Greetings watch nerds! It’s Chris Rovzar, your clubmaster, back with another monthly dispatch from the heights of horology.

I didn’t go to Geneva Watch Days, but our contributor Mark Bernardo has a great report for you with all the most interesting timepieces he saw at the show. Highlights include a bronze Bulgari Aluminium watch, a new line of spacey TAG Heuer Carreras, and a subdued (as always) Laurent Ferrier.

The new TAG Heuer Carrera Astronomer collection houses a novel movement and moonphase in the brand’s Carrera case. Read here for more highlights from Geneva Watch Days. Source: TAG Heuer

Instead I went to an annual convention for LGBTQ+ journalists in Atlanta, which is a truly wonderful city that is absolutely drowning in leafy trees. (My allergies went bananas.) One night I was out having fun with friends at a video bar playing Lady Gaga remixes in Midtown, as you do, and across the crowded room I spotted a very unexpected sight: A Ming 37.02 Minimalist, a watch I’ve never seen out in the wild.

A Ming Minimalist spotted out on the town in Atlanta. (The star pattern you can see on the crystal is not on the watch, it is in fact a reflection of disco lights from the ceiling of the bar.) Photographer: Chris Rovzar/Bloomberg

Horologer Ming is a wildly inventive Malaysian watch brand founded by Ming Thein, a finance guy and photographer with a degree in physics from Oxford who launched the indie out of Kuala Lumpur in 2017. (The company is domiciled in Switzerland, where it has a manufacturing facility now.) It specializes in luminous materials and vibrantly weird dials, and releases its watches in drops that often sell out immediately. Prices in the main lines run from around CHF 3,500 ($4,100) up to CHF 10,000. Certain experimental watches that come out of an elite development lab Ming calls the “Special Projects Cave” are limited editions, usually about 25 units, and run up to around CHF 20,000 or higher.

• Related: Glass That Glows? You’ve Never Seen a Mechanical Watch Like This

I went right over and talked to the man wearing the Minimalist. He told me that he found it online and was intrigued because his own nickname is Ming, but then he fell in love with the brand because its watches are so unlike other ones that are out there. This guy owns multiple Rolexes and makes a habit of stopping by multi-brand timepiece boutiques whenever he is in a new town; he says everywhere he goes, dealers love Ming.

An interview with Ming Thein

So I called up the man himself, the 39-year-old Ming, to check in on the brand and how everything’s going. We first covered this independent watchmaker  when we did a big package on independent watchmakers in January 2023, right at the dizziest height of the Covid-induced collector’s boom. Two and a half years later, the market has come back down toward earth, but Ming is innovating more than ever.

Here is our conversation, edited for length and clarity.

Thein. Source: Horologer Ming

I was so excited to see a Ming Minimalist out in the wild the other day. Are you at all surprised at where your watches end up, or how big the company has become?

I’m surprised we survived this long. I’m not surprised where they end up.

When we started, we didn’t know whether there was demand for a hundred watches, one watch, a thousand watches. I think we’re up somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000. The one assumption we try not to make is that it’s always going to continue—because a lot of companies got caught up with that post Covid. We’ve seen a general industry softening in the last couple of years that’s affected everybody. So long as we can sell enough of what we make to stay in business, that’s the basic threshold.

But also, for our brand, making more doesn’t work. We generally try to avoid being populist. And that strategy of ours in itself limits our potential audience.

How do you mean?

It’d be much easier if we had a very well-defined diver, a very well-defined pilot, you know, a well-defined whatever traditional model. People generally have trouble pigeonholing us, which is not a bad thing. But sometimes it leaves people a little confused as well.

The Ming 20.01 Series 5, out this year and priced at CHF 37,500. It’s nominated for a GPHG award, the Oscars of watchmaking, in the chronograph category. The ceremony is in November in Geneva. Photographer: Ming Thein  

Do you find that you are finding non-watch people to become new audience members? Or is it traditional watch collectors that are finding something new?

