Business & Industry
Hodinkee
Inside The Manufacture: Why Fam al Hut Is Pursuing Manufacture Status
Fam al Hut, the Chinese independent founded in 2024 whose debut MARK 1 Möbius won the GPHG Audacity Prize in 2025, has built a movement-focused workshop in Taicang that handles design, prototyping, machining, assembly, and testing in-house (cases and crystals still come from outside suppliers). The brand is now revisiting roughly 98 percent of the award-winning watch's movement components as it pursues manufacture status. The bet: leverage China's vast manufacturing base to build a homegrown haute horlogerie name with genuine international recognition, a lane that has stayed conspicuously empty.
WatchPro
Girard-Perregaux replaces Bremont as official timekeeper of Williams F1 team
Girard-Perregaux has taken over as official timekeeper of the Williams F1 team, filling the slot Bremont vacated when Davide Cerrato ended that 2021-era deal shortly after becoming CEO in 2023. No co-branded watch has landed yet, though a Williams-accented Laureato is the obvious play. The real story is GP buying its way into the F1 branding-and-hospitality circuit Bremont walked away from.</parameter> <parameter name="categories">[]
WatchPro
CORDER’S COLUMN: Which watch businesses to invest in now?
WatchPro's Corder crunches a year of watch-stock returns and finds the Japanese (Seiko, Citizen) and retail plays (Watches of Switzerland up 123%) trouncing luxury conglomerates, with LVMH actually losing money for investors as its watch brands shrink. The bigger story is share leaking away from listed Swiss makers in four directions: the private big three (Rolex, Patek, AP) doubling turnover, independents, a $20 billion grey/secondary market, and Asia-made value brands (Fossil, Movado) filling the low end the Swiss abandoned. The commercial read: Japanese firms and undervalued retailers like The Hour Glass look like the smarter P/E bets than the luxury Swiss names.
Community & Culture
Hodinkee
Essays: George Daniels At 100, A Personal Reflection By Roger W. Smith OBE
On what would have been George Daniels' 100th birthday, Hodinkee runs a personal essay from protege Roger W. Smith reflecting on Daniels' twenty-six watches, his co-axial escapement, and the workshop years that revitalized British watchmaking. Smith also reveals he is completing Daniels' unfinished final pocket watch, a detail that will matter to collectors tracking the ongoing commercial and cultural value of the Daniels lineage.
Also at: Revolution Watch · WatchPro
Worn & Wound
Version Watches, and a Uniquely French Take on Midcentury Design
Version Watches, the 2024 French microbrand founded by design-school grads Cybèle Vigneron and Carla Lanfranchini (alumnae of Cartier, Bulgari, Dom Pérignon), made its US debut at New York's Tempus Takumi with the V01-LCC ($1,850): a 38mm Sellita SW200-1 automatic with a bisected, semi-skeletonized lattice dial drawing on Bauhaus, Charlotte Perriand, and Gallic auto design. A second collection, the Concorde-inspired V0201-TH, is slated for September 2026. In a microbrand field where founders increasingly compete on design narrative rather than off-the-shelf nostalgia, Version is betting a pure-designer pedigree and a deep-cut cultural mood board can carve out attention.
WatchTime
Watch Week Aspen 2026 Wraps Its Biggest Edition Yet
Watch Week Aspen returned for its third and largest edition, drawing more than 300 attendees to Colorado for four days spanning 40 events and a record 19 participating brands and retailers, with WatchTime signing on as an official event partner. The format spreads programming across boutiques, galleries, and outdoor activations rather than one show floor, and it is quietly maturing into a destination collector event that gives independents like Moritz Grossmann and Cyrus real face time with American money.
