Openwork: Inside the Watch Industry

To mark 250 years of American independence, we're revisiting one of our favorite conversations: our sit-down with Josh Shapiro, the American independent watchmaker behind the Resurgence — the only watch that currently meets the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's standard for "Made in America." It's a fitting week to ask a question that feels newly urgent in an era of tariffs and reshoring: what would it actually take to bring watchmaking back to the United States at scale?

Josh takes us from the industry's staggering height — when American factories employed over 100,000 people and produced millions of chronometer-grade watches a year, so far ahead that the Swiss crossed the Atlantic in 1876 to study our methods and race to catch up — through the forces that dismantled it: the pivot from pocket watches to wristwatches, an aggressive Swiss cartel, Depression-era trade deals, and a postwar collapse that was already terminal long before the quartz crisis delivered the final blow. Along the way he explains why the single hardest thing to rebuild isn't machinery or capital, but people, and why "Swiss Made" and "Made in America" are two very different promises.

Told through the lens of building the Resurgence in his Los Angeles workshop — the CNC machines, the $150,000 balance-staff breakthrough, the North Dakota jeweler he coaxed out of retirement — this is a clear-eyed look at the slow, deliberate work of rebuilding an industry from the roots up, and what any of us can do to support it.

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 podcast@collectivehorology.com.

This week we're proud to welcome Bamford London to the Collective line card. George Bamford is the OG of modern collaborative watchmaking, but it's his own designs — the D300 Ceramic Diver, the Monopushers, the GMTs — that pulled us in: pieces that read as instantly recognizable without ever aping the usual suspects, built from forged carbon, ceramic, and titanium, at a genuinely accessible price. They also slot perfectly into the decade-plus renaissance in English design and watchmaking. Then we get into the real subject of the episode, which is almost the opposite of Bamford's forward-looking material science: the rise of analog culture, and why it's quietly driving one of the strongest stretches the US watch market has ever seen.

US watch sales jumped nearly 30% in the first five months of 2026 — and that's sell-through reported by retailers, not sell-in. We felt it in our own business, posting our biggest sales month ever before June was even over. But the more interesting question is why, and we make the case that this moment is fundamentally different from the COVID boom. That run was narrow and speculative: a handful of steel sports references, mania, watches as assets to flip. What's happening now is broad-based and rooted in the intrinsics — design, handwork, the human connection between the person who cut the dial and the object on your wrist. The three segments leading the way tell the story: neo-vintage and vintage, independent brands, and the $50,000-and-up tier where handcraft lives.

We zoom out from there, because watches are riding a much bigger wave. Vinyl now outsells CDs, with most of Gen Z owning records — and plenty of buyers who don't even own a turntable, which tells you the object itself is the point. Film cameras are back in production, analog synths are having a moment, and a real backlash is building against a digital licensing economy where you rent your media instead of owning it. We get into what that physical, patient, you-actually-own-it impulse means for collecting, why automating the hunt drains the fun out of it, and where neo-vintage reissues might go in 2026 and 2027.

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 podcast@collectivehorology.com.

We're on summer hours, but we wanted to keep something in your feed as much as we can — so this one comes from our Watches Of podcast, a conversation Gabe recorded in person with Claude Greisler of Armin Strom. Claude is one of the brand's two modern co-founders and its master watchmaker, and he made the trip out to Los Angeles for Open House, where a full spread of the Armin Strom collection was on the tables. Before the watches, the two sat down for a wide-ranging talk about how he got here.

Claude's path is what makes this one worth your time. He grew up in a family of watchmakers, trained for the better part of a decade across Swiss watchmaking, restoration, and movement construction, and cut his teeth on high complications at Christophe Claret. But unlike so many of his peers, he never put his own name on a dial. Instead, with his childhood friend Serge Michel, he took over Armin Strom: a legendary local watchmaker whose vision was a single, clear idea — the movement should be the star of the watch. That conviction is the spine of the conversation, from the decision to become a true in-house manufacturer to the brand's signature complications and its philosophy of transparent mechanics.

This is also, at heart, an Openwork episode. What we keep coming back to on this show is the power of a clear, strong brand identity, and Armin Strom is a near-perfect case study: a watchmaker who walked away from the obvious move to inherit a brand with a reason for being, then re-engineered it from scratch. Along the way, Claude demystifies resonance — what it actually is, and why Armin Strom's approach to it is so distinct — using a couple of analogies that made it click for Gabe, and probably will for you too. We'll be back next week with a regularly scheduled episode.

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 podcast@collectivehorology.com.

Gabe heads to Las Vegas for one of the largest trade shows in the watch and jewelry world — a B2B behemoth that's quietly making a bigger play for watches than ever before. He breaks down what the show gets right, where it falls short of the events collectors actually obsess over, and the one brand on the floor that genuinely stopped him in his tracks across every price point imaginable.

Then the conversation turns to the topic everyone assumed was behind us. Tariffs didn't go away — they just changed costume. Gabe and Asher trace the legal shell game playing out right now: what got struck down, the new justifications being rolled out to take its place, and the deadline this summer that could send rates climbing all over again. If you thought the worst was over, this is the segment to hear.

Underneath the legal maneuvering are some genuinely serious accusations being leveled at brands the guys know personally — claims they can say, with absolute certainty, simply aren't true. It's a conversation about what's being said versus what's real, what it means for prices and the collectors who love this hobby, and why there's still far more to look forward to than to fear.

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 podcast@collectivehorology.com.

Morning after Open House 2026 — the biggest event Collective Horology has ever thrown. Now in its third year at The Aster in Hollywood, the fair pulled 400+ people through the door, a line down the street, a closed RSVP, and attendees who flew in from as far as Boston. Gabe and Asher dig into why a show built entirely around esoteric, left-of-center independents draws such a self-selecting crowd: not casual passersby, but a curious, informed audience that knows exactly what it's looking at.

Every brand got an identical table this year, which Asher argues strips everything away but the watch — a half-million-dollar Armin Strom repeater feet from a sub-$20K Fears or MING that more than holds its own. Gabe relays Ariel Adams' surprise that Collective lets brands talk directly to clients, something most retailers avoid for fear of being cut out. The reason is the whole advantage of independent retail: when you choose every brand you carry, you trust them — the same camaraderie that had competing watchmakers breaking bread together after the show.

Big thanks to everyone who came out, to the brands who flew halfway around the world, and to operations lead Ellie, whose execution made the day run.

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 podcast@collectivehorology.com.