INDUSTRY MATTERS: Alistair Audsley of The Alliance of British Watch & Clock Makers

The Alliance of British Watch & Clock Makers was founded in 2020, with the mission statement to unite the diverse British horology community and advocate for its growth on the world stage. Today, British watch brands are enjoying a sustained period of success. Co-founder Alistair Audsley spoke about the evolving role of the Alliance to Watch Insider’s Daniel Malins.

Watch Insider: Starting with an historical look at British watchmaking, how did Britain go from being the centre of the horological universe to playing second fiddle to Switzerland and others? 

Alistair Audsley: It’s a classic case of us snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. In 1800, Britain was producing more than half the world’s watches. By 1979, mass production had stopped. The issue was in trying to protect the craft as opposed to realising we needed the industry. I always rail against this notion that somehow the British sector is only a story of [Thomas] Tompion, [John] Arnold, [Thomas] Earnshaw, [John] Harrison, before we go into decline. Yes, that is the holy grail of our provenance as a country of origin for watchmaking, but don’t forget the importance of the later brands. I always say, a Mr Jones or a Studio Underd0g probably has more of a need to tip a hat to the likes of Accurist and Sekonda, because they established a kind of irreverent attitude in the British sector that made us unique.

While we’ve got to thoroughly respect the incredible heritage of innovation that we’ve got in British watchmaking, let’s not forget the importance of our pop culture in helping to inform where we are now. If I define our sector currently, we are a creative sector. The fact is, virtually all our brands design; virtually none make. We’re seeing a resurgence of British onshore assembly and finishing now, and we’re starting to see greater demand for graduates of the British School of Watchmaking. But we’re a million miles away from seeing the return of a movement maker to Britain, and even case making.

WI: The last company that gave it a serious attempt and put a lot of money into it was Bremont, of course.

AA: You know, we can invest in all the machinery we like but the problem we’ve got is that we’ve lost a critical generation of people who knew how to mass produce watches, and that came with the closure of Smiths Industries in 1979. What if that had continued long enough to give Bremont a movement maker? Imagine if they’d just hung on another 15 years and we got into the mid 90s and Giles and Nick [co-founders of Bremont] were starting to embark on their quest.

When I went to visit the Wing [Bremont’s headquarters], I have to say they were really open about the challenge. They were basically shining a torch at their feet, walking down a dark tunnel, trying to rediscover the processes and means by which they could mass produce. 

WI: I was interviewing a US jeweller the other day, and he spoke at length about the lack of watchmakers in the States. He was coming at it from the angle of the reputational damage that it does to him as a retailer, because after sales service can be so slow and expensive. He was saying it’s because brands are producing more than ever, and that’s being added to the pile that already exists, because old watches don’t get thrown away. 

AA: For a luxury sector where experience is key, that’s a pretty damning situation. You raise an interesting point actually about new watches being layered over old. I collect vinyl records, and I remember reading a music industry article with a really interesting term that’s apt for the watchmaking sector, which is: proliferation competition. In other words, old music never goes away, and each year you add another layer of competition for airwaves, for streaming, for records. I suppose you could argue it’s similar with watches because they don’t go away. I think proliferation competition is something worth investigating within the watch sector. 

WI: The other comparison with the music industry is that there are a finite number of genres and melodies in the world, so artists find themselves tweaking what’s been done before. We both love watches, but there isn’t an infinite number of unique watch designs. This makes brands have to work so hard at marketing, merchandising, packaging, storytelling etc.

AA: It’s very true. Something I always say is, no matter whether a watch is £100 or it’s a Roger Smith for several hundred thousand pounds, it’s a luxury product to whomever is buying it. Because nobody needs to buy a watch in the modern day. The British watch trade body saying that might sound counterintuitive, but you’ve got to understand that basic functional utility is not required. If it’s the experience of telling the time, then buy a watch. And that then is a creative endeavour, to make that experience worthwhile and to create a value proposition.