WatchTime
Blast from the Past: A Vintage Spotlight on the Gérald Genta Retro
WatchTime revisits the Gérald Genta Retro Sport, the jump-hour, retrograde-minute piece from Genta's own brand that ran on an ETA 2892-A2 base with a module, wrapped in a 40mm case with sculpted crown guards and a woven carbon fiber dial center. Built in the early 2000s and priced then at $5,300, it's a reminder that Genta's most personal work lived under his own name, not the AP and Patek icons everyone quotes: a useful frame now that the LVMH-revived Gérald Genta trades hard on exactly this heritage.
Monochrome Watches
Twelve on Time – Louis Erard’s Manuel Emch and his Personal Relationship with Time and Watches
Monochrome's "Twelve on Time" interview series sits down with Manuel Emch, the man behind Louis Erard, Kollokium co-founder and industry consultant, for a personal Q&A on his taste and philosophy. Emch takes aim at "artificial scarcity as a marketing strategy" and warns that brands "selling heritage without creating culture" will fade, while name-checking his everyday Louis Erard × Alain Silberstein Tourbillon and Kollokium Projekt 02. The value for the trade is in the messaging: one of the industry's most prolific collaborators framing limited editions and partnerships as creative-only plays, a not-subtle positioning of his own portfolio.
Reviews
SJX Watches
Credor Locomotive “Dawn Blue” GCCR995
SJX Watches went hands-on with the Credor Locomotive "Dawn Blue" ref. GCCR995, the Gerald Genta-designed integrated-bracelet sports model marking Credor's Watches & Wonders debut at US$13,200 (excluding taxes, not limited). They find it "more than the sum of its parts," praising the titanium case and bracelet quality and the shimmering embossed hexagon dial while faulting a "weak spec sheet" (the Soprod A10-derived cal. CR01 with 45-hour reserve and a loose -10/+15 tolerance, plus a micro-adjust-less pin-and-collar bracelet). The trade takeaway: SJX reads the Genta-pedigreed Locomotive as an "ideal platform" for a "newly international" Credor to build a global identity, with the modest movement deliberately spec'd to avoid stepping on Grand Seiko's toes.
Monochrome Watches
The Yellow Gold Minerva The Unveiled Chronograph Limited Edition 30
Monochrome Watches goes hands-on with Minerva's Unveiled Chronograph in a new 18k yellow gold, 43mm execution limited to 30 pieces at EUR 84,000, powered by the reversed hand-wound monopusher Calibre M17.26 with column wheel. They find the brown-coated German silver plates and gold-toned going train "considerably more luxurious" and warmer than the cooler blue-accented 2024 edition, praising the hand-finishing that rewards close inspection. For trade readers: this is another Minerva-under-Montblanc play, chasing collectors at the top of the market where an exposed, inverted chronograph architecture justifies the six-figure ask.
aBlogtoWatch
The Versatile Traveler Watch: Bamford London GMT Forged Carbon Review
aBlogtoWatch reviews the Bamford London GMT Forged Carbon and lands positive, calling it an underdog with fair pricing and better-than-expected quality; they praise the 40mm forged-carbon case (11.7mm thick, 46.5mm lug-to-lug) for wearing far smaller than its photos suggest and the internal rotating 24-hour bezel for adding a third time zone, while faulting the slightly oversized GMT bezel markers and the generic collection name. The trade detail: the GMT is now Bamford London's core line, 40 of the brand's 93 listed watches, with the Sellita SW330-2 forged-carbon version at £1,800 (steel GMTs start £1,450), the carbon commanding roughly a £300 to £350 premium.
New Releases
Fratello
A Heavenly “Match” — The Olympique De Marseille × Jacques Bianchi Marseille JB200 Chronometer Limited Edition
Jacques Bianchi Marseille has reworked its JB200 for its first official collaboration with football club Olympique de Marseille: a 42mm steel dive watch (47mm lug-to-lug, 13.3mm thick, 200m water resistance) with a 20-layer heavenly-blue enamel dial, an embossed OM logo, a bezel scale that runs through a gray 45-60 minute "stoppage time" section, and a COSC-certified Soprod P024 movement, a first for the brand. Priced at €995 including VAT with two straps, it goes to pre-sale on September 3, 2026 at 15:00 CEST on the Jacques Bianchi Marseille website, with the run size set by the three-week pre-order window and deliveries starting December 2026. For a niche independent, plugging into a club claiming 23.5 million digital followers is the whole commercial logic: the audience dwarfs anything the watch world alone could deliver.
