Am I Buying Microbrands All Wrong? (w/ Zach Kazan, Worn & Wound)

Unpolished Watches

Tony Trena hosts Zach Kazan, managing editor of Worn & Wound, to examine the current state and future trajectory of microbrands ahead of Wind Up New York. They trace the

Key takeaways

• Zach Kazan explains that 'microbrand' originally denoted small DIY operations but now covers ambitious independents doing actual manufacturing, causing friction over the label's connotations.
• The initial microbrand boom peaked around 2015–2016 with Kickstarter-driven brands like Brew and Halios, followed by a current resurgence driven by avant-garde designs and matured collectors seeking novelty.

Main topics

• Definition and evolution of microbrands
• Kickstarter era vs. current experimental wave

Notable quotes

"I associate the kind of like ascent of micro brands and the growth of micro brands with... a larger percentage of brands that really took hold... were doing watches that existed on the tail end of like the success of the Tudor Black Bay"

Conclusion

The episode provides collectors with a practical framework for evaluati

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:04) All right, welcome Speaker 3 (0:06) back to another episode of the Unpolished podcast. I'm Tony Trena. Thanks for listening in. I'm trying to do episodes every Friday, basically, through the busy months here of the fall and early winter. Today, I'm excited because I've got Zach Kazan, the managing editor of Wardenwound, who's going to join the show. Zach, how you doing? Speaker 2 (0:24) I'm doing well, Tony. Thanks for having me. It's great to talk to you. Speaker 3 (0:27) I'm not going to use the full video. I'll post some clips probably on Instagram, but it looks like you're moving in there. You've got a bunch of watch boxes behind you. Is that what I see? Speaker 2 (0:35) Yeah, you've caught me during a move. I'm relocating from Concord, New Hampshire to Brooklyn, and the movers are coming just days from now to pick stuff up. But what you see behind me is many moving boxes, a startling percentage of which are filled with empty presentation boxes. most of us wash collectors have acquired over the years. Speaker 3 (0:59) Yeah, of course. They're all buried somewhere in my closet as well. I wanted to frame today's episode because I want to talk about micro brands. I'll be in New York in a few weeks for Wind Up Chicago, one of your, Wind Up New York, one of your biggest show of the year is easily, I would imagine, 150 plus brands or something like that. I obviously went to the Chicago one here earlier this year. And I thought it'd be a good time to sort of talk about the state of the micro brand industry. I have always had, I don't want to say mixed feelings about it, but I viewed it with sort of an arched eyebrow, if you will, because I've bought so many micro brands over the years. I've gotten to know so many of the people, some of them I've featured on this very podcast and love a lot of what they're doing, the creativity, the design, even the mechanics nowadays, the way some of them have matured over the past 10 or 15 years has been really exciting to watch. As we get into, I don't know, some of them I view critically as well. There's just so many freaking brands out there. And you cover it as closely as anyone and you have for probably longer than me and on a more detailed basis than me. So that's kind of the impetus for having you on the conversation. I guess we'll start by defining our terms, basically, as any good conversation would. MicroBrand, is that still a meaningful term for you nowadays, structurally? And if so, what does it even mean to you? Speaker 2 (2:17) Yeah, I mean, this could be the entire discussion, really, talking about what is a micro brand. It's something I've thought about an awful lot. And I think it kind of like can mean different things to like to different brands. I think that when the term originated, it just meant like a small kind of like do-it-yourself kind of ethos sort of brand, like really like a true micro. operation and as the um like that scene has grown um brands have become more ambitious and have you know attempted to do uh like you know other things besides just like picking parts out of a catalog like there are you know micro brands ostensibly that are doing like things with like actual craft and manufacturing things on their own. And that doesn't really fit the earlier definition, I think, of what most people thought of as a microbran. I think some people still take that definition with them and it requires us to sort of like. reconcile those things. So, I mean, this is like, it's really something I wrestle with a lot. And I know some brands don't like to be referred to as micro brands and some brands prefer independent or challenger brand is another term I've heard used by our friends on the open work podcast at the collective. I Speaker 3 (3:34) was about to say it's like a very MBA term. And yes, yeah, they do it. They do a good job. So we're covering the business end of things. That makes sense. Speaker 2 (3:40) Yeah. So, I mean, I think that like it's still like it still means something to kind of like differentiate, you know, kind of like more enthusiast focused brands from like from like mass market brands. But there's there's huge variance like within that sort of like micro brand scene. And I think that there's a lot of a lot of different wrinkles to that. Speaker 3 (4:04) Yeah, I remember when I was