One of the most exciting things to happen in the watch world over the last 15 years has been a boom in so-called Microbrands. These brands are often started by someone with a simple idea and desire to create their own watch. They use suppliers to help with design, manufacturing and supply and often do all their own marketing. They may use a platform like Kickstarter to raise funds to have the watch produced. We've written a more thorough introduction here, and in today's post we want to reflect on the fact that this boom in new watch brands doesn't seem to be slowing down.

Now that The Watch Collectors' Club is nearly 4 years old, we've met a huge number of Microbrands from all over the world. We're running shows (in Manchester and Glasgow) that help them exhibit their watches to enthusiastic watch lovers. Despite our heavy involvement in the space, we are constantly excited and overjoyed to learn about new brands and help them reach their customers. There seems to be no end of people willing to take the brave step of building their own watches to get their ideas out into the world. This has huge benefits for watch lovers as they are presented with more and more interesting timepieces to choose from.

The Awake S'on Mai, as displayed at our recent show in Glasgow.

This drives an positive spiral of ever-increasing value for money. As these brands compete hard with each other and famous established brands, their suppliers compete to provide great parts, components and finishes for them. This drives down the price of quality components, movements and assembly and testing services. Brands invest time and money in brand building and story telling to help market themselves, and the brands that do this best see the highest growth. Some of these brands manage to grow to sell tens of thousands of watches a year even without much marketing, as they have an angle that drives customers to them from a different channel. One example of this is Ralf Tech, a French brand making watches issued to military and police service members, another is William Wood with their timepieces themed around Firefighting.

Watches from Ralf Tech, Fathers and Bavarian Watch Group that will be on display at our upcoming Event in London next month.

More brands are getting started

Within The Watch Collectors' Club we've got no fewer than five Club Members either running or starting their own watch brands. They are all at different stages of the process and it's been fantastic to have them as part of the community, bringing prototypes along to our Meetups and Events. This helps them improve their watches with direct feedback from enthusiasts and helps other Club Members learn more about what goes into designing and producing a watch.

Club Members Matt and Sam run Apiar, a brand born from their expertise in additive manufacturing, or 3D printing. Our members have helped them with their designs and we've helped them with advice, events, and fundraising. They attend our shows and as they grow we'll be right there with them; it's been very exciting.

The Apiar ERB watch with hand-painted dial by The Dial Artist.

We love meeting Microbrands from overseas, as they have such interesting design ideas and inspiration. Recently we've hosted French brand Awake and Singaporean brand Vario at our watch show in Glasgow. Getting to know them better has been enormous fun and it's great to see the reaction to their watches at these events. In preparing for future shows I'm talking to founders interested in exhibiting and getting to hear their stories, understand their product and help them build their brand. Brands can work with us to help their growth. Every month we come across more and more interesting brands from more and more countries. It's a fantastic time for watch enthusiasts and brand builders, and we can't wait to see what comes next.