How Independent Watch Brands Are Making a Comeback I Jason Lu DSH #1282

There's this term that is probably one of the most contentious terms in watchmaking where people say, did you design everything from the ground up? And did you manufacture everything from the ground up? I'd like to use the word that we have a manufacturer. So I am using a traditional Swiss architecture.
So we're using somebody else's architecture. We'll remanufacture those plates and bridges that are our own.
All right, guys, we got Jason Liu here today, 1776 Atelier. Thanks for coming on, man.
Hey, thank you for having me. Yeah, would you label yourself as a watchmaker? I would.
What a title to have. Not many people have that title.
It's sadly, the title is disappearing in the United States. It's still prevalent in some other parts of the world, but as the world becomes more digital, it's an area that's truly, it's dying.
Right. You're the first one I've met in the U.S.
Why do you think that is? Why do you guys think you're a dying breed right now? Well, so in the 1950s, one of the last, the Hamilton Watchmaker, Watch Company left the United States. There are a couple of us left.
There's four or five, probably just call it less than half a dozen truly independent U.S. watchmakers left.
But, you know, Swiss have done a fantastic job of making fine timepieces that people crave, that Japanese have. And as we all know, the Chinese have also done a good job of bringing mass production to the watch world.
And so with the, and the U.S. has just shed its capability, which is something I think we can do a good job to try to overcome.
Yeah. What are the big watch brands in China? I haven't heard of those.
Well, I think if you look, so the Swiss have a watch ward called the GPHG. And although I wouldn't say that many, my opinion, and I'm sure there's some Chinese watch companies out there that might be shaking their fists and say, we're bigger than we are.

But they're probably going to be more niche, almost independent watchmaking brands, but have started to gain notoriety because they've won some prestigious awards. So I think that it's up and coming and it's an eventuality with the industrialization of China that I think is unfortunate that I think the U.S.
needs to play some catch up. Right.
So a lot of U.S. customers like the label made in the USA but we were just talking earlier how it's almost impossible to have that label as a watchmaker here at an affordable price point, right? Right.
Why is that? So the United States Federal Trade Commission has a label, if we go into, that says, the actual language says all or virtually all content has to be of U.S. content.
Now if we actually say, so for me to say that, that means every component has to have U.S. origins.
Now let's just compare and contrast with other countries. So when somebody, when we flip open a Rolex or any of the other watches, I'm not going to make an allegation that one company has more or less, but the Swiss arbiter for made it in Switzerland is 60% by value.
So, and then Germany, England, other countries have much lower standards than the United States. And we can make the argument for the Swiss, for the Federal Trade Commission, that they're just protecting companies that really do 100%.
But at the same time, when we cannot buy jewels, hairsprings, balances, gears, pivots, in the United States, they either have to be manufactured completely here. But for example, let's take hairspring material.

