Openwork: Inside the Watch Industry

Gabe and Asher break down one of the most successful marketing partnerships in watch history: Omega and James Bond. The story starts in the mid-’90s, when both franchises were trying to reboot. Omega was a struggling asset inside the Swatch Group, and Bond had been off screen for years. Nicolas Hayek tapped Jean-Claude Biver to position Omega against Rolex, and the Seamaster Professional 300M arrived in 1993, two years before GoldenEye. Costume designer Lindy Hemming chose it for Pierce Brosnan because she saw Rolex as too flashy for the new Bond. Biver turned that product placement into a full integrated sponsorship, and Omega’s revenue nearly tripled by the end of the decade. From there, we trace the partnership through four phases. In the Brosnan era, Omega marketed an existing hero watch through the films. Licensing and limited editions began with Die Another Day, and Casino Royale was used to launch the Planet Ocean. Spectre made the on-screen watch available to buy. With No Time to Die, the titanium Seamaster 300M became a non-limited model that Omega’s CEO says ranks among the brand’s top five sellers worldwide. We also cover the 60th Anniversary Seamaster, the First Light chronograph tie-in, and the new Bond and Spectre editions. These releases show Omega treating 007 as evergreen IP that no longer depends on a film release. We close on what comes next. Creative control of Bond has moved from the Broccoli family to Amazon MGM, and Tudor is on the rise. Asher offers a theory: Rolex could use Tudor to go after the most valuable partnership Omega has. Plus: why dive watch marketing is still a sea of sameness, and why Omega’s decision to sell a tool watch on pop culture instead of diving credentials still stands apart. Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].

Watch media looks nothing like it did ten years ago. Blake Buettner was one of Hodinkee's early writers, later managing editor at Worn & Wound, and built The Deep Track on his own. He joins Gabe Reilly and Asher Rapkin to talk about how watch journalism got decentralized. A Hodinkee Introducing article used to be enough to sell a watch. Now a launch gets spread across traditional outlets, watch influencers, YouTube creators and celebrity endorsements, and most of it runs through brand PR rather than marketing. We also get into why watch reviewers so rarely write a negative review, and the difference between critique and just being critical. Then there's access. We talk about press trips, watches offered to writers, and whether influencers play by different rules than journalists do. The uncomfortable conclusion is that enthusiasts want independent, critical watch media but mostly won't pay for it. That's a big part of why so much talent has moved to brands and retailers. We also want to hear from you: which watch content creators do you follow, and why? Before all that, Asher goes hands-on with the Gallet Flying Officer he just bought. It's Breitling's revived heritage brand, with a Sellita movement and a $3,100 price on the bracelet, and we look at how it stacks up against Longines, Oris and Hamilton. We also have an update on our tariff lawsuit, which was just heard at the U.S. Court of International Trade, and our plans for WatchTime New York. You'll find us at the Ming booth. Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].

Eighteen months after Liberation Day, we look at where Swiss watch exports stand. Shipments to the U.S. are down 8.3% year to date but still up 8.8% versus 2024. Mainland China is down 23% from two years ago. Global exports are still up 1.7%, carried by the UK, India, Europe and South America. The growth is coming from watches over $50,000, while the $1,000 to $10,000 middle of the market gets hollowed out. Collector taste is moving away from steel sports watches and toward dress watches, complications and handmade pieces. Rolex's new Padellone annual calendar is a business move. Starting at $59,000, it's another sign that Rolex wants to compete with Patek Philippe while Tudor handles Omega. We ask whether it will open buyers up to classical dress watches or stay inside the Rolex world, and which annual calendars we'd buy for the money instead. Then there's Breguet. Under CEO Gregory Kissling, the brand has made some of its best product in years: the new Classique tourbillons and updated Traditions. At the same time, it has cut dozens of U.S. retailers in 18 months and is moving to company-owned boutiques. Lange, AP and Rolex all made that shift from a position of strength. We look at how Swatch Group mismanaged Breguet for decades, why the Hayeks are still involved, what happens to longtime Breguet clients when their dealer disappears, and what we'd do differently if we ran the brand. Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].

Recorded live at Geneva Watch Days, this episode of Openwork sits down with Ming CEO Praneeth Raj Singh to unpack one of the strongest product runs in independent watchmaking: the Polymesh, Iris, Starfield, Lightning, and Comet. Hosts Gabe Reilly and Blake Buettner ask how much of it was planning versus luck, and Praneeth explains the shift from pandemic-era scramble launches to a more deliberate cadence, plus why Ming's graveyard of killed ideas is bigger than its actual catalog. Praneeth gets specific on how Ming decides what to build and what to cut, including how a failed 3-kilometer dive watch indirectly produced the Bluefin's case construction and 600-meter water resistance. He talks through the tension between moving fast and giving platforms like the 37 Series more room to breathe, how Ming manages production partners as capacity gets squeezed by larger brands, and why some projects stay dead while others resurface years later in new form. Praneeth also previews Ming's 10th anniversary in 2026: an expansion of the Superleggera lightweight collection into a chronograph, and the brand's first non-round case. Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].

Gabe and Asher kick off Episode 93 with news: Collective is now an authorized Ressence retailer. Then they get into the week's biggest story out of Geneva Watch Days 2026: Breitling's Gallet relaunch, its inherited distribution network, the debt behind the bet, and why it beats the usual sub-$5,000 heritage revival. The rest of the episode is Collective's annual rundown of the watches nobody else is covering: the Laurent Ferrier Classic Moon Dusk and its lumed double-moon phase, Singer Track's new V72 chronograph in gold panda dial, and the Atelier Wen x William Messina Inflection, a real collaboration with a Chinese-calligraphy and Arabic numeral dial. They close with three more: the Urwerk UR-1001 Amadeus, a one-of-one engraved pocket watch that tracks centuries and millennia; the Marco Tedeschi MT 1.1, a crownless skeleton tourbillon from the watchmaker behind Kross Studios; and the Fears Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar, built on a customized Sellita and Dubois Dépraz module. Gabe and Asher use it to make the case that movement choice, not movement brand, should determine a watch's value. Fears Brunswick 39 Perpetual Calendar – Interview with Nicholas Bowman-Scargill and Lee Yuen-Rapati: https://collectivehorology.com/blogs/articles-reviews/the-fears-brunswick-39-perpetual-calendar Openwork is a weekly podcast about how the watch industry actually works. An unfiltered look behind the scenes — no press releases, no hype, and no sponsored takes. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email [email protected].