BRAND FOCUS: William Wood remembers the heroes of 9/11

Independent British watch brand William Wood is dedicated to the firefighting grandfather of founder Jonny Garrett. The brand is famous for incorporating repurposed rescue materials into its designs, including using melted-down brass helmets, straps cut from decommissioned fire hoses, and details inspired by fire engine dashboards and uniform rank markings. After the runaway success of William Wood’s ‘9/11 Time for Heroes’ watch to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and the firefighters that lost their lives that day, it’s back this year with a 25th anniversary version called the Never Forget Watch, with Garrett having already sent a cheque for $15,000 from sales to the Tunnel To Towers Foundation. Garrett spoke to Watch Insider’s Daniel Malins about the challenges of designing a watch to mark such a somber moment in recent history.

Daniel Malins: This is an anniversary watch, and you did something similar for the 20^th anniversary. How simple is the initial process of getting it off the ground? Do you need certain approvals? Are there administrative hoops you’ve got to jump through?

Jonny Garrett: What we always try to do is work with the biggest charities out there that are also commemorating big anniversaries around 9/11. So, we’re donating 10% of every watch sale back to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation. We’ve worked with them on numerous occasions in the past as well. We did a 100-piece limited edition run of Tunnel to Towers watches for their beneficiaries, which then drove a donation back to their foundation. We also produced a one-of-a-kind watch for the 20-year anniversary of 9/11, which sold for about $16,000-$19,000, which is a hell of a figure, seeing as the retail price for the watch was about $3,000 at the time. We want to make sure that, because it’s such a tragedy, it is charity-led and purpose-driven.

For those who don’t know, Tunnel to Towers is a foundation that gives mortgage-free homes to firefighters and military personnel across America — you literally get given the keys to a house with no mortgage on it. It’s absolutely unbelievable. It was founded off the back of 9/11, where the founder of the charity lost his brother, Stephen Siller, who was an FDNY firefighter. He was one of the first firefighters onto the scene and he ran with his bunker gear from the tunnels to the towers. Like a lot of firefighters and first responders, he lost his life that day, and that’s why the foundation is called Tunnel to Towers. It’s grown into an absolute behemoth of an organization. I believe it raises at least a billion dollars a year now in fundraising, and it’s the bellwether when it comes to supporting firefighters in and around the US.

That’s the purpose-led reason for wanting to commemorate this. We’re actually celebrating our 10-year anniversary next year as a brand, and as you will see on our website, every single watch we’ve ever produced over that 10-year period has been dedicated to my grandfather, who was a firefighter for 25 years in Newcastle, and generally to firefighters and first responders internationally. Every watch is made from decommissioned firefighter equipment. The 25-year anniversary of 9/11, if you look over our 10-year calendar, is probably the most important giving-back-to-the-fire-service calendar date over that period, so we knew we had to do something to commemorate it.

DM: Firefighting is in the DNA of your brand, as you say, but the downside is that you’re on the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean. Logistically, does that hold you back in any way, and how often do you manage to get over to New York?

JG: If you’d asked me that question at the start of creating the company, I would have thought that it would have been harder to be able to make a British watchmaker and a British firefighting story resonate over The Pond in the US. But actually, I can’t even remember a conversation where it’s been pushed back on at all or that they couldn’t empathize and see the correlation between their family members, who are first responders and firefighters in the US, and the story of my grandfather and what firefighters do in the UK.

They call it a brotherhood and a family, so no matter where you are in the world, we see time and time again that firefighters who own our watches are literally invited into firehouses all around the world because there is this camaraderie. Not only do they understand what it’s like to be a firefighter, but family members understand what it’s like to have a first responder in the family, too. That’s a big deal as well, when a first responder is coming home every night and they’re trying to explain what they’ve been through. If, like us, you have an office job, it’s difficult to be able to put it into perspective.

So, in answer to your question, it resonates really strongly over The Pond. So much so that over 50% of our revenue comes from the States in general and then for this limited edition it’s closer to about 75%. The US, Canada, UK, UAE, and Australia are really our main markets.

DM: From a design perspective, how difficult is it to balance trying to create something that looks as good as possible against being respectful of what was ultimately a tragedy?

JG: I think you’ve summed up one of the hardest parts of our design journey with every watch we ever make. It’s how you make it respectful to what happened, but something that’s not too cliché and tacky at the same time. In my opinion — obviously I’m biased — I really feel like our collections all still have that luxury aesthetic that you would want to wear. Even the Never Forget watch — I’ve just seen today the first watch fresh off the production line, and it looks like a very beautiful, understated luxury watch. I was thinking from the renders that we produced that it was going to be a bit more in-your-face with the New York skyline, but it’s very classy, subtle, understated. 