I think for the most part it’s been the watch geeks who are really buying our stuff. We do need to diversify because I mean, firstly, there’s a finite number of watches people can buy no matter how much they like you. And secondly, I think long-term survival of the company depends on greater recognition.

Can you believe that it’s been eight years since you sold your first watch?

No. There are days where it feels that long, and there are days where it feels like we’re still trying to figure out what we’re doing.

Is your audience spread around the world?

The biggest chunk remains the US. Post tariffs [Editor’s note: currently goods from Ming’s manufacturing base in Switzerland have a 39% tariff rate] it remains to be seen whether that changes.  We find that Asia is less adventurous when it comes to new watch brands; strangely enough, they are not very patriotic. I think it’s because there is still a very large element of societal recognition that people buy watches for here. So if you don’t have that instant brand cred, then people tend not to be so interested.

Are you changing prices because of the tariffs? Or are you waiting and seeing?

We’re going to wait and see. For the moment we’ve been absorbing the tariff. Not an ideal situation. But like a lot of brands, we realize that there’s a balancing act going on between, I can raise prices to cover the tariff, I can absorb it, but I have to sell more to cover the difference. We will hold on for the moment and see where it ends up.

Read our story on innovations in glow-in-the-dark watches, including the Ming 20.01 Series 3, Ressence TYPE 5 L and Bell & Ross BR-X5 Green. Photographer: Hannah Whitaker for Bloomberg Businessweek

You said earlier you don’t want to be populist. What do you hear from clients and how much does that play into your new ideas?

To be blunt, it doesn’t. Because people don’t understand the mix of manufacturing. They don’t understand what’s possible. A typical example is you get somebody who wants to have a unique piece made at an entry level price, and they don’t understand that the R&D cost that must go into that has to be swallowed by that one watch, including the spares, the prototypes that work and prototypes that don’t work.

The other thing is, if you haven’t seen what’s possible technologically, it’s very hard to suggest something. So coming up with something new is both contingent on your own imagination and also understanding what’s possible.

I always like to say we have to make things that people don’t know they want.

So no, it’s not actually useful to have customer feedback on most things.

How has your design language shifted over time?

It’s simplified—well, maybe clarified is a better way of looking at it. We’re now in generation five. The first generation was just trying to figure out what works, what doesn’t. At that point, I was designing in 2D on paper, and having our production partners screw stuff together and figure out how to package it all.

The second generation was me moving to CAD and figuring out that I could do the external packaging plus the internal construction. And the third generation onwards was basically us doing everything internally. That coincided with us having our own Swiss facility. That’s when we started the reductivist thing. We simplified everything down to very monolithic forms.

The fifth generation is a little bit more ostentatious. It’s a little bit more exciting, a bit more playful. [Editor’s note: There was no fourth generation, in accordance with regional superstitions.]

The Ming 57.04 Iris is in the fifth generation of the brand’s watches and was just released in August. A destro style watch (meaning the crown is on the left side, of ideal access for left-handers), this monopusher chronograph is priced at CHF 6,250. The dial is a fluted brass with a coating that shifts from turquoise to blue to purple depending on the eye’s angle. Photographer: Ming Thein

Tell our readers about the Special Projects Cave and how that works.

It has always been a way for us to pay for expensive R&D; there will be some new technology we want to develop. We need to find a way of refining the process so that it can go into the mass lineup. Ceramic luminous material, for example. We started with that on a special project, and now we basically use it for everything because we’ve gotten the process down to the point that economically it’s possible.

How many watches are you making a year now?

Somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000. Depends on the year.

I think it’s about where it needs to be. We always need to have an interesting entry level piece be available to to keep things accessible. I am a firm believer that you don’t need to pay a huge amount of money to get an interesting watch. Especially as a new collector, you don’t want to be completely intimidated and go, Well, okay, this is great, but it’s a stupid amount of money.

It’s much harder to design an entry level piece than a special project because you are working with budget constraints. Still, we like to say the word “impossible” is a challenge.

What’s an example of something impossible you’ve done?

