Editorial: Why American Watchmaking is More Exciting Now than it Has Been in Years
American watchmaking is having a moment. And if there’s any day that’s worth celebrating, it’s the Fourth of July. Happy birthday, America, hope you like Damaskeening!
Just in the last month or so, we’ve seen a new release from J.N. Shapiro that could point to an entirely new and more accessible concept for the brand. Cornell Watch Co. revealed their new Lozier, with a case, dial, crown, and handset machined in the United States. Colorado Watch Company, the Fort Collins, CO based brand making cases and dials in-house with movements assembled in the United States, just shipped their first batches of new watches to customers after extensive prototyping. And Keaton Myrick, who makes watches completely by hand in vanishingly small runs in Oregon and somehow has flown under the worldwide watch community’s radar for years, just saw a fantastic result in a public sale via Phillips that went for just over the high estimate.
And it’s not just that there’s a lot of activity. The watches mentioned above are all, actually, very very good, and show that American watchmakers and brands can succeed in multiple ways, using different models. Myrick and Shapiro operate at the very highest end of the spectrum, while Colorado Watch Company has the ethos of a microbrand (the project was funded via Kickstarter, just like their sister brand, Vortic). The Cornell model, though, is probably the most interesting to me. The majority of the watch is manufactured in the United States, but it’s outsourced to Hour Precision, a machine shop in Ohio owned by Zach Smith, with ambitions of doing similar work for other brands looking to produce more components on American shores.
If Cornell’s model is successful it could dramatically change how we think about American watchmaking. There’s a possible future where Hour Precision is booked solid, producing cases, dials, and other components for dozens of American microbrands and indies, and perhaps other shops pop up to compete, driving competition in real American watch manufacturing for the first time in a century. Brands that previously outsourced to Switzerland, Japan, and, yes, China, may decide to produce components here. Not out of some type of patriotic duty, but because the work is that good and the price makes sense.
And, hopefully, because watch consumers want to buy American watches. This is, as ever, a big question mark. The watch community has been conditioned for years to believe that “Swiss Made” equals the pinnacle in terms of quality. In some cases, it is. But it doesn’t have to be, and an American-made watch can be worth buying, wearing, and collecting on its own merits. The future of American watchmaking might not mean equalling the Swiss at their ability to mass produce watches for a worldwide market (or make incredibly high end artisanal pieces using old fashioned techniques for a much smaller one), but in carving a unique way forward built on collaboration, transparency, creativity, and ingenuity.
I saw Cornell’s Lozier in the weeks before its big public unveiling, and I was very impressed. Cornell’s John Warren walked us through the project’s concept, and explained that the CNC machines used in Zach Smith’s shop were the same ones used by big Swiss brands like IWC. The idea was that with skill and know-how, they should be able to make a watch of the same quality. It’s a simple enough idea, and while I didn’t have an IWC on hand to do a side by side comparison, I’ve handled enough IWCs to confidently say the machining and especially the dial work meets or exceeds that standard.
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The challenge for brands that seek to make watches in America, besides the actual production, will be teaching consumers about these watches, how they’re made, and why it’s important. Because make no mistake: they will be more expensive than many will want to pay. When the Lozier was unveiled, I spent far too much time on social media and the various websites covering the launch to sample the reaction. There were way too many, “this would be great at half the cost” comments.
This type of knee-jerk reaction is probably unavoidable to a large extent. A certain percentage of people will always think a watch is too expensive regardless of how fairly it’s priced. But both brands and watch media have a role to play in properly explaining why a watch like the Lozier costs a little over $6,000 and not $3,000. To hold it in your hand is to understand immediately. But that’s not possible for the vast majority of people discovering a new watch.
A watch purchase is always an emotional decision. Nobody buys a watch, especially a luxury watch, in 2025 for reasons that are easy to articulate outside of our strange little community. Most don’t get it. But when it comes to American watches, and growing this movement, explaining the reasoning for these things becomes easier and clearer. Watch collectors who buy a Lozier, or a watch by J.N. Shapiro, or a Colorado Watch Company watch made in Fort Collins, or a 5280 watch with a vitreous enamel dial made just miles away in Denver, or a Typsim with a complication engineered and made in Zach Smith’s workshop, are patrons of an important and historic craft, and contributing to its continuation here in the United States.
We’d love to know your thoughts on the current state of American watchmaking and how you’d like to see us cover it, so please feel free to leave us a comment below.
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