There’s a really good maxim in the luxury sector, which says that the product is the souvenir of the experience. This comes back to the difficulties that you mentioned with slow servicing and repair, because if the aftermarket is a lamentable experience, then you’re significantly undermining the brand value of the product.

WI: Isn’t the shortage of watchmakers just market failure? If word gets around that watchmakers get paid well, then shouldn’t that lead to an increase in the numbers applying to qualify? I appreciate that free market forces are not an exact science, but this feels like a particularly egregious excess of demand over supply.

AA: I think in a way what you’ve done is highlight one of the reasons why the USA needs a formal trade body. We’ve been developing our online Careers Hub, which will give talent the sense that there is a career to be had in this sector, so it becomes a viable career choice.

From January, the British School of Watchmaking will have eight new benches, so they’re expanding the number of people who are coming out because they’re getting the market intelligence to say there are jobs to be had. This is not a fool’s errand; if you can scale up talented people, there are jobs there for them.

WI: To what extent is there a perceived lack of glamour and sexiness around the role of a watchmaker? A bit like why we have a shortage of plumbers, even though it’s well documented that there aren’t enough of them.

AA: It’s a very interesting point. I mean, is it a sexy profession? Probably not. But you are working in the luxury world. It’s certainly a lot more glamorous than plumbing or, dare I say, most engineering and micro engineering roles. You are creating products which consumers can buy, which you can take great pride in having worked on.

The other thing I’d say is that it is appealing to people who might be neurodiverse. If I visit a production or servicing house, typically what you’ll find is someone with headphones on that doesn’t really want to engage, but is completely fixated on their project. I’m not saying that if you’re neurodiverse then a career in watchmaking is definitely right for you, but if somebody did a poll and researched the topic, I think you’d probably find that there’s quite a strong correlation.

WI: Perhaps micro engineering is an industry that can really be targeted to attract watchmaking talent in the future then?

AA: Exactly. One idea I’ve had is to look where others aren’t looking. I connected up with a really interesting not-for-profit called Brave Starts. They advise people who are 45 or over on their next career. I mean, I’m 60 and I still feel like I’ve got a huge amount of energy left for my work. 30 or 40 years ago, once you hit the age of 50, you were probably thinking it’s time to coast and ease into retirement. Now, through financial necessity and the fact we’re younger longer, I think there is a big untapped population of people who could very well retrain and have another 25 years as watchmakers. When I look at the proliferation of people who would be regarded as middle aged, I think why not tap that demographic up as potentially new talent coming into the watchmaking sector.

WI: How do you see your remit as the CEO of The Alliance? You’re talking about the next generation of watchmakers, but you also have British Watchmakers Day, plus you consult with members too. So what weight and importance do you place on all the different elements? 

AA: The first five years have been about building it. When I wrote the strategy paper for the Alliance, it said that we’ve got to identify that a sector exists. Mike [France] and Roger [Smith], my co-founders, often talk about meeting at SalonQP in 2018, and having the sense that there was definitely something happening in the sector. So the first task was to get everybody inside the tent working together to help define what its future can look like.

You’re always going to tend to default to your own professional strengths and where you’ve come from, and I’m a marketeer. So, the key remit for me has been about growth and awareness. 

I’m in a very fortunate position to be able to lobby government and to make some noise about the British sector, which got me onto the economic sector panel for consumer goods for the Department for Business and Trade. We’re a small but amazing sector that actually supports many of the key pillars of Britain’s proposition around creativity, innovation, heritage, craft, and luxury. 

When we launched about five years ago you had Roger Smith, Mike [France] with Christopher Ward, Nicholas [Bowman-Scargill] with Fears, Bob Bray with Sinclair Harding, and Crispin [Jones] with Mr Jones. That was the founding core. Five years on, we’ve got 114 brand members who’ve come on board. 

Where we are right now, my key imperative is to continue to promote and to grow the sector. I’m a great believer that the more wealth we can build for the sector, the more impact it can have. In terms of developing its own economic sustainability, but also its ability to invest in itself and its ability to attract investment from funds and private equity. I always say, one company is a customer but 114 is a market. And as a market, I think we’re highly investable.  

