The British watch brands playing Switzerland at its own game
Where Bremont and Christopher Ward lead, a surfeit of British watch brands has followed, offering boldly-designed mechanical timepieces at a snip of their Swiss counterparts
Spoiler alert: your Swiss-made watch wasn’t assembled in a snow-strewn shed by an octogenarian watchmaker armed with only a loupe and a lathe. As romantic as that notion remains, your wristwatch was assembled by robots on a production line. It may – may – have been engraved and polished by hand, but your watch is the work of giant CNC machines. Machines that cost millions of pounds to procure.
Indeed, the investment required to launch a new movement – the collection of cogs and gears that make a watch tick – is estimated to cost a company more than £13 million. Hence the reason only the largest of the world’s watch brands can lay claim to producing calibres ‘in-house’, and only then with varying degrees of credibility. It is far more efficient to outsource these mechanisms to third-party suppliers. Swiss watchmakers have been doing so for decades. Over the course of the past quarter century, and especially during the previous decade, it’s a business model that’s taken root, and proliferated, in Britain, too.
With neither the enormous manufacturing and marketing overheads of Switzerland’s watch giants, nor the creative restrictions of risk-averse overlords, these British watch brands are able to offer well-made, and boldly-designed, mechanical timepieces at (relatively) affordable prices. Welcome to the home-grown dial names stealing (at least some of) Switzerland’s spotlight…
Bremont
Bremont was established in 2002 by aviation-obsessed brothers Nick and Giles English. Their express mission? To bring back industrial-scale mechanical watchmaking to Britain. That long-term aim may still remain, but, since the majority of the brand was acquired by an American private equity fund in 2023, Bremont has pressed pause on its objective of manufacturing as many of its components on British soil as possible. In 2024, the brand was completely overhauled with a new logo, new design language and new communication strategy. So far, new-generation Bremonts have served mainly to highlight the excessive levels of passion that went into making English-era Bremonts (double entendre intended).
Visit bremont.com
Christopher Ward
Launched to be ‘the most affordable luxury watches in the world’, Christopher Ward was, along with Bremont, a forerunner in importing Swiss-made movements and housing them behind British-designed dials. Headquartered in Maidenhead, and still in the hands of its founders, Christopher Ward’s direct-to-consumer sales strategy means that it can offer specs at prices rarely seen in the mechanical watch space. Last year, the brand scooped a gong at Switzerland’s prestigious GPHG watch awards, and in 2024 was revealed as a founding partner of Everton football club’s new stadium (co-founder Make France being a die-hard Toffee). Interestingly, also in 2024, Christopher Ward acquired a 20 per cent stake in Pauluzzo AG, a Swiss CNC machining company – which might tell you something about its broader ambitions.
Visit christopherward.com
Schofield Watch Company
A self-confessed eccentric Englishman, Giles Ellis is an associate lecturer at the University of Sussex, where he delivers packed-out talks on industrial design and design philosophy. He is also founder and CEO of Schofield Watch Company, a design-led indie that finds inspiration in British coastal styling and the 18th- and 19th-century lighthouses that dot the coastline of Ellis’ native West Sussex. Schofield launched with the Signalman in 2011, which this writer bought and hasn’t felt a single pang of buyers’ remorse since. The Obscura, new for 2024, signals a new direction for the distinctive dial name, featuring a new case shape and dimensions, while platforming the fastidious attention to detail that has characterised the brand from day one.
Visit schofieldwatchcompany.com
Pinion
Founded near Reading in 2013 by Piers Berry, a designer more used to pixels and coding than gear trains and balance wheels, Pinion’s early automatic watches referenced instruments from World War II, with the company’s debut DLC-coated Axis Black an immediate sell out. Pinion continues to be inspired by vintage military paraphernalia, but equips its watches with the latest mechanical calibres from Switzerland and Germany. The decidedly-retro Pinion Elapse AN Chronograph, for example, is fitted with a workhorse Valjoux movement, but otherwise is designed, finished, assembled and tested in Lancashire.
