Skeleton watches are clearly a big part of Orient Star. Between the sporty Avant-Garde Skeleton, the more refined Orient Star Skeleton in the brand’s Contemporary Collection, and now this new Orient Star M34 F8 Skeleton Hand Winding created for the brand’s 75th anniversary, the Japanese brand has built a broad range of openworked watches over […]
The Streamliner collection by indie brand H. Moser & Cie. debuted in 2020 and immediately established the series as one of the distinctive alternatives in the integrated-bracelet sports watch category. Its fluid, almost organic lines were a nice departure from conventional luxury-sports-watch design codes. In 2023, the Streamliner Small Seconds refined the concept by introducing […]
This week on The Business of Watches, we sit down with Akio Naito, the President of Seiko Watch Corporation. Seiko's Credor brand, the ultra-premium offering showcasing artisanal creations, unique craftsmanship, and design, made its Watches and Wonders debut this year. We discuss Credor's positioning within the Seiko Group and its expansion into international markets.Photo credit: Mark KauzlarichThe biggest challenge for Credor, Naito says, will be increasing production for more markets, as th
Parmigiani Fleurier’s luxury sports watch collection, the Tonda PF, got off to a flying start with the release of not one but two chronographs in its inaugural 2021 lineup. Led by the refined Split Seconds in platinum and the high-frequency COSC-certified integrated manufacture movement powering the steel Tonda PF Chronograph, the collection may be understated […]
For the past few days, if you’re even remotely into watches, your Instagram feed has probably been flooded with speculations about Swatch’s next big collaboration. Ever since the first teasers dropped, the rumours have only grown louder. And, honestly, the clues were becoming impossible to ignore. Swatch would be teaming up with Audemars Piguet, and […]
Founded in 1904 in Geneva, ZRC first specialised in bracelets and waterproof cases before entering the world of professional dive watches in the late 1950s. The big change came when ZRC was contracted by the French Navy and created the Grands Fonds line, robust, highly engineered instruments designed for underwater use. Defined by their unconventional […]
What We KnowThe cat is out of the bag on what is likely to be the biggest watch news of the year. The Swatch x Audemars Piguet "Royal Pop" just launched, ahead of its official availability on May 16, 2026, at selected Swatch stores. There are no wristwatches here, just eight unique pocket watches in two different styles, cased in brightly colored Royal Oak-shaped bioceramic cases, powered by manually wound mechanical SISTEM51 movements. Eight watches, for each side of the iconic Royal-Oak beze
Since its debut, Horloger Ming, the brand led by Ming Thein, has built its collections on light, transparency, and layered dial constructions. From early minimalist pieces to more technical watches like the 29.01 Worldtimer, Ming has explored how a dial can interact with its environment. Recently, the brand went even more expressive, resulting in the […]
The watch world hasn't seen an auction season like this in quite some time. Well, ever, frankly. Phillips set multiple records (43 by their count, though many are quite obscure), including a new record for the highest single sale of $96,328,083, besting their result from just last fall. If you add in their online auction, they passed $100 million for the first time ever. Sotheby's smashed the record for the most expensive A. Lange & Söhne ever (for a pocket watch, we might add)—a record th
Held on the mountainous slope of Vancouver's North Shore, the Vancouver Timepiece Show offered its second-ever installment this past April. The event offers a true enthusiast-driven platform for a variety of value-driven brands and is part of a now three-show-strong portfolio for Canada's Timepiece Shows, spanning Vancouver, Toronto, and, later this month, Montreal for the first-ever appearance. Less than a week after the big show in Geneva ended, I hopped on a plane and flew to Vancouver for
What We KnowWant to see a magic trick? No, not the kind the Joker pulls in "The Dark Knight," but instead something pretty cool that Ming has cooked up with their new 29.06 "Peep Show." The watches below look markedly different, but the only thing that's changed is the direction the hands point. When Ming Thein showed me this watch last fall, I immediately got what was going on as he turned the crown. If you were doing the same, you'd see that the guilloché dial with a multiphase color-shiftin
How do you capture 100 years of the Oyster? That's the question at the center of Rolex's new 23-minute film celebrating the anniversary of one of the most important watches ever made.The film opens with incredible archival footage of Mercedes Gleitze swimming across the English Channel, then moves on to archival footage of many defining moments tied to the Oyster's history—speed records, Everest expeditions, deep-sea exploration, and much more. Most will know these stories, but seeing them pre
Urwerk, the indie brand founded by Martin Frei and Felix Baumgartner in 1997, is renowned for its futuristic, aerodynamic vessels with kinetic satellite hour displays. In 2025, Urwerk released the UR-10 SpaceMeter, a watch that initially stumped fans with its round dial and conventional hour and minute hands. However, closer inspection revealed Urwerk’s fascination with […]
Rado’s foray into the world of dive watches in 1962 resulted in the Captain Cook, a somewhat quirky watch that didn’t emulate the rugged tool watches populating the underwater scene. Defined by its less utilitarian character, the Captain Cook had a compact 35mm case, an inward-sloping bezel, a domed acrylic crystal, a pivoting anchor at […]
Timex and affordable quartz watches are synonymous and have been since the brand ceased mechanical watch production in 1982, following the Quartz Crisis. Few brands have found as much success as Timex with quartz, and innovations like Indiglo (bright, uniform dial electroluminescence introduced in 1992) have kept them on top for decades. Only a few […]
Swatch is planning a collaboration with Audemars Piguet, expected to be one of the most significant and talked-about watch releases of the year. Swatch began teasing the tie-up last week with social media posts featuring the distinctive font associated with AP's iconic Royal Oak model and the words 'Royal' and 'Pop.' That led to hordes of speculation online that the brand was preparing a collaboration with AP. And then, over the weekend, the two marques confirmed that indeed they would be rele
Collaborations are an established part of the modern watch cycle: a new model is introduced, colors follow, maybe a complication is added, and eventually a collaboration enters the mix, often positioned as a moment of creative divergence within an otherwise predictable trajectory. With the Citizen Tsuyosa seconde/seconde/, the brand hits that phase in a way that feels both familiar and slightly off-script.Collaborations are also never entirely expected, yet the best ones have such a natural fi
Less well known than the brand’s popular dive and pilot watches, Oris has a dressier, more formal watch line, some powered by the brand’s in-house calibres, such as the refreshed Artelier Complication we covered a few weeks ago. The Artelier Date, a classic time-and-date model, has also been selected for a design makeover. Keen to […]
Among top-level, mainstream Swiss-made watch brands, few can match Cartier's performance over the last half-decade. The Paris-based jewelry marque has vaulted ever higher to become the second biggest watch brand by sales, according to analyst estimates from both Vontobel and Morgan Stanley. While the jewelry unit of Cartier remains its primary driver, analysts say estimated sales from the watch division grew about 10% in 2025 to exceed CHF 3 billion, up from less than CHF 2 billion in 2019. Wh
The BR-03 collection by Bell & Ross has been around for nearly two decades, and by now, its square case with a round dial is one of the most recognisable designs out there. Originally launched in 2006 as a 42mm alternative to the larger 46mm BR-01, the collection was updated in 2023 with a slightly slimmer […]