This is the part that turns the balance that we call the heartbeat of a watch. Every mechanical watch has to have a hairspring.
Hairspring material, the minimum order quantity is roughly a little bit over a mile of hairspring material at a cost of well over a million dollars. So when I only need less than six inches of hairspring material, you can imagine what that does.
So as to my knowledge, there's only one watchmaker in the United States that can have a made in the United States stamp. The Federal Trade Commission prohibits us from using the words made in, built in, crafted, to use Texas, USA, or any other moniker that gives the illusion that it's made in the United States, unless we can pass that almost impossible to meet threshold.
So then we have to use assembled, which is a travesty when more than 70, I'd say 80% of our content is US. Wow.
So they need to look into that, how to change that, right? And again, it's a double-edged sword. When somebody that's making floor mats, for example, can use polymers and resins and say, hey, because of the industrialization of that type of chemical or that type of commodity is easier to do.
But when the industry has entirely left this country, how do you bring it back? How do you bring an industry back to the United States when you're forced to word assembled. And when and the threshold for us measuring against our peers is much higher.
Yeah, that makes sense. So Rolex obviously has the biggest market share, right? Percentage wise.
I don't know the exact number, but is that number going up or down over the next few years, you think? Searching for the perfect job can be overwhelming. You know, it's out there.
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Rolex is, now I watched the media, so for all the viewers out there or listeners who may criticize it, Rolex in 2024, I believe, sold roughly 1.25 million watches. Wow.
The number's gone up. They've actually increased their capacity.
Jeez. So they were the largest producer in the Swiss marketplace, I think, globally by far.
And they've done a great job marketing themselves rolex is a fantastic marketing machine they do they build great timepieces that are craved yeah 1.25 million a year is insane it's insane how are they making that many that's nuts so they've actually skeered up to increased production because if you go into a rolex dealer there's the infamous if you want your rolex daytona or your rolex watch you will wait months if not you could say argue for daytona it might be one of the most desirable time pieces in the world and it's arguably impossible to get some people have waited years that's right yeah it's nuts um i've been able to get some in vegas i think partially because of connections but it yeah you might know a person or two yeah but sometimes like before the podcast i would walk in there they wouldn't even look at me you know what i mean i'd pull in they wouldn't even talk to me and the store would be empty yeah and they that so i think the the there's the talk in the watch world is that that's alienated some people with the difficulty of going to an ad you don't have any inventory to sell me and you're going to go on some sort of mysterious list yeah and that's that's that there's the algorithm behind when you're who and when somebody's going to get a timepiece is i think one of the greatest mysteries in the watch world yeah it's such a mystery like you don't know what number you are yeah you don't even know if there is a list i don't know if there is a list or have to buy 10 other pieces of jewelry or something else to elevate my status within that list. AP is even harder.
Yes. AP is hard.
I walked into Richard Milley. Yeah, they didn't even put me on a list.
That one's probably impossible. Those are the biggest.
So AP is one of the Holy Trinity, right? With Patek Philippe, AP, and Vacheron Constantin. And they occupy a big piece of the Swiss wash industry.
And they hold a huge portion of the revenue, but that's largely because of demand. Now, I think in 2024, we started to see a little bit of downturn in demand.
And hopefully things start start coming back to earth a little bit. Yeah.
Did that scare you, that downturn? It was a pretty big one, right? Not from a watch industry perspective. For independents, it really hasn't bothered us.
Oh, wow. As an independent watchmaker, we kind of cater towards the few that a lot of our buyers are collectors who say,

I want something a little bit different, right?

We might have a couple of the other brands, Swiss brands, Japanese brands,

in our collections, and we want something that's maybe a little bit more personal,

that has arguably a higher attention to hand craftsmanship.

Yeah.

Do you think independent brands are going to make a comeback?