Visit pinionwatches.com
Marloe Watch Company
As with many start-ups, Marloe Watch Company was the answer to a question brand co-founder Oliver Goffe was having trouble solving. In this case, a good-looking, solidly-constructed watch that was powered by gears and cogs, instead of quartz, but which didn’t cost the earth. In 2015, Goffe teamed up with product designer Gordon Fraser and within 12 months they had produced Marloe’s first watch. Interestingly, given that the watch world was prophesising its own downfall at the hands of the Apple Watch at the time, Goffe and Fraser focused their attention on re-popularising the most traditional of timepieces – the manually wound wristwatch. The company takes its name from the riverside town of Marlow, close to company HQ.
Visit marloewatchcompany.com
Bamford Watch Department
There was a time when Swiss watch brands were threatening to sue George Bamford, of Bamford Watch Department. Now they are queueing up to work with him. Since then, the designer dubbed the 'King of Customisation' has launched his own line of watches, which you can customise for yourself online. Designed in BWD’s Mayfair-based HQ, the Bamford GMT houses an automatic movement from Swiss calibre specialist Sellita. Choose from a medley of colour ways and smattering of strap options.
Visit bamfordlondon.com
Farer
Farar began life as a purveyor of battery-powered fashion watches, before moving into automatics and launching its own range of GMTs shortly after. Based in Ascot and inspired by the derring-do of British explorers and record holders, Farer appropriately derives its name from the terms seafarer and wayfarer (so you now know how to pronounce it). Typically, Farer watches ape designs from the ’60s and ’70s, before injecting bold contemporary dial colours and make use of the tried and tested (mostly ETA-supplied) Swiss movements.
Visit farer.com
Vertex
During the Second World War, the British Army commissioned 12 watchmakers to mass produce a combat-ready three-hand wristwatch that soldiers could take with them into the field. Among the brands that answered the call – collectively known as the Dirty Dozen – were Longines, IWC, Omega, and Britain’s Vertex. The last of those brand continued to produce watches until the late Seventies, when, along with many other international watchmakers, it was effectively killed off by the advent of cheap, battery-powered watches from Asia. When Don Cochrane, the great grandson of Vertex’s founder, rebooted the company in 2015, he did so as an invitation-only venture. Lowly civilians have since been granted access to Vertex’ robust, WWII-inspired watches, although they have a habit of selling out fast.
Visit vertex-watches.com
Studio Underd0g
'Why can’t horology be a little more playful?' asks Richard Benc, Brighton-based designer and Studio Underd0g founder, on his brand’s website. It’s a question Benc originally asked himself during the lockdowns of 2020; a question he’s spent the ensuing years answering, following a successful Kickstarter campaign, with a slew of sub-£1,000 watches that have caught the attention of the watch community for their oddball and irreverent designs. Movements are sourced from China and Switzerland, but dials – inspired by, among other things, watermelons, strawberries, ice cream and aubergines – are very much the vision of Benc. Testament to the sort of waves Studio Underd0g has made in the typically strait-laced watch industry, the brand has already collaborated with H Moser & Cie, another disruptive watchmaker operating at the polar opposite end of the horological price spectrum.
Visit underd0g.com
Mr. Jones Watches
Given that they are, for the most part, priced under £400, you could be forgiven for presuming that creations by Mr. Jones Watches are powered by battery. Not the case. Using mechanical movements sourced from China, Mr. Jones – that’s London-based designer, Crispin Jones, by the way – produces playful, make-you-look-twice automatic watches for a fraction of the price you’d expect to pay elsewhere. Throw in bold-faced designs, jumping-hour complications, waterproof cases and collaborations with global artists, and you have a British watch brand offering a singular product for a cost it’s difficult to get your head around. Which could also be said about the way you tell the actual time on the brand's watches. But, of course, that’s all part of Mr. Jones’ shtick.
Visit mrjoneswatches.com
Fears Watches
Descended from a line of English watchmakers that had been trained in Glashütte, Germany’s nexus of watchmaking, before establishing what would become one of England’s largest watchmakers, Nicholas Bowman-Scargill left an apprenticeship with Rolex to restart the family business in 2016. Fears, established in 1846, had ceased trading in the seventies. Bowman-Scargill rebooted the company 40 years later with a classically-styled collection that paid homage to Fears’ graceful back catalogue. Sourcing movements from Switzerland and cases from both Germany and the UK, Fears remains committed to what Bowman-Scargill calls the ‘elegantly understated.’
Visit fearswatches.com