However, one of the things that our Bellwether survey identified is that there are two aspects to growth. There’s market growth, and I believe we have a huge untapped domestic market. I find it depressing when I meet friends who are watch people and they say they didn’t realise we had a watch sector! Anecdotally, it tells me we still have a big job to do on raising awareness. I’d love to see more above-the-line communication. I’d love to see a Tube poster talking about British watchmaking, just to really break out of the echo chamber that we can tend to find ourselves in. 

Needless to say, there’s a big job to do with export. The USA is our tier one market. India has enormous potential, and that’s a market where I’m trying to get us on the government agenda. We’ve got a massive British Asian community. There’s that close historical tie and, dare I say it, an appreciation of British products. That really excites me.

The other part of that remit you asked about is to increase our influence and have a louder voice with government and the other trade bodies. It’s also part of the networking that helps give us access to other markets and opportunities. 

But the Bellwether survey told us that, apart from the marketing imperative, we’ve got to fuel this growth. And if we don’t have enough talent coming in, we’re going to run out of fuel. We were talking about this earlier, making it an appealing career. And as you rightly say, because of basic free market economics, it’s a well paid career now. 

I don’t think we’re in a crisis situation, especially with the British School of Watchmaking adding a 25% increase in the number of graduates they’re going to be pushing out. That’s significant and it’s going to help. 

In the past I’ve talked about wanting to see watch manufacturing return to Britain. I think that our communication needs to change and to basically say that the British sector should embrace the transnational supply chain. The idea of “We’ve got to bring manufacturing back to Britain” is arguably the very attitude that closed us down in the first place. During the Industrial Revolution, you had people coming in from Europe and saying: “Hey, what if you divide up the skills. So instead of having to master 34 skills, you master two and we industrialise and we mass produce.” And we went into terminal decline from there. So the notion that we’ve got to get back to manufacturing everything here, I think it just denies the practical realities. This is very much my opinion, but I feel that it’s the wrong battle to fight at this point. Yes, there is a definite virtue to bringing more assembly and finishing back, and that’s happening. I’d love to see a case maker and maybe a dial maker re-established. But the notion of 100% made in Britain is the wrong battle – at least for now.

WI: If I was starting a new watch brand, in layman’s terms what exactly are the services and benefits that the Alliance can provide for me if I was to become a member?

AA: What you are gaining access to is a pretty good brains trust, there’s no doubt about that. And it’s a very convivial, mutually helpful brains trust. Nicholas is a great example at Fears. He was one of the first to back Richard Benc with Studio Underd0g with his own Kickstarter. Nicholas has always had an open ear to questions and to help people. And I think that’s true across the board. We provide the tent to come into to get access to that brains trust. 

Access to British Watchmakers Day is an interesting one because we have to think about the consumers and the people who are attending. You’ve got to protect people from getting into a very competitive environment that they’re not ready for. For this next British Watchmakers Day, we will have eight new brands. They’re not necessarily brands that have just appeared, I’m talking about brands who haven’t exhibited before. And they’re all ready to mix it with the bigger names. 

I mean, it comes back to: why do you need a trade body? It’s about amplification of the whole sector for the good of each individual brand. There are sometimes situations where someone might need some advice. One of the things I’ve been involved with most often has been sharing information from government on the arcane complexities of export. Someone might ask me for advice because they’re having an absolute nightmare with Europe, for instance. I will take it to my contacts at the Department for Business and Trade and I will lobby on their behalf. Most of the time I’m lobbying on an aggregate basis, but there are occasions when something really arcane will happen, and I can take that as an individual case study and hopefully have an influence and get the situation brought up as part of the agenda, with a hope to find a resolution.

WI: How do you feel you would have performed if you were in the Swiss equivalent of the Alliance, and you’d been lobbying the Swiss government about the tariff situation with President Trump’s administration? 

