The Indie Insider is our column dedicated to exploring the vast world of independent watchmaking through the eyes of Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo. Expect in-depth coverage of the latest and greatest watchmakers and releases to enter the scene, as well as detailed analysis on all your favorite familiar names.
– By Logan Baker
New faces in the independent watch scene come in all shapes and sizes. Some, such as Hervé Schlüchter, fit the traditional mold of a solitary individual sitting behind a work bench, while others, such as last year’s superstar debut, Simon Brette, come from a more specialized background (engineering, in Brette’s case).
However, there’s another route out there that has become increasingly popular in the 21st century, that of a watch-obsessed entrepreneur with a singular vision and an overwhelming desire to start a watch company – despite not having a watchmaking background.
Max Büsser, of MB&F, and Ming Thein, of Ming Watches, are two figures that loom large in the mind of Thomas Fleming, the 27-year-old founder of a new, self-funded independent watch company – Fleming – that released its debut timepiece last month.
Fleming, the founder, who resides in Pebble Beach, CA, didn’t believe he had the background or ability to create his own watch company. In fact, he was working on launching a sparkling water brand with a few classmates after graduating from Stanford University in 2019 with a B.S. in Management Science and Engineering. The emergence of COVID-19 in early 2020 dampened any notion of fizzy fame – but it allowed Fleming a moment to reflect and dig deeper into one of his true passions: watch enthusiasm.
“During the pandemic, I got more and more into reading about independent brands like Ming and MB&F, and the different approach they've taken in watchmaking,” Fleming said. “My conception before that was in order for someone to start a new watch brand, they'd have to have a watchmaking background. They'd have to be Swiss. You'd have to have a gazillion dollars to start a manufacture. Otherwise, you just couldn't really make a high-end watch. Ming really shattered that notion in my mind."
What began with early-pandemic musings – in between binging episodes of Tiger King, I’m sure – quickly turned into a legitimate business plan and plenty of concept sketches.
Approximately three-and-a-half years later, and we finally have the result: the Fleming Series 1, a time-only 38.5mm × 9mm wristwatch available in your choice of a tantalum, platinum, or 18k rose gold case.
It’s clear at first glance that the Series 1, in all variations, is not the work of an amateur. No, no. If the skeletonized horn-shaped lugs didn’t clue you in on that fact, the intricately decorated manual-wind caliber FM-01 – with its seven-day power reserve – surely did the trick.
It should be no surprise, then, that Thomas Fleming took a hint from Max Büsser and his friends, as well as Ming Thein and his cohort at Schwarz-Etienne: It takes a village to build a successful high-end independent watch brand from scratch.
So what else was there for him to do but put himself out there?
Assembling The Fleming Dream Team
“The way I approached [the business] was: ‘I know nothing’,” Thomas Fleming said. “But I think I can get to where I need to be, so I’m just going to keep working to find good people to partner with, so we can get to where we need to be together. And it's going to take however long it's going to take.”
Fleming started his outreach.
Working alone at the very beginning, with just a loose idea of what we wanted his watch project to look like, he connected with a large number of movement suppliers and designers.
“I just wanted to learn as much as I could, and talk to as many knowledgeable people as I could, to sort of see what was possible,” he said. “And then I'd go from there.”
Finally, a random cold email sent by Fleming through a – very dated looking – “Contact Us” form on the website of Chronode, a highly regarded Swiss specialist movement manufacture and developer, didn’t disappear into the ether like one might expect.
What Thomas got instead was a direct response from Chronode’s legendary watchmaker founder, the brilliant Jean-François Mojon.
Mojon, 58, is one of the few people out there that could accurately be described as “your watchmaker’s favorite watchmaker.” He started Chronode in 2005 with the goal of becoming a one-stop-shop for the rarefied world of high-end white-label Swiss watches. Mojon and his team at Chronode are the horological minds behind watches from Czapek & Cie., Harry Winston, HYT, MB&F, and Urban Jürgensen, not to mention countless unpublicized projects.
