FRIENDLY TERRITORY

Here's our curation of five watch brands at an interesting price point for real-world, daily use

- RUCKDEE CHOTJINDA

More often than not, when we meet other watch lovers, especially the ones who have been around for many years, the conversation quickly turns to how watch prices have skyrocketed in recent years. This feature article will not try to explain market dynamics. Rather, it will bring to your attention five watch brands that deliver a good blend of design and substance, a commendable measure of originality, and finally, excellent value for money. Not all of them will be Swiss though.

BALTIC

We will start with Baltic. The young French company came into this industry in 2017, following a successful crowdfunding campaign. We came to know them one year later because of their Aquascaphe watch, now marketed as Aquascaphe Classic due to the addition of other sublines to the collection. At that time, we could sense that the company was already doing something interesting, at a nice price point, and with appealing marketing visuals.

Founder Etienne Malec publicly revealed that the brand name Baltic is an homage to his father who had origins in the north of Poland, along the Baltic Sea. This is very important because everything leads back to him. After he passed, Malec (the son) inherited his watches and a journal he kept as a watch collector and a photographer, documenting the watches he owned during his lifetime. That journal set the younger Malec on the path to where Baltic is today, as well as served as the design playbook for some of the brand's core collections.

One of the first two watches introduced for the said Kickstarter campaign was the Bicompax 001: a 38 mm chronograph watch with a heavy influence from the 1940s. The Aquascaphe dive watch that captured our attention followed the next year. It, too, came with vintage design codes and a sizing of 39 mm. Its value for money ratio also convinced us to study more about the brand as a whole.