AA: I mean, I certainly wouldn’t view it as a failing of mine if I was the Swiss. I think it would be a case of it’s simply not an impactful enough economy to not be the recipient of the rather heavy handed treatment that was issued by the President. I mean, he is a horse trader, at the end of the day. It’s very difficult when your economy is the size of Switzerland’s. Britain’s done well, but let’s not forget that we’re always either the fourth or fifth biggest economy in the world. You think about where Switzerland ranks, it’s an easier one to beat up.

WI: There aren’t as many diplomatic or historical ties between those countries either. The stuff that the UK and the USA have been through together, for instance, makes it likelier that we will materially benefit from the so-called ‘special relationship.’ 

AA: When we talk about a special relationship between us and the States, let’s face it, it’s a special military relationship. We’ve always been there as a key practical ally and supporter of the USA at very difficult times in our modern history. That counts for an awful lot. But even if you look at the raw economic numbers, we are an important player. And that’s why I think we’ve been able to forge a good relationship. 

WI: The final thing I’d like to ask you is about British Watchmakers Day. You made reference earlier to the quality control element on your side and avoiding brands being allow to exhibit prematurely. But it’s been such a success, and I wonder what pressure you feel to open the doors to a wider audience. If you did, how would you protect the interests of Alliance members and prevent them feeling like they’ve been usurped by ‘bigger’ brands?

AA: Well, let’s go back to basics and first principles with the show. My key inspiration came from vinyl records, and that was Record Store Day. What Record Store Day did from its inception in 2007 was to rescue the physical market for music. At that time they were virtually turning the pressing plants off for vinyl and a very enterprising group of labels, independent stores, and artists got together and said: “Hey, what if we had this one day a year where we coordinate limited edition records that are only available from the independent stores?” 

And it without doubt changed the music industry. It tapped into the innate desire to collect, which started to proliferate. By 2019, vinyl had actually overtaken CD as the principal revenue earner for the music industry. You’ve now got a situation where Taylor Swift’s latest album sold 126,000 vinyl records in the first week. I mean, you’re back to the heyday of record sales, you know? 

So, I asked myself: “What if I could get exhibitors together to make special edition watches only available at the event on the day?” I had to basically pitch that to everybody, to try and give us a genuine point of difference. At the end of the day, if I go somewhere, am I going to come away with an addition to my collection? And if you can make that addition a genuine collectable, then that obviously becomes more interesting. I wanted to create a new perception that you could build a collection with British watches. Would we have had that conversation eight or nine years ago? No, I don’t think we would. 

So I’m only explaining that that was the first principle behind the show. It’s always going to be about British watchmaking brands. I’ve got absolutely no intent or desire to start bringing in foreign brands. That’s for somebody else to do. Do we have a really good international watch show or fair in Britain? I don’t think we do, if I’m honest. But the minute it feels as if you’ve got to have a star turn from another market, it would diminish the profile of our own brands. 

Let’s go back to the music analogy. Imagine if Glastonbury had all British acts, and then suddenly you say that you need Taylor Swift to come in to sell tickets and to make it a bigger event. Suddenly everyone else feels like a supporting act, and I don’t ever want British watchmakers to feel like a supporting act. 

WI: If you take your Glastonbury example, the flip side of your point is that, with international acts there, it’s become the biggest music festival in the world. But I guess they are a pure commercial operation, whereas you’re a trade body, so in some ways the question was always academic.

AA: It’s a really good point. We’ve got to stay true to our principles. We are a trade body. We’re a not-for-profit, let’s not forget that as well. So we’re a long way from being an events organising company. We’ve created this thing that gladly has found a very solid place in the watch calendar and that’s amazing. But it’s a strategic delivery for a trade body, it’s not an events company, so you’ve absolutely hit on the key difference there.

We’re British watchmaking and we’ll always be British watchmaking. The whole point of British Watchmakers Day is that they are the stars.

This article first appeared in the December 2025 edition of Watch Insider.