“Jean-François is someone who has seen everything and done everything in the industry, but he still really loves these new projects,” Fleming said. “I was some 23-year-old kid from the U.S. – but he still came to the project with a lot of enthusiasm. He heard me out and really bought into the project, helping us connect with different suppliers and just figuring everything out. I think, more than anyone else, he was the person that allowed us to do this.”
A few of the other suppliers and companies that soon joined Fleming’s fledgling effort after the Chronode co-sign include Neodesis, a design firm in Le Locle, who worked with Thomas to develop and fine-tune the design of the Series 1. TMH SA in La Chaux-de-Fonds, who supplied movement components used by Chronode to create the caliber FM-01. And of course, Kari Voutilainen’s dialmaking company, Comblémine, who crafted the multi-finish, hand-decorated dials.
Arguably the most difficult part in creating the Series 1 was allocated to Fleming's casemaker, Efteor SA in Bassecourt, Switzerland: who had to develop the Series 1 tantalum cases. But you’ll have to wait to hear more on that below.
A network of high-quality, dedicated suppliers is worth its weight in gold, but as the project grew and expanded, Thomas decided it was time to build up an internal U.S.-based Fleming team to complement the Swiss workshops. He didn’t have to look very far. The company’s Chief Financial Officer, Grace Rood, is Thomas’ partner, and a younger Fleming brother, John, takes care of operations.
The fourth and final full-time member of Team Fleming is someone who might be a familiar face to the Phillips faithful: the photographer James Kong, better known by his Instagram handle, @waitlisted, where he’s amassed more than 40,000 followers. (Full disclosure: Phillips hired James to photograph a number of editorial stories in 2023 – see here, here, and here.)
A leading figure in the 2020s development of watch photography as a creative medium, James spent years balancing his passion for watches and photography with his day job as a corporate lawyer in New York. Kong and Fleming became friendly chatting via Instagram over the years, with the latter formally offering the former the position as Fleming’s Chief Operating Officer and Art Director at the end of 2022.
He started at Fleming in January 2023.
Leaving a lucrative career you’ve dedicated years and years of your life to can be intimidating – if not terrifying – but in my numerous conversations with James over the past year, he’s expressed zero regret.
I think that says a tremendous amount about the culture and future growth potential of the Fleming brand – and I’m not the only person that thinks so.
The two final members of the Fleming team (so far) are also the two most high profile.
First, there’s Emmanuel Gueit, the famous designer of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore. Thomas initially connected with Gueit over a simple Instagram DM, which eventually led to Gueit signing on with Fleming to design the brand’s second watch, the sporty Series 2 that is said to feature an integrated bracelet. Thomas mentioned to me that the Series 2 is being fast-tracked and could potentially be revealed before the end of 2024. Gueit was not involved in the creation of Fleming's Series 1 watch collection.
And then we have the professional ATP tennis player Casper Ruud. The 25-year-old Norwegian and three-time Grand Slam finalist is Fleming’s inaugural brand ambassador; unusually, the partnership was announced in June 2023, nine months before Fleming released its debut watch.
Thomas, an avid tennis fan, noticed one day that Ruud didn’t have a watch sponsor, surprising for a young, handsome athlete consistently ranked in the ATP's Top 10 for Singles. So Fleming did exactly what has brought him so many successful partnerships to date. He went to Ruud’s official website and sent in a sponsorship inquiry email.
Ruud’s team soon got back to Fleming to schedule a meeting. It didn't take long for the Norwegian tennis player and the American watch executive to develop a quick connection – the rest is history. Ruud reportedly has even turned down more lucrative offers from established watch companies that have approached him.
Ruud has consistently worn a prototype of the Series 1, both before and after his matches, since Fleming’s sponsorship was revealed last June, following his runner-up finish at Roland Garros. However, Ruud is also working with Fleming to develop a lightweight evolution of the Series 1 known as the “Series 1 Ghost” that Fleming has said should be no heavier than a sweatband on the wrist.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves – let’s circle back to the Series 1, the only Fleming watches we’ve seen to date.
The Fleming Series 1 Collection
The three Series 1 examples presented by Fleming in its debut consist of 41 total pieces across all lines, while sharing identical case dimensions, the same manual-wind movement inside, and even a shared dial architecture. However, a huge distinction is present across the trio in terms of texture, finish, and color that might make it hard to accept at first glance that all three watches come from the same family – and that’s without even mentioning the use of three separate case materials.
