3 Independent Watchmakers That Will Make Waves This Year
This story is from an installment of In the Loupe, our weekly insider newsletter about the best of the watch world. Sign up here. For more on this topic, check out our list of the 25 greatest independent watchmakers working today.
At the end of August, Matteo Violet Vianello, founder and creative director of Anoma, a boutique watch brand based in London, attended Geneva Watch Days to promote his new A1 model, a triangular steel timepiece that, for many watch insiders, epitomized the shaped-watch renaissance of 2024.
“It was my first time meeting a lot of people since the watch was made public, and nine out of 10 people defined Anoma as an independent brand, which surprised me,” Violet Vianello tells Robb Report. “I associate independence with [the formal craft of] watchmaking. And what that tells me is that there’s an evolution in people’s minds because of all the great work that was done by watchmaking-focused independents. They can now see that it’s maybe an independence of thought and design and the concepts that drive you.”
Violet Vianello reflects on the high-end watch market and how saturated it is with brands that don’t have a point of differentiation. “If you’re starting a brand, the question you should really ask yourself is, ‘What’s my right to exist?’” he says. “You should try to bring something new to the conversation.”
Below, we spotlight three upstart makers, including Anoma, that are doing just that. Aesthetically speaking, there is little similarity between them. Instead, they share a philosophical approach to watchmaking that places ideas on equal footing with functionality and looks. Imagine that!
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Anoma
Two years ago, when Violet Vianello founded the brand, he was working as head of business development at the London pre-owned dealer A Collected Man, applying the same level of academic rigor to the study of independent watchmaking as he’d applied to his university degree in philosophy.
“At the time, there weren’t necessarily resources for collectors,” says the 28-year-old. “If you wanted to be a collector of Monet at the highest level, there are books, there are resources, there are catalogs about the work. But if you wanted to collect F.P. Journe at the highest level, the information was not codified. A lot of it sat with collectors. We thought there was an opportunity to broaden that.”
As he studied the horological masterworks of the recent past, Violet Vianello came to two conclusions. “First, there’s a lot of innovation in watchmaking in terms of complications and finishing, and design often gets a second rank to that,” he says. “It’s almost seen as a vulgar art form, as decoration.
“Second, when it comes to visual experimentation in watchmaking, it’s very much within watchmaking codes: You rework a certain lug or you rework a case and it all exists within certain parameters. My desire was to do two things: One, show that design can be its own form of craft and two, bring inspiration and influence from outside of watchmaking.”
Anoma, the product of that effort, reflects ideas and forms inspired by furniture, architecture, and interior design (specifically, the work of Charlotte Perriand, a French architect, designer, and collaborator of Le Corbusier who “believed in fusing industrial and artisanal methods,” Violet Vianello says. “She often said, ‘Nature’s the greatest designer.’”)
In March, Violet Vianello plans to introduce a second series of the A1, called the A1 Slate, designed as “the purest version of the A1 possible,” he says. It will retain the automatic Sellita movement that powered the first series, which debuted in June, but will boast a new black lacquer dial featuring vertical brushing, contrasting triangles individually engraved using a hand-guided precision tool, and multiple layers of lacquer, designed to add a sense of texture and depth. Unlike the original A1, which was limited to 300 pieces, the A1 Slate will be the first model in Anoma’s permanent collection. “The starting point was volcanic rock as inspiration because I liked its dark-gray color and shattered texture,” he says.
Down the line, Violet Vianello is already planning a succession of models—the A2, A3, and A4—built on a “core idea that’s really around doing less, bringing inspiration outside of watchmaking, and trying to nudge expectations of what watches can be.”
“I don’t want to go too quickly,” he adds. “I think 2025 will be about cementing the core collection and then using [the models] as canvases for much more experimental projects.”
ID Genève
In November 2021, Nicolas Freudiger, a co-founder of ID Genève, told the New York Times that within three years’ time, he hoped his 1-year-old brand—which had distinguished itself in the Swiss watch industry by using only circular components, from refurbished movements to compostable packaging—would have Leonardo DiCaprio as an ambassador.