I think they are making a comeback, right? Now, here's the question is, are there going to be too many of us? But right now, there is a resurgence of... My personal take is, there's been a lot of frustration as you go to...
We named a bunch of brands where there are difficulty buy. And I think the consumer in the world where you can Amazon something and have it show up at your door the same day, it's a frustration saying, I might wait months, if not years, to get something.
And these are same consumers that are fairly well-heeled and they're educated and they can say, hey, what else is out there? And as you educate yourself about timepieces, it's similar to the car world where you start to crave something a little bit more that's not pedestrian and so i think the independents who have said hey i can offer a higher level of handcraftsmanship i can offer you exclusivity um there are not 10 million of these things that are going to be made yeah um and we're kind of ever thought about how much emf and radiation your body is exposed to every single day from smartphones smartphones to Wi-Fi, modern technology never stops emitting invisible stressors that could disrupt brain function, hormone balance, and cellular health. That's where Ares comes in, the only scientifically validated solution designed to help your body adapt to today's technology.
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Wow. At a price that's sometimes a fraction of what the big brands charge.
Yeah, and handmade, right? I'm not sure if Rolexes are fully handmade, to be honest. And I'm not going to speak on behalf of the big dangerous Swiss brand, but I do know that the level of hand craftsmanship and hand workmanship that we have is going to be higher.
Yeah, I know you brought some here. If you could show us, but we'll take B-roll and put it on the camera.
But could you explain what's going on here? Sure. So we have a timepiece for you.
Do you want to start with it? Oh yeah, please. This is a timepiece that's a gift for the show.
I look forward to having you wear these. Yeah, I can't wait.
I'll put it on right now if it fits. My wrists are skinny, so I might have to adjust it.
Damn, this box is legit, too. Full wood.
Wow, look at this thing. Beautiful design on the box itself.
Wow. Damn.
So this is a skeleton, right? It's a hand-skeletonized handpiece, so we didn't use CNC for that. We cut it out with jeweler saws and files.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, it's even moving in the back and everything.
Yes, you can take it off and it's as beautiful in the front as it is from the back. It's a push button.
Wow, this is phenomenal. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, that's insane. I'll take a video and show it on the camera later, but thanks so much, man you.
I'm glad you like it. So if you take a look at how that's built, we have a sample here.
You look at the front, that's a main plate. Here's one that's hand finished.
That's hand cut out. You can see the jagged edge from a jeweler saw cutting that out.
So someone actually cut this cut this out manually. We cut that out manually.
And you can see a more finished version as we filed it and hand beveled each edge of what that looks like. Damn, this looks intense.
This is not easy to do. And so as that catches the light, the little bevels that you see on that, the corners, each piece is actually cut out by hand.
And why we chose to do that is that's what we view true watchmaking is, right? It's not just a CNC machine that's using modern technology and cutting. What's missing is that level of craftsmanship, right? What you're buying at a certain point is what we believe is mechanical art.
Yeah. Right? If we really were to distill this, and half the watch world might get mad at me for saying this but if you really want the best most accurate time piece pull out your phone and look at your iphone or your samsung and it's going to tell you exactly synced up to the atomic time it will be a perpetual calendar that that knows leap years it will be it will be accurate far more than 100 years and it was it's always going to be accurate but what you're buying is mechanical artistry right you're buying that piece that of of what we view that as almost has a soul to it there's a watchmaker there's an artist there that spent time to put those bevels in there because why it's not because you can we believe it's because you should i love that yeah you're basically buying art in a sense right that's right it's not just a watch that's right you're not using it for time in fact all my watches i don't even use it for time right it's something when you put it on it as you know some people joke around say hey that i don't put feelings first sometimes i take a very logical view towards things but from timepieces it's it when you buy a timepiece, it should somewhat speak to your soul.
Yeah, that's the Asian in you. You don't put feelings first.
Maybe, yeah. The autistic Asian in me.
That's the tough love, man. My mother raised me with that logic.
Yes, that might be part of the culture. No, it is.
Asians are strict. Your parents were strict, weren't they? They were strict, yes.
It's good in a sense, I think. Yeah, it keeps us from being complete fuck-ups.
Yeah, complete generosity. Then they moved to America, and you see the Asian-Americans out here wilding out.
Yeah. Yeah, I've been to China a few times.
But they haven't gotten here yet, so. Oh, China hasn't? Yeah, because they're making them in.
I think they make a lot of components for people. We try to minimize the, I think the only Chinese component on that right now is the clasp.
Nice. I love that.
So how exactly is a skeleton made? Because that's probably one of the hardest models to make, right, I'd imagine. So people ask, let me answer that in an about way.
So people ask, is our movement in-house? So in-house is this term that is probably one of the most contentious terms in watchmaking where people say, did you design everything from the ground up? And did you manufacture everything from the ground up? I like to use the word that we have a manufacturer movement. So I am using a traditional Swiss architecture.
So we're using somebody else's architecture we remanufactured those plates in plates and bridges um that are our own and so at that point is that i didn't reinvent the wheel by saying oh we're coming with our new own gear train design i'm using somebody else's gear train design but our components are are our own. And so how did we do that?

Is we literally took one of our main plates,

drilled holes in them,

and then took a jeweler's file and a jeweler's saw

and cut out the pieces to expose the gear train.

That's insane.