Let’s start with the 18k rose gold model. Fleming is only making seven examples of the Series 1 in rose gold, the rarest of the threesome. The dial consists of a central portion and small seconds decorated with a hand-hammered finish in a warm “light champagne” hue, which is then surrounded by an undulating hand-turned guilloché pattern colored in a “carbon grey” shade. It carries a cost of CHF 48,500 each.
The platinum-cased Series 1 will be produced in a nine-piece production run at an individual cost of CHF 51,500. The dial decoration is comprised of multiple swirling hand-turned guilloché patterns with the central segment and small seconds colored in what Fleming describes as “southwestern brown.” The surrounding dial area that supports the applied hour markers has a separate guilloché pattern – yes, still done by hand – and is colored in a shade Fleming calls “amber hand.”
Finally, the tantalum batch consists of 25 pieces, the most in the Series 1 family, with a price tag of CHF 45,500 each. Unlike its precious metal Series 1 siblings, the tantalum range features zero guilloché decoration on the dial, instead opting for two solid slices of aventurine in the central section and small seconds, with the periphery segment decorated with a frosted platinum finish.
All three variants are individually numbered in series.
The case design of the Series 1 was the result of a near-obsessive trial-and-error process to determine a cohesive design language between the case and the lugs. The Fleming team says they paid extra attention to the relationship between the lugs and the mid-case. The mid-case, in fact, is a tripartite structure consisting of brushed top and bottom surfaces, a polished caseband, and unique skeletonized openings in the lugs.
The lugs themselves are one of the Series 1’s main attractions. A modernist riff on beloved mid-century “horned” lugs, all four lug components have been completely skeletonized – even on the tantalum model.
Tantalum, as you might recall from our recent visit to F.P. Journe’s all-new Les Boîtiers de Genève casemaking facility, is an incredibly difficult material to work with. Very few watch brands are willing to embrace the material, and some of those that do, such as F.P. Journe, are able to subsidize the investment by producing everything in-house.
The Fleming team didn't have those advantages – and yet, the tantalum case found on the Series 1 features what is likely the most complex architecture of any previous tantalum case I can find (yes, that includes F.P. Journe's Chronomètre Bleu).
In fact, it took Efteor SA, Fleming’s casemaker (remember earlier?) two years of work to make a finished version – and the cases didn’t arrive until one month before the Series 1 launch. Thomas and James had to reject an earlier batch of the tantalum cases due to the lug treatment. While the precious metal examples feature soldered lugs, the tantalum case is paired with lugs fitted using an internal screws.
The manual-wind caliber FM-01 that works away inside the Series 1 watches is a modified version of Chronode’s signature C101 caliber, selected by Thomas for its resolute thinness (3.98mm), the lengthy power reserve up to seven days, and its ability to receive a high level of hand-finished decoration.
The semi-skeletonized movement bridges were chosen in order to best reveal the action of certain internal components involved in the winding process. A variety of surface textures, including frosted bridges and hand-polished chamfers, catch the eye due to their contrast. The ratchet wheels are black-polished, then skeletonized in the shape of Fleming’s official logo. Finally, the large balance bridge has been extensively black-polished to achieve an immaculate mirror finish.
Fleming sold out of all 41 of the Series 1 models shortly after the initial announcement last month, but you can visit the official Fleming website to sign up for the waitlist, or to register your interest in one of Fleming's upcoming models (Series 1 Ghost, Series 2).
About Phillips In Association With Bacs & Russo
The team of specialists at PHILLIPS Watches is dedicated to an uncompromised approach to quality, transparency, and client service. Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo holds the world record for the most successful watch auction, with its Geneva Watch Auction: XIV having realized $74.5 million in 2021. Over the course of 2021 and 2022, the company sold 100% of the watches offered, a first in the industry, resulting in the highest annual total in history across all the auction houses at $227 million.
About Logan Baker
Logan has spent the past decade reporting on every aspect of the watch business. He joined Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo at the start of 2023 as the department's Senior Editorial Manager. He splits his time between New York and Geneva.
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