at Hodiki and I was we would try to use. boutique brands sometimes because microbrands sounded a little, yeah, it sounded a little pejorative. I don't, I feel like it doesn't even sound pejorative anymore. Maybe the, maybe the microbrands have reclaimed it or something like that. But I don't think, I don't associate it with such a sort of negative connotation as I used to, maybe because some of them have been around so long and some of them have embraced it. But I don't know, sometimes like boutique brand or independent or something like that is also trying to do too much with what at the end of the day is like still the relatively smaller. Speaker 2 (4:38) Sure. I mean, I can see why a brand would like resist the micro label. Like it's a like it's a big endeavor to, you know, to like have your own own brand and run your brand. And it's expensive and it probably doesn't seem micro to anyone who's involved in that. So I can I can totally understand why why a brand would resist that label. But I've personally never seen it as a as a. pejorative thing. And that is where it gets dangerous because some people do like some people like dismiss brands as as, you know, merely a micro brand. I think that is, you know, that's that's that's dangerous. I don't like to see that. And I but I do think that the community is largely moved past that. It's Speaker 3 (5:14) a Speaker 2 (5:14) minority of people who still hold that view, I think. Speaker 3 (5:17) Yeah. It is funny. Any brand that I worn and wound or outpolished or anyone would take the time to cover that's new, it's like a year plus in the making that at the first paragraph of the intro on any of these publications, you hear micro brand. You're like, what the hell? I did all this work. I get what you're saying there too. Speaker 2 (5:33) I Speaker 3 (5:34) wanted to trace the history of it a little bit before we get to the present day because I feel like we're seeing a bit of a boomer or resurgence in micro brands. But I associate... the original kind of enthusiast brand, the original moment being in like maybe 2015 and the establishment of Kickstarter brands, basically. I think Brew was probably one of the ones that was the most successful. Hallios was another successful one. I don't know if they were on Kickstarter originally, but brands like that that have continued on, some have gotten quite big. like Brew and Jonathan. Speaker 2 (6:11) Others have sort of Speaker 3 (6:12) maintained their steady, slow clip of production. But I feel like that was kind of the real genesis of the micro brand or the enthusiast brand. But maybe you see it a little bit differently. Speaker 2 (6:22) No, I think that's right. I think that, you know, a lot of the, there's a lot of brands kind of like celebrating, you know, like 10 years, you know, this year and last year, but like Brew among them. And I think that, yeah, like 2015, 2016 sounds uh you know sounds about right for the genesis of this i associate the kind of like ascent of micro brands and the growth of micro brands with um well like with with two things like one there's always been like brands doing like really avant-garde kind of like wild experimental stuff um like for like really niche um uh niche collectors um and but i think a larger percentage of brands um that really took hold and then that like you know time period, about 10 years ago, were doing, I don't want to call them like homage watches necessarily, but like watches that were sort of like existed on the, on the tail end of like the success of the Tudor Black Bay and things like that, that were also really popular at that time and just sort of like coming, coming into shape. And I think that there's been an arc of brands, you know, kind of like milking all they, all they could out of that, like vintage inspired. And now we're seeing in this new wave kind of like a return to the avant-garde and experimental sort of side. And I think collectors who matured, you know, over the past decade are looking for something new. And I think that's what's driving a lot of this, like this boom that we're seeing sort of like 10 years after that first boom. Speaker 3 (7:55) Do you feel like it's, maybe I've just become more privy to it, but has there been sort of this boom or resurgence of microbrains in the past? couple of years or is it just that there's like there's more content and more content creators that are focusing on the space maybe that's what i'm too well Speaker 2 (8:10) i think it's both i think there's certainly a lot more content uh content creators there's a lot more i mean we've both been to watches and wonders and have seen you know uh everyone walking around with their uh with their with their cameras there's a lot more uh you know instagram you'd be clear Speaker 3 (8:24) i'm one of korean Speaker 2 (8:25) Yeah, of course. Yeah. Same. Yeah. And so I think that there are more creators, there's more people making content. And yeah, like more people have decided to get into the space and have like to try their hand at this, you know, with varying levels of success and durability. So I think both things are kind of happening in parallel there. You mentioned, you Speaker 3 (8:48) know, we've seen some brands celebrating 10-year anniversaries this year, last year. Ming comes to mind as well, for example, you know, being founded in 2015, 2016. And are they a micro? Like, Speaker 2 (8:58) that's a really interesting brand to like. Speaker 3 (9:00) Well, that's about