's multihued design dramatically diverge from H. Moser's usual color palate. The set makes for an insider's wink and a cheeky IYKYK nod for the collectors who made the London pilgramage to become one of 100 worldwide able to give that nod back.
Now completely stripped of all preconception, I was delighted to discover BVOR, a brand young in many ways than one. Friends Oliver Smith and Henry Johnston began their horological journey as teenagers in collaboration with their engineering professor, Nurul Alom, to become 'the World's Youngest Watch Designers.'
The founders' approach matches their engineering foundations with a youthful entrepreneurial mettle: 'We all have immense power; we just have to find it' reads the second line on the brand's home page. With a vivid understanding of brand building in today's market, the founders have bypassed chasing retail distribution to focus on social media engagement, event participation and strategic partnerships. BVOR is collaborating with the Austin Healey Club to produce limited edition watches that complement club members' cars.
'Being a small brand, it's all about ourselves, really getting hands-on with the watches and actually promoting it ourselves through our social media platforms,' Johnston told me. 'We're selling them on the basis of the story that goes with the brand. The uniqueness and limited quantity that is available is what people really seem to like.'
With their manufacturing limitations, modest ambitions (they plan to launch a Kickstarter campaign soon), and technical basics, BVOR would never have previously entered my radar. Yet I found myself appreciating them as the necessary seedlings from which greater things will grow, putting a distinctively fine point on the opportunity before me: BVOR represents the first rung on Britain's watchmaking ladder. Where Roger Smith might occupy the pinnacle of technical mastery, these young entrepreneurs embody the industry's future and may very well reshape the industry with distinctly British innovations we can't yet imagine.
The passionate pursuit of luxury is first and foremost about connection—to craftsmanship, to creators, to a communal sharing of appreciation. Fostered by direct access to a brand's creative directors, the British watchmakers' scene shows emotional investment can sometimes matter more than extensive R&D.
'These are people who, around the world, have discovered these brands, discovered the founders, learned their stories,' Audsley summed. 'Those stories have inspired them in some way. I think they've made bonds that go way beyond the product.'
And also:
British watchmaking is stepping out of Switzerland's shadow, carving a new identity rooted in creativity, collaboration, and a touch of irreverence. The journey from the first rung of BVOR to the pinnacle of Roger Smith is just beginning. And for British watchmakers, the passionate pursuit of watchmaking is less a commercial enterprise and more a shared adventure into what the industry can become without the heritage and resources of Rolex.