We put a display caseback on a watch that has a crush depth of like 960 meters under water. It’s a 38 millimeter watch, it’s 12mm thick, it has a transparent back and a huge front crystal. But we reinforced the weak spots and because we use dome crystals that have a certain kind of profile that transfers the pressure load to the outside of the case, and the case itself has a certain kind of profile … it works.

And that changes the way the watch looks and feels in a subtle way.

The Ming Minimalist in darkness. The glowing white ceramic was a particular triumph for the brand, in Ming’s eyes, as competitors could not achieve a luminescent material that was not in a color. It is an example of an experiment that went from its elite Special Projects watches to most of the timepieces in the collection. Photographer: Ming Thein

Our Ghost and Minimalist watches are not dive watches, but they’ve always passed the 100m water resistance test. So I was curious: We put one into into the failure chamber [where watches are tested for water resistance] and basically dialed the thing up until we saw some bubbles. They failed at 265 meters.

Earlier this year, at Watches and Wonders, Ulysse Nardin made a big deal of launching an ultralight diver. It was carbon, it had an exotic movement. It was like 45 grams and got to 150 meters. Ours are titanium and 35 grams and got to 265 meters without even trying.

That’s, that’s the difference between what we do and what the vast majority of other brands do.

This month’s reader watch is another one I ran across out in the world. I was having breakfast at the Harvard Club in New York not too long ago with Ankur Daga, who is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Angara, a fine jewelry company. I was learning about how Angara specializes in colored gemstones and offers a very simple “design your own jewelry” option on their website which provides low-cost versions of jewelry you’d find at most good boutiques. Some of their stones are lab grown, and some are heirloom-quality from mines. You can choose, and the cost varies.

Daga comes from a family in the biz, has a BS from Penn’s Wharton School and an MBA from Harvard, and is a graduate of the Gemological Institute of America. He’s so smart about the industry, and we had a great chat. But of course the first thing I noticed about him was his watch: an awoooga-inducing Legacy Machine Perpetual from MB&F.

Ankur Daga’s MB&F Legacy Machine Perpetual watch. Source: Ankur Daga

“When I started learning about watches, I was immediately drawn to smaller watchmakers over the hyped-up brand names. This philosophy of seeking the exceptional over the expected has defined my collecting journey,” Daga says. “I bypassed the typical Rolex to Patek progression entirely, going straight to independent watchmakers, initially focusing on pieces that resonated with me rather than investment potential. My timing proved prescient: the independent watchmaking scene exploded post-Covid, with pieces regularly trading at 2-3x retail prices.”

Click through to read our 2023 package on the most exciting independent watchmakers stealing market share from the kings like Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet. Illustration: Evan M. Cohen

Throughout this, he discovered his own crown jewel: the Legacy Machine Perpetual.

“They only made 40 pieces, and they sold out in just two minutes. However, through my network, I learned about one that someone had declined, and I immediately jumped on the opportunity,” Daga tells me. The watch represents everything he values in horology: revolutionary innovation, artistic integrity  and exclusivity that comes from true craftsmanship rather than marketing hype.”

“What makes this watch truly special is the revolutionary innovation within,” Daga continues. “Designed by Stephen McDonnell, an Oxford PhD in theology turned self-taught watchmaker and quite possibly the smartest person I’ve ever met, the perpetual calendar mechanism represents the first breakthrough in this complication in over 150 years.”

McDonnell's solution employs a 28-day base calendar that intelligently adds 0-3 days depending on the month and year, eliminating the mechanical stress that typically causes traditional perpetual calendars to fail.

I don’t think I’d ever seen an MB&F unexpectedly out in the world—and certainly not at the Harvard Club—so I loved this interaction. Until next time folks, please send your questions and thoughts to us at watchclub@bloomberg.net. I look forward to hearing from you!

Max Büsser and his band of revolutionaries at MB&F made products they themselves wanted—and built a huge fandom on the way. Read our Businessweek profile on the brand. Source: Jake Reeder

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