When Matt Borowiecki, a Boston-based financier, wanted to add a new timepiece to his array of A. Lange & Söhne and Rolex models, he started looking at independent watchmakers to, as he puts it, “supercharge” his collection. After all, owning one of the right indies has long been seen as a sort of graduation to the big leagues of watch collecting. But he soon found that having the means, the interest and even the right connections wasn’t enough to get his foot in the door. “It’s been incredibly difficult for me to break in,” he laments. “I’m either not playing at that level yet or I’ve not been able to participate. I’ll hear about a brand, or I’ll hear about a release, and I’m left trying to email or go through Instagram and reach out, and it’s been a very frustrating journey for me.”
Borowiecki is far from alone. The demand for independent watches has skyrocketed in the past three years. Even longtime collectors of the realm’s leading makers—the kinds of buyers who’d typically get first access to the newest watches—find themselves having to wait their turns. Michael Hickcox, a London-based executive who has been collecting some of the independents since their earliest days, remembers a time when Finnish watchmaker Kari Voutilainen didn’t have a single order. Another collector tells that, as recently as