So, and then if you look on that timepiece,

you can actually see all those cuts that you see out there are hand cut out. The dial will be making.
Wow, like all the ones on the outside? Everything. That's so impressive.
There doesn't seem like much room for error on something like this. No, you screw it up, you throw it away.
Really? Yeah. Yeah, I can't notice.
And even when we bevel the edges, right? So there's a term called englage where we're trying to bring in, cut the bevels so that it catches the light. It's part of fine watchmaking.
But a lot of that just uses a graver. It's an engraver where we're just cutting away bits.
But if you slip on that once, usually the graver is so sharp, it will scratch the entire movement and you throw the whole thing away. Holy crap.
What keeps this thing spinning in the back? So that's the hairspring that we're tying. Oh, that's the hairspring.
That's the most expensive thing you mentioned earlier. Well, we use a Swiss hairspring for that reason, right? That timepiece right there is $4,900.
At that price point, I can't put a portion of a million-dollar hairspring. $1.25 million for hairspring, man.
That's nuts. Hopefully a USA manufacturer starts making that for cheaper.
They do, right? But it's just not at the right price. Now, I think maybe there's some opportunity for maybe a bunch of, if US watchmaking becomes more than a handful of us, there's maybe opportunities for multiple watchmakers to collaborate.
I think there's a lot of opportunity. When there's only less than half a dozen of us, I don't view us as competition against one another.
We're just, the U.S. is the largest watch market in the world.
Wow, I didn't know that. I think we, don't quote me on this, but I think we will represent roughly one-third of the world's watch consumerism.
Damn. But we only occupy, I think, less than 4% of the watch industry.
And that's another term I heard from somebody else. So somebody can probably chat GPT or Google me and correct me.
Good old AI. I mean, it sounds accurate to me.
I don't hear of any US watchmakers. A lot of my friends own watches.
There's a couple and I really respect them. So before anybody else, there's timepieces from competitors of mine that i own as part of my own collection i respect them all wildly um and most of us are just watch nerds we love mechanical time pieces and so if somebody makes something beautiful i'll be the first to give them credit and give them props for it but uh what we're trying to do is make it a little bit more accessible.
What was your favorite era of watches? Because there's a new trend now of people restoring old watches. I don't know if you've seen it on TikTok.
So it's interesting you bring that up. So this is how I got into watchmaking.
So although I'm an avid watch collector, this is a Hamilton 902. And so if you look at it, it's beautiful inside.
And I'll let you look at that. So this is 100 years old?

That was built in 1925.

Holy crap.

So it's either 99 or 100 years old.

Yeah, this is historic.

It's historic.

And it's in a modern case with our strap on it.

But if you look at the work on that,

that was built that beautifully 100 years ago.

That's impressive.

But if you drop it, it's not shock resistant a lot less a lot more prone to being magnet magnetized but they're beautiful super beautiful this is a clean design yes i love it so that you know this is from the golden era of american watchmaking right if you look at back when that was made in the mid-20s the u.s was at its peak we were the best. At watchmaking? At watchmaking.
There was nobody better. Wow.
So you think about the history there is actually the U.S. has a pretty storied and positive history in watchmaking.
You figure from the 1880s during the Industrial Revolution when railroads were a big part of the expansion of the U.S. industrial complex.

We needed watches that were accurate to keep trains from crashing into each other, to keep things on time. And so the idea of a railroad standard and pocket watches that were the most accurate became a big pervasive need as part of the industrialization of this country.
and the U.S. was able to, where the Swiss were always good at building bespoke, highly crafted timepieces.
The U.S. was really good, became really good at building highly crafted, beautiful timepieces, but also mass production.
So you have the Waltham Watch Company, you had Hamilton, you had Elgin, and all these companies that took their turns at becoming some of the biggest watch manufacturers on the earth, but also building some of those beautiful, accurate timepieces ever. Some of the Hamilton timepieces that went all the way through World War II were known to be the most accurate timepieces in the world.
Wow. But that all disappeared when we gave up that capability.
The Swiss were really good at marketing their capabilities, and we gave it up as a country. How much would that Hamilton watch cost if you found one on the market these days? Actually, they're not that expensive.
You look at an old Hamilton pocket watch that's fully restored, it's going to be less than $1,000. Really? Because that's historic.
I would buy something like that just to have. But those, a good fully restored piece is often less than $2,000.