“We recognize him as a real leader in terms of climate change,” Freudiger said at the time. “So if he’s reading this article, that’s perfect.”
Less than two years later, well ahead of schedule, ID Genève announced that it had raised 2 million Swiss francs, or about $2.2 million, with an investment from DiCaprio. When Robb Report met with Freudiger at the brand’s headquarters in Geneva in November, he explained how he helped clinch the deal.
“My first pitch to his team was very clear,’” Freudiger recalled. “I said, ‘When I tell you about Swiss-made watches, what comes to the top of your mind?’ And the guy’s like, ‘Well, I think about elites, wealth, quality, mountains.’ And I said, ‘Okay. Thank you. I’m going to ask you that question again in five or 10 years’ time. And I want you to add to that ecological transition, circularity, thanks to the work we’re doing at ID Genève. And in 30 seconds, he was like, ‘Okay. I got you.’”
Now, the 4-year-old brand has inked deals with some of the globe’s finest watch retailers, including Watches of Switzerland in the U.S. and U.K., the Indian company Ethos, and Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons in Dubai. And it’s getting ready to deliver its fourth collection, called Elements, featuring five 37 mm watches in stainless steel recycled from 100 percent Swiss waste. The timepieces feature colorful, graphic dials made using nano-engraving technology developed by Morphotonix, a Swiss start-up that specializes in printing processes for banknotes and passports. In addition to models named Air, Earth, Fire, and Water, there is a “5th Element” watch that’s meant to serve as the line’s talking piece.
Freudiger insists that the brand has the potential to change hearts and minds in the Swiss industry and beyond. “We have a responsibility to shed light on climate heroes and climate solutions by getting on the wrists of people who are decision-makers for the economy of tomorrow,” he says.
At the end of January, he’s planning to make good on that vow when he attends the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “It’s so wild that more brands have not figured out that they should be at these places,” he said. “It’s a blue ocean. It’s an opportunity.”
Quiet Club
Take one look at the Fading Hours watch from the Japanese-American brand Quiet Club. What do you see? More to the point, what don’t you see?
“It doesn’t even have our brand name on the dial,” says Seattle-based chief executive Hokuto “HK” Ueda (who founded the brand in 2022 with San Francisco-based product designer Johnny Ting and Tokyo-based watchmaker Norifumi Seki, winner of the 2020 edition of the F.P. Journe Young Talent Competition). “That was purposefully done. We didn’t want to make watches that were a signal to the outside world. We wanted it to be more about signaling to your internal world. So the back is very complicated and beautiful and decorated, but we wanted the front to look relatively simple.”
That approach is in keeping with both the brand’s name (“We’re a little bit reserved and quiet,” Ueda says) and the ethos of the Fading Hours itself. The $85,000 titanium timepiece—available now for pre-order on the brand’s site, with deliveries expected to begin in mid-2025—features an alarm function, but if you’re imagining something with a piercing, screechy sound, think again.
“The concept of Quiet Club is more about complications that might not exist today but are better suited for modern life,” Ueda tells Robb Report. “I do a lot of work that requires sitting down and focusing for, like, two hours. I was using the alarm on my phone, but then I needed my phone around, which was distracting. A mechanical watch on your wrist with an alarm function works awesome for that. You’re not using it for nostalgia. You’re using it because it’s the best tool to use. But existing alarm watches are really loud and obnoxious. They’re this spring-loaded type thing trying to wake you up, and that’s also not great for focus. So we thought, ‘Let’s make something with the beautiful sound of a minute repeater, but more with an alarm, which is a function that we actually would use every day versus a minute repeater function.’”
As the trio behind Quiet Club looks to the future, the plan is to continue reinventing complications to better suit the day-to-day realities of modern living and, hopefully, attract like-minded watch lovers in the process. “Right now, it’s just the three of us, so it’s not much of a club,” Ueda says. “But it’ll grow.”
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