DM: What are the key details on the watch that stand out for you?

JG: What we really wanted to do was a world first. We had never seen the Tribute in Light used in a design. When you look at the New York skyline and you see the two illuminated beams of where the Twin Towers used to stand on the New York skyline, it’s really quite a powerful image. We wanted to be able to bring that to life on the dial of the watch in a way that would actually be able to reflect it in both the day and night. So, when you shine your lume flashlight at it or the sun charges up the beams, the lights within the towers of the New York skyline illuminate, but also the Twin Tower beams illuminate on the dial of the watch as well. It’s something that we’ve never seen before.

And then the back of the watch has a really special commemorative see-through caseback design that looks into the movement. It’s also got straps made from upcycled blue fire hose and our crown made from a 100-year-old British brass firefighter’s helmet as well. It still carries through that upcycled element that our customers really love.

DM: On the business side, how difficult is it to balance giving proceeds from each sale as donations while being able to pay your staff and keep the business afloat? Is the hope that this is doing some good for both brand equity and the charity?

JG: You and I both know in the independent watch market just how difficult the margins can get, especially since retailers can want to take a margin of 40%, sometimes up to 50%. We’ve donated over a quarter of a million dollars to firefighters and their families. If that was on our balance sheet right now, you could deploy that and away you go with a whole load of reinvestment in new collections, but it’s always been such an important part of what we do.

I actually care at the end of the day, because my grandad passed away in 2009, so he never got to see the brand, but my grandmother is still alive and she’s super proud. We do so much at grass-roots levels as well to support firefighter challenges. We know that our donations actually make a difference because big corporations, especially in the UK, don’t seem to make significant donations to the firefighting sector. When you make a five-figure donation to a UK firefighter charity, it genuinely makes a significant difference.

We try to work out how far we can go with the donation level. If you take this watch in particular, we knew it was very special and we thought that people would pay a little bit more for it. A watch of that kind of ilk and movement in our collection usually retails for about $995. In this instance, we increased the price to $1,100, and that price jump is the donation to the charity. You wonder if people are willing to pay extra because they know that 10% of the donation is going to go back to first responders. That’s a question that I’ve got to think about every time we make a new collection: how much of the margin can we be donating back to firefighters and their families?

DM: How limited is the launch and how will it be sold? Is it all direct from the website, or are any of your retail partners getting their hands on some?

JG: For this one, it’s all direct through the website. The first batch we produced delivered at the start of September, ready to wear on time for September 11, which was a big deal for us. We had to move around some workshop capacity to make that happen, so that’s the first 100 pieces. Each watch is a limited edition, engraved up to 300 pieces, so we do have the ability to produce another 200 pieces if we want.

The challenge that we have, and that we had with the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee watch, is that when you produce a watch that is wedded to a historical event, will people still be willing to buy it in 2027 or 2028? I think in this case, because the design is so unique, the answer is yes. We’re hearing directly from customers just how much they love the watch.

It’s also worth saying that a lot of people who are buying the watch aren’t just buying one. We have one lady who’s bought seven, we’ve got another gentleman who’s bought five, another gentleman who’s bought three, and they’re donating the watches to first responders and firefighters who actually helped around Ground Zero or who have lost family members as a way to commemorate it, which I think is quite special.

DM: More generally for your brand, you’re nine years in – how much further ahead or behind are you than where you anticipated being? 

JG: We’ve hit every goal that we’ve set for ourselves. Anything that we do now just feels like a win, which is amazing, and I don’t know how many brands can say that confidently. So now we just have fun with it, really. We don’t have any shareholders, we don’t have any debt, we don’t have any banks to answer to. Every single design that we produce, we have total creative freedom to do it.

We’re very lucky now because we have a sizable customer base, so we could, if we wanted to, just keep producing watches for existing customers and that could see us through. We’re very blessed because these customers are telling more people about us, and we keep adding new customers to our database every month. It’s really just a self-fulfilling prophecy now. We’ve put all the hard work in, gravity has taken us over the peak, and now we’re just riding it.

We also have quite a bit of celebrity endorsement and that just keeps taking us to the next level. I always wanted to set up a company that has a really strong, unique selling point, because the watch market is so saturated. Even though people may think that a firefighter watch is very niche, every country in the world has a fire service, and it means that you can really hone your marketing and know exactly what and who you need to target if you’re ever going to enter into a new territory.

This interview was first published in the September 2026 edition of Watch Insider.