And it's a neat piece of history to have. That's not bad at all.

It could probably be a decent investment, honestly, too.

Yeah, and if you look at some of these great pocket

watches, there's some military-grade

ones that

they had in World War II

that were used to navigate

B-17 bombers

during the war. Damn.
And so it's pretty neat. Some of them have really neat histories.
Yeah, there's some that were used, what was the one in space? Forget, someone, an astronaut wore it in space. So Omega makes the moon watch.
And that really put, was a big part of Omega's history.

So most watchbooks, I have one, Omega Moonwatch.

That's like a staple, right?

It's a staple.

You just have to have one.

Omega did a really good job in selecting materials

and in making accurate watches

and really things that could stand up to the test of NASA

when the others couldn't.

So a lot of the watchmakers, other brands that we talked about yeah put in their offerings um but omega won that one that's cool which mainstream watch brand are you the most impressed with quality wise so let's call what is mainstream i love patek okay um i know a lot of people argue how is that mainstream um i think they're a staple of the holy trinity and well-deserved um um you know i i like any watch collector i i do have rolex and they are what i call tool watches but not in a negative sense is that out there i will take anywhere jump off a mountain with it and i know it's just going to keep on they call it a daily right it's a daily yeah and i i don't there's no reason you can't daily one of our watches but you know what i want to take it to the shooting range and do machine gun fire with it not with this i prefer you didn't but it's you know i don't know that it will break but i haven't tested that yeah we haven't done machine gun tests would this survive underwater uh 50 meters so it will probably a light swim 50 meters but i wouldn't but the idea is 50 meters people say well i'm not going to dive to 50 meters the idea is behind water resistance ratings is um the case is actually we rate at we advertise 30 meters the case is rated at 50 got it and the reason is it's 50 meters of pressure in motion so all the seals under there when you're actually moving your arms underwater, you actually can generate more force than 50 meters of pressure and motion. So all the seals under there,

when you're actually moving your arms underwater,

you actually can generate more force than 50 meters.

Oh, interesting.

And so that's how it's rated.

So you really, to see truly water-resistant swimmable is 60 meters.

Have I taken mine swimming with a rubber strap?

Yes.

That's balls.

But we do it because I know a guy who can replace it. But for warranty purposes, we say 30.
That makes sense. You got guys that could fix these everywhere yet or no? So because it's a proven known architecture, some of our components are proprietary.
So for example, if you were to throw generic Swiss parts in it, it's not going to look the same. So even our gears, if you look at the gears, all our gears are beveled, all our gears are grained, all our gears are galvanic treated by hand in Texas.
And so even if we will procure the parts, by and large, most of them are then transformed in the United States. That's really why we have that claim is that about 70 to 80% of our content, and people say, is it 70 or 80? How do you do the math on that? So we think it's subjectively somewhere there.
Hopefully you'll be able to keep up with demand. These look pretty intense to make, man.
It's been fantastic. It's been a fantastic ride since launch.
Nice, when did you launch? We launched in December. We did a- Oh, was it three months ago? About three months ago.
Wow, brand new. We've been doing this for for about we've been building them for about two years it takes time to come up with design we launched and we're close to sold out on some of our collections dang well done man because this is not an easy industry it's a tough industry but you know what we're feel blessed is that I think we got in the right time where made or the high amount of American content is something that the market generally craves.
We sought a lot of feedback, both positive and negative on our designs. And so we put it out, not everything was a hit, but what we've put out so far has been really, really, really well received.
That's smart that you were getting feedback on the designs before you made them into real products. Yeah.
Well, this was not a road without failure. I have a, we call it the R&D box.
Yeah. And it is a graveyard of parts that we tried that probably some people would laugh, could say, what were you thinking? And maybe my answer is I wasn't.
It looked good to us, but not to many, so. Well, coming up with design can't be easy.
No, it's hard. I hard.
Because you got to think of something that hasn't been done before, but also that people would want. And the fact that every single time we try something, it has a high cost.
You figure every single one of those is manufactured for us. Right.
And I can't just buy one. Usually, I'm begging a machine shop to make 10, 15.
And then if we decide after the first one we don't want it, we throw away 15 pieces. Damn.
Yeah, that ain't cheap. Yeah.
And then when we put it in production, right, we're ordering hundreds. Yeah.
Well, what's the next step here? You're about to sell out of everything. What's next? So we have a, that time piece that you got is kind of a halfway prototype.
You actually, if you look on the back of that, I think it's serial zero, zero, zero, on the very top. On the top.
On the balance bridge. One of the parts that's spinning.
Oh, on this part. Yeah.
Yeah, I see that. So obviously we don't sell 0000 to anyone.
So that one is halfway in between. There's a model we're coming out.
I think we're going to call it Pure. And the idea is that it's going to take us a little bit more of a nod um towards