it. Maybe I'll ask you that first. Are there brands in the past 10 years that you felt have really graduated from quote-unquote microbrand to just being like a brand? Speaker 2 (9:10) Yeah, I mean, I think of, like, I think of Ming as an independent. brand like I I think that they're doing enough kind of like um like research and development on their own and making their own stuff and and uh you know starting from scratch and coming up with something completely unique that like to to me like that's a level of independence that I wouldn't um you know I wouldn't necessarily tag them as a micro brand but when they you know first uh when they first came on the scene I think absolutely like they they felt like a micro brand and they had that sort of like, um, I don't think it was technically a Kickstarter, uh, but they, you know, they were funding sort of projects as they went, which is sort of like the hallmark of those early, uh, you know, early micro brands. And now they kind of like exist on, on their own. They have models in their permanent collections. So I don't know if, if graduated is necessarily like the, the term I would use. Cause then that implies that, you know, there's a, you know, like the end goal is the same, uh, for, for all of this. Speaker 3 (10:08) these brands yeah yeah yeah yeah and it's not Speaker 2 (10:10) for sure yeah but uh but yeah like ming is definitely like an interesting sort of like case study and like starting uh you know like relatively small and then like having this like huge ambition which i think was always there but like they've really like made good on on that yeah Speaker 3 (10:24) you brought up an interesting distinction implicitly there that i hadn't quite thought of that kind of defines a brand or an early micro brand or a brand that's at least early on in its journey is that um they're taking the funds or the cash flow from one project and basically rolling all of it into the next project to get the next watch or the next launch completely off the ground and once they're able to do that and they have enough cash flow that they can kind of independently fund different projects implies some sort of like higher level of um i don't know corporate entity or whatever it is But that's something I hadn't quite thought about before. That's like an interesting distinction that you kind of drew for Ming and when they became something more than like one project to the next in this sort of linear fashion. Speaker 2 (11:10) Yeah, I think that there's just like a public, you know, perception when a brand is like using those, you know, those sorts of like funding techniques, you know, like taking one project and rolling it into another that it's like it's not it's not real. Yet, and I don't know that that's fair, honestly, because that's something that has existed for as long as watchmaking, you know, obviously, you know, this, you know, subscription, you know, models, you know, back in the back in like, you know, the earliest days of, you know, of watchmaking. So I, that's another thing that there's, there's variance to that. And I don't know that there's like a clean. definition there you know to you know the way to like put brands in a specific bucket based on how they uh how they operate like that but i think you know the the perception does matter to to some extent and and it it does it is like a show of um you know that the the business is solid at least when ming can kind of like escape that a little bit or other similar things Speaker 3 (12:11) you know what's funny is i have this sort of I have the same hesitation, like when brands do pre-orders and they're like, you'll get the watch at six months or nine months or whatever. I kind of think to myself, why should I be giving these people an interest-free loan so that they can go produce the product for six or nine months? Which is, you know, not totally fair. You know, it takes money to invest in production and manufacturing and your partnerships and all this stuff. And then I also think it's like kind of hypocritical because people pay me subscription dollars to produce content on an ongoing basis. So it's basically the same thing at the end of the day. um on a different scale of course but it's uh it's not so different so i have to look at the mirror as well Speaker 2 (12:48) yeah no for sure and i think that uh i mean that's sometimes like if you love the watch or if you love the sub stack you're happy to pay it you know and other times uh you know you might just be leery of it if you're if you're unsure of something it's you know that's another thing that i think about a lot is like um you know how do we support you know, these, these brands, um, you know, what, what are we willing to do, you know, to support these, these brands? Are you willing to like, kind of like lay your money out for a, for a year? Um, I've pre-ordered watches that I've really, you know, wanted to have that I knew I wasn't going to have for, you know, for, for, for many months. And, uh, you know, I, I feel good about that, but it's not a decision I would make for every watch. You have to really love it. So, um, yeah, Speaker 3 (13:31) I, you know, patronage is, uh, it's a real thing. It's a tough thing to like get over that hump. because you're totally sort of paying it out of the goodness of your heart on some level. Obviously, you get the object in return, but it is different than buying something you need, obviously. I wanted to ask you a question