A tiny Brighton watchmaker is putting the fun back into hor0logy
Richard Benc doesn’t know where the idea for the watermelon watch came from. “I wish I could say there was a eureka moment,” he says.
He allows that it may have been born out of rebellion; that, after six years as the product developer and designer for Braun watches, it was a way of doing something not minimalist, tasteful or black and white. (“Or, if we were feeling particularly adventurous — grey.”)
Or, perhaps he was inspired by the watch website that published an eight-year-old’s crayon drawing of a fantasy Rolex, based on a can of Sprite. (“I liked the idea of poking fun at an industry that is typically very serious.”)
Either way, he hardly expected the pink, green and lime watch he launched in a “colourful and playful” series of chronographs to make his brand Studio Underd0g one of the most talked-up new names in horology. (The Watermel0n was joined by the Mint Ch0c Chip, Desert Sky and Go0fy Panda watches.)
“Especially as it’s so easy to become a novelty or a gimmick,” Benc says, when we meet one morning in Studio Underd0g’s basement offices in Brighton. “We’re playing close to the line here. We’ve got a watermelon-inspired watch. The hour markers are in the shape of watermelon seeds. But I think it’s worked, because the design never comes at a sacrifice to the functionality.” (In January, this novelty line moved ever closer, when Benc announced that a pizza-themed watch he’d proposed on April 1, 2023 — that’s April 1 — was being put into limited production. “For some inexplicable reason, this monstrosity was desired by enthusiasts!” he wrote on Instagram, a clear case of having his slice and eating it.)
Studio Underd0g arrived at the right moment. Dreamed up during lockdown free time, it coincided with two trends in the watch world. First, kitsch became chic. In the past 12 months alone, Audemars Piguet has released a glow-in-the-dark Spider-Man watch, Oris teamed up with Kermit the Frog, and Rolex (Rolex!) launched a model with emojis in the place of dates. There has also been a discernible swing away from the venerable luxury players to so-called microbrands. These are nimble start-ups producing watches in limited batches and sold direct to consumers, where novelty and point of difference are key. Most recently, microbrands have been pushing upwards into haute-horology territory. The French company Baltic typically sells watches for around £600.
Last year, it created a one-off £46k collector-grade model. Not long after, Christopher Ward became the first British watch brand to win the prestigious Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève awa