traditional watchmaking so there's another time piece i'm giving one of your colleagues uh charlie

yeah and that one was one of my first time pieces that one is serial zero zero zero zero damn of that was my personal timepiece quadruple zero quadruple zero that. All the prototypes are some versions of zero, but that was an earlier timepiece than that.
So that one's a little rougher finish. That one was my personal watch.
That one's the one that went swimming. But both of those have, you'll see when you open that one, that one has, I don't want to say it's cruder, but it had more skeletonization.
But this one is going to be a little bit more nod towards artisanal workmanship where you'll see on the gears on yours that you can see the way the light reflects off with snailing. We have a higher focus on playing with light.
Look at doing watchmaking in its more pure form. So that's why we're calling it pure.
Yeah, I love that. Do you have a personal favorite watch? So I personally wear, I'm wearing one piece right here.
There's two versions here of the art, our personal piece. I love the skeletons, but that was more like a labor of love.
We were having a lot of problems with the dials with these because they're so complex um you can take a look at this this one's fully hand engraved wow god damn and this is another one and this one's got even more serious engraving in it dude holy crap and those are hand engraved by uh a colleague of ours in Indiana. All done by Americans.
Wow. And if you look at the level of engraving on that, it is insane.
Dude, this is nuts. Days and days of engraving.
So detailed. Yeah.
And so we believe that is the lowest fully handed of high-end watches. That's the lowest price fully engraved movement watch.
How much is this one? $3,000. Dude, that's...
It's $2,900. I haven't heard of anything close to that price.
And so, that's personally because of the amount of work that goes into these. Yeah.
I see what goes... There's a lot of work that goes to the skeletonization of that, but I'll be honest, I don't personally have the skills to engrave like that.
Not very many people do. You can see that and your audience will probably be able to see it on the b-roll but it's it's it's impressive no that thing was spinning fast yeah and i just so to me that's i i even though the the back of the watch is not on the front of the watch that i i like look i like sitting there sometimes and just looking at the way the light reflects yeah the way that was moving yeah wouldn't even wear it.
I would just be looking at it. That's a beautiful piece right there.
That's why we love it. Yeah.
For me, the skeleton AP is like my dream watch. It was on my collection.
Yeah. Now it's strange when you become a watchmaker, you feel guilty wearing other people's watch.
Plus, you can make it yourself for a fifth of the price. You can try.
I can try, but it's not that I don't crave to wear some of my other timepieces. It's a watch guy.
You admire other watches, but you feel guilty. Yeah, there's some cool ones.
Have you seen Jacob and Co's watches? Some of those are nuts. The space one.
Or the Bugatti one. Yeah, that must be insane to make.
I can't imagine. Yeah.
The price is pretty insane. You can have your condo and some vacation spot or your Jacob.
You want a house or a watch? That's right. That's where Patex are going to now too.
Some of those are like two, three hundred K. Two, three hundred K.
Or even a good, even some of the basic Pate, you can pick between your S-Class Mercedes or a Patex.

Yeah, for real.

Jason, it's been awesome, man.

Where could people look more into this and potentially buy one?

1776atelier.com.

A-T-E-L-I-E-R.

Check out the site, guys.

I can't wait to wear this around.

I'll take some photos in it.

Stay tuned.

I'll see you guys next time.