Cover Ming Thein, the co-founder of Ming and Alternative Horological Alliance (Photo: Fady Younis)
Ming Thein, the co-founder of Ming and Alternative Horological Alliance (Photo: Fady Younis)
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Ming Thein, the creative director of Ming and Tatler GMT Collective honouree, on the reality of independent watchmaking—and why it’s an art form worth celebrating
The romantic notion of one man creating an entire watch is a fantasy. While it is possible for a single master watchmaker to design a movement, machine bridges and plates with a lathe, cut wheels and pinions with hand-operated machines, and polish them with files, this only happens in a rarefied realm inaccessible to most collectors.
Yet, this is the romantic image of ‘luxury watchmaking’. Modern independent watchmaking actually means financial independence from one of the big groups. Despite the high prices of these watches, making them is far from a lucrative endeavour—if anything, it often proves to be the opposite.
It means you are on your own for bargaining power, creating the right collecting experience for your customers, and finding suppliers for the myriad components that you don’t make. (I have yet to see any watchmaker capable of fusing their own sapphire blanks, or injection-molding their teflon gaskets).
Read more: Ming Thein on designs that reward observation
The modern independent watchmaker has to be a jack-and-master-of-all-trades, equally skilled in cashflow management, operating a camera, mastering 3D CAD programmes, navigating social media, adjusting a hairspring, and excelling in creative design.
History is full of one-hit wonders, and it is no surprise that collectors approach every new announcement with trepidation. Will they survive? Will the watches even be delivered? Will there be anybody to service them in 10 years? These are legitimate concerns.
I was a collector way before becoming a designer and brand founder. I didn’t understand the consequences of the things I asked of the independents at that time but they were kind enough to talk to me. Seemingly simple customisations are really anything but.
For instance, changing the colour of a metallic dial requires numerous eperimentations to achieve the desired hue. With an electrolytic or CVD process, some colours are just not physically possible—and paint does not look the same.
Then you need spares in case something goes wrong during assembly and for future service. It isn’t easy to disrupt production at the dial supplier for a single replacement. That one watch must absorb failed prototypes, spares, project management, setting up a chemical coating batch…
Above Ming 37.09 Bluefin won the Sports Watch Prize at GPHG 2024
Ming 37.09 Bluefin won the Sports Watch Prize at GPHG 2024
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Proper independent watchmaking means the overall design is unique enough to require figuring out how to consistently make numerous unusual components, many also requiring entirely new processes. Laser mosaics in sapphire, ceramic luminous material, white glow, special metallurgy—these are all very complex to execute.
I would say that if done right, watchmaking is truly an art form. Because it has no rational function other than to provide beauty and challenge what we are capable of creatively and technically. Like most art, the real reason we do it is because we are compelled to.
If you expand this across all of the unique components in a watch, it’s easy to see why watches cost what they do—plus what must be done to give the right ownership experience. And that’s not including customer service, logistics, spare parts, after-sales, HR, finance, IT, and all the other mundane business elements.
See also: Revisit the deep with the new Ming 37.09 Bluefin dive watch
Above The founders of Alternative Horological Alliance: Joshua Shapiro, Ming Thein, and Thomas Fleming
The founders of Alternative Horological Alliance: Joshua Shapiro, Ming Thein, and Thomas Fleming
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We independents must all rely on a network of specialist partners for specific things—such as sapphire blanks, laser etchings, coatings— all of which are very different processes. We are hugely indebted to those who help us bring our visions to life, and must do what we can to keep the ecosystem alive and accessible.
This is becoming increasingly difficult in the face of acquisitions by the big groups. Our recent cofounding of the Alternative Horological Alliance, together with JN Shapiro and Fleming, was intended to give new independents more critical mass to help address this issue.
Ultimately, we still rely on collectors’ support. The big brands produce some beautiful watches which we own and enjoy ourselves but they do so in huge quantities. Though the level of industrial optimisation required to achieve both quantity and quality is an incredible feat, you can hardly call them rare.
Today, the time can be easily read everywhere so a watch is an irrational, emotional thing. It should be something that makes you feel good and it should be special.
For the same price of, or less money than, a mainstream piece, there’s a world of unique choices out there. Something is bound to speak to you if you allow it to. Beyond creativity, independent watchmaking is really about discovering people: fellow collectors, the creators behind the pieces, the personalities in the industry.
It’s personal in a way something special should be. Who knows, you might fall in love with something you never knew existed, and make some new friends in the process.
Oxford-trained physicist Ming Thein is the co-founder and creative director of the award-winning Horologer Ming, which was founded in 2017.
This piece is part of a series of opinion articles from the Tatler GMT Collective honourees, featuring a broad range of voices from across the region offering expert perspectives, advice, forecasts, and thought leadership. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or editorial stance of Tatler Asia.
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