The official logo of the Microbrand Watches Facebook Group

It was an early November evening, back in 2014, that I invited a few of my friends and WatchPaper contacts to join a new Facebook group that I just started, called Microbrand Watches. The whole idea came as I was writing more on more often on WatchPaper about these so-called microbrands, start-up companies, that design and sell watches, popping up everywhere in the world thanks to the popularity of online crowdfunding platforms and watch forums. I’m a big fan of online forums, especially the more popular ones, like Watchuseek or TimeZone, these forums have grown into really deep knowledge bases, fantastic places to learn about watches, but I always found that they are not the ideal tools to share a picture, a link or a quick note effortlessly, here, Facebook is much better. To my surprise, there was no Facebook community for fans and founders of watch microbrands.

As I was setting up the group, I realised that defining the term microbrand is not a cakewalk. The origin of the word microbrand is quite foggy and everyone has their own interpretation of what it means. Some would base it on the number of watches produced and sold, others on the number of employees, some will look at sales figures, etc.

Throughout my career as a graphic designer, I worked for several tech startups and I always considered watch microbrands as businesses that have a lot in common with technology startups, they are small, newly emerged ventures, products of a new economy spawn from the Internet. They are trying to create watches with a unique design, looking for a niche that remained still unexplored by bigger brands, the production is outsourced, and for some even the QC and the customer service is handled by third parties. They are a new breed and I never wanted to place them in the same basket with independent watchmakers. For example, Akrivia or the Grönefeld brothers are producing just a few watches per year, but their way of making a watch has nothing to do with the businesses that I would call microbrands; the quality, the sophistication and of course the price range is not the same.

It’s not easy to draw a clear line, there are too many shades of grey, but we focus on watches that are less than $1,500-$2,000. There is also a list of watch microrbands that we compiled, you can find it here. This list is not set in stone, if you would like to add a brand, feel free to contact me or one of the moderators of the group.

Microbrands have their share of fans that are looking for watches with a unique twist, those that are more involved in online communities can even have their say in the design of certain watches and most of the microbrand owners are open to interact with their customers.

The group took off quite quickly, luckily, Brad and Niranjan accepted to take on the moderator role and help me keep the conversation civilised. I can’t thank them enough! I would also like to thank the members who shared pictures of their watches, those that invited their friends, and everyone who joined our group.

Recently, we passed a new milestone, the Microbrand Watches Group has more than 7,000 members and probably it is a good time to think seriously about the role that our group can play on the watchmaking scene. This week, someone asked me if we managed to monetize the group? No, I never started out this group with the idea to turn it into a business. I know there are other groups, some of them well-known that will leverage their popularity by asking ridiculous yearly fees from bloggers, I can only imagine how mush they are charging watch brands… We welcome other bloggers to share their stories and reviews of microbrand watches, we welcome microbrands to share their collection and their upcoming projects, free of charge. Our members want to have access to as much information as possible and fees should not be a barrier. I always wanted this group to be an incubator for watch collectors and brands, a place to share our common passion for watches.

As we go forward and our group continues to grow, I have big plans, crazy ambitious ideas that will be beneficial to everyone, I hope one day we can materialize them. In the meantime, this is our logo, the silhouette of a watch, in its centre the lowercase of the Greek letter mu, μ, a symbol for micro in the metric system.

To join the Microbrand Watches Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/265562160234660