Worn & Wound
Longines Adds a Light Blue Conquest Heritage Central Power Reserve
Longines has added a light blue dial to its Conquest Heritage Central Power Reserve, the third color after the cream, anthracite, and black versions from 2024, in a 38mm by 12.3mm case running the Longines-exclusive L.896.5 caliber with a 72-hour reserve and silicon balance spring. The release also debuts a bracelet option; it's available now through authorized retailers at $4,300 on a strap and $4,400 on the bracelet. Notable as further proof of a strong Longines year: after the reworked HydroConquest and updated Master Collection, the brand is still throwing enthusiasts a niche archival bone alongside its big-tent core push.
Monochrome Watches
The New Norqain Independence Skeleton Titanium DLC
Norqain extends its Independence Skeleton line with a blacked-out version: a 42mm Grade 5 titanium case (11.8mm thick, 48.75mm lug-to-lug) in black DLC, with 100m water resistance, red gold-plated skeletonised markers, and the COSC-certified NB08S automatic (Sellita SW200-1, 41-hour reserve). On a black rubber strap, it runs EUR 4,850 with a pin buckle or EUR 5,180 with a folding clasp. The play here is squarely in the accessible openworked segment, where Norqain keeps volume without straying into haute-skeleton territory.
Time + Tide
FounderFest: Why the echo/neutra Rivanera Piccolo “Rosa d’Epoca” is Zach’s personal favourite of the seven
Echo/neutra has released the Rivanera Piccolo "Rosa d'Epoca," a Time+Tide Studio Edition pairing a titanium case with a grained black dial accented in pink. Part of a seven-piece FounderFest lineup, the collab keeps Time+Tide in the studio-edition game where retailer-brand tie-ups are increasingly how boutique names reach new audiences.
Fratello
The Charming Kiwame Tokyo Yane Is Like Putting A Japanese Temple Roof On Your Wrist
Kiwame Tokyo has launched the Yane ("roof"), a US$730 rectangular dress watch whose case, engravings, and taruki-inspired caseback riff on Japanese temple architecture, with a 26.5mm-wide, 44mm lug-to-lug, 9.7mm-thick 316L steel case and a choice of black (Kuro) or burgundy (Enji) lacquered dial. It runs Miyota's automatic 6T27 (28,800 vph, 21 jewels, 40-hour reserve), carries 30m water resistance, and opens for pre-order August 19th with an initial 200 pieces per color, non-limited, shipping December 2026.
Monochrome Watches
Henri Grandjean & Cie Unveils the Magician Atrivm Green Sapphire and Atrivm Red Sapphire
Henri Grandjean & Cie, the revived Le Locle chronometry name relaunched by collector Sohail Aziz, is adding green and red sapphire-crystal versions of its Magician triple-axis flying tourbillon at Geneva Watch Days 2026, extending the Atrivm series that debuted in blue and clear sapphire at Watches & Wonders. The 45mm transparent cases house calibre 1831 (manual-wind, 218 parts, 21,600vph, 42-hour reserve) with Grand Feu enamel accents and lightweight magnesium/titanium/steel cages; these strictly limited editions retail at CHF 990,000 excl. taxes. At near a million francs a piece, this is a naked play for the ultra-high-net-worth independent-tourbillon buyer, positioning a barely two-year-old revival squarely in MB&F and Purnell territory.
Podcasts
Fratello
Fratello Talks: Building A Dream Two-Watch Collection
On this Fratello Talks, Nacho, Lex, and RJ each build a hypothetical no-budget two-watch collection prioritizing versatility and how the pieces complement each other, a useful listen for anyone tracking how seasoned collectors think about pairing dailies with occasion watches.