The past decade has seen a massive uptick in the number of new watch brands hitting the market. Whether considered boutique brands or microbrands, these independent watchmakers mostly compete on the more affordable side of the spectrum, offering up compelling designs and impressive specs for $1,000 or less. But a handful of this new crop of brands have taken a much bigger swing, pricing their watches above $5,000 and taking aim squarely at the industry's well-established luxury market.
Entering such a competitive product space as luxury goods is never easy, but it can be especially difficult when it comes to watches. Tradition plays a huge role in the luxury side of the business, with the most distinguished brands laying claim to literal centuries' worth of history and utilizing techniques and technology that are just as old. So if you're a new luxury watch brand looking to break through and get people to notice you, you've got to do things a bit differently. And that's what Norqain promises.
The brand debuted just in 2018, but with an impressive pedigree that allowed it to gain a foothold quite quickly. It's an actual Swiss brand, based in Biel/Bienne, making it a neighbor of Omega. Its CEO and founder, Ben Küffer, is an industry veteran with a decade of experience at Breitling whose father serves as the Swiss Watch Industry Association's Chairman of the Board. Co-founder Ted Schneider is the son of former Breitling owner and CEO Theodore Schneider. Then there's brand advisor Jean-Claude Biver, a watch industry legend who is credited with turning around the fortunes of such brands as Blancpain, Omega, Hublot and TAG Heuer over the course of four decades.
To discover if this upstart brand is really worth Tudor money, I spent several weeks wearing the Wild One. A lightweight luxury sports watch with a unique design made from a proprietary case material and housing a manufacture movement, the watch — the first from the brand to be designed in collaboration with Biver — felt like the most "Norqain" watch available. Here are my impressions.
Norqain Wild One: What We Think
I admittedly was skeptical of Norqain. There's always the temptation to quickly dismiss a watch at this price from an unknown brand in favor of swimming in the more familiar waters of brands like Tudor and Breitling. But I realize now how mistaken that thought process is. The Wild One is fantastic. It offers something differing by looking and feeling like nothing else on the market, and yet it still manages to offer the premium feel one associates with luxury watches.
It's incredibly lightweight and comfortable, and the manufacture movement is every bit as good as one you'd get in one of those aforementioned brands (which makes sense, considering they all use movements from the same factory in Kenissi). The design is a bit muddled — there's a lot going on — but overall, this is a rugged, unique and downright cool sports watch that gives big brand competitors a run for their money.
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- Case Size: 42mm
- Water Resistance: 200m
- Movement: Norqain Calibre NN20/1 automatic chronometer by Kenissi
The case construction is interesting
The Wild One lives up to its name as Norqain's most out-there watch, and that's mostly owed to its unusual case construction. The bulk of the case is made up of Norteq, a proprietary carbon fiber material that the brand says is 3.5 lighter than titanium, which itself is nearly twice as light as stainless steel. Making the case out of that stuff would have arguably been interesting enough on its own, but Norqain went beyond in overbuilding the case of the Wild One.
Only the outer portion of the case is made of Norteq, with a top and bottom piece screwed together around a rubber shock absorber — the sides of which are visible on either side of the case. The Nortec acts as a protective skeleton for the rubber, which itself surrounds and further cushions a titanium container that houses the movement, and all three layers are quite fascinatingly visible through a sapphire exhibition caseback. The unique construction enables the Wild One to withstand shocks up to 5,000 g, according to Norqain's in-house testing.
I certainly didn't test my loaner Norqain to the limits of its shock resistance (or, for that matter, its 200m water resistance) by throwing it off any buildings, but it took its share of doorknob knocks and clumsy drops without skipping a beat or showing a scratch. The watch certainly feels robust and rugged, sort of like a more refined, mechanical G-Shock. And it screams to be used like a G-Shock, too, price be damned. This is a watch that longs to be covered in mud, knocked around on a trail and scraped across a rock face. And those aren't things I would recommend or feel comfortable doing with most watches that cost this kind of money.
The strap is crazy comfortable
The lightness of the Norteq case is great, but pair it with a cumbersome or uncomfortable strap and suddenly that lightness isn't going to matter as much. Thankfully, the Wild One is paired with a spectacular rubber bracelet. The strap is on the thick side but supremely flexible out of the box; it's one of the most flexible rubber bracelets I've ever handled. The interior is perfectly smooth and feels great against the skin, while the exterior has an intricate Milanese pattern that adds a nice bit of visual and tactile texture. The strap is actually produced by BIWI, which also supplies rubber straps to Richard Mille and Audemars Piguet, so quality is certainly not an issue here.
The strap is also integrated into the case in such a way that it curves straight down and around the wrist. It's impossible to get the watch to lie flat because of this curve, but my wrist isn't shaped like a table and neither is yours, and this setup allows the watch to wrap around the wrist like a second skin. Even though the Wild One's case size of 42mm is larger than what I normally go for, at no point while wearing it did I think it felt oversized or wish it were smaller. In fact, it's so light and comfortable that I genuinely would forget I was wearing it most of the time.
The design feels a tad confused
A lot of thought went into creating the Wild One, that's clear, but I wonder if perhaps too much thought went into it. The case construction and rubber strap are excellent, as discussed, but I think the visual design takes a few missteps. The case shape is a bit odd, with rubber horns jutting out from either side in a way somewhat reminiscent of a Patek Philippe Nautilus.
The horn on the right is functional, acting as crown guards, while the one on the left is there both for visual balance and to house the "Norqain Plate." I'm not really a fan of brands sticking their name on the side of a watch case (sorry, Blancpain), and I'm not a fan of it here, though this is one of the more subtle examples I've seen since you've got to get in pretty close to read the name. Norqain also offers you the option of customizing the text on a second plate to say whatever you want, which you can swap out for the nameplate with a screwdriver.
I think the case shape is fine, honestly, though I know it's divisive. The dial, however, feels a bit over the top to me. There's a laser-engraved pattern consisting of three layers and interlocking depictions of the brand's logo. It's frankly too much and has a sort of dizzying effect if you look at it too long, which isn't ideal for reading the time. The hands and indices I'm a bit torn on. They're diamond-cut and skeletonized, and all seem to catch the light and shimmer at all times, adding a brilliant and luxe element to the watch. I like the look, but I can't help but feel that it doesn't belong on this watch.
With the Wild One's position as a rough-and-tumble adventure watch (collab versions have been done with the NHL Player's Association, the New York City Marathon and South Africa-based wildlife sanctuary founder Dean Schneider), I would prefer to see those skeletonized hands and indices filled with lume, as that would better match the explorer theme. As it is, the lume is almost non-existent on this watch, making it basically invisible in the dark.
The movement makes it worth the money
Shortly after its founding, Norqain established a partnership with Kenissi, the manufacture founded by Tudor in 2016 to craft its own exclusive movements. Other premium brands have since made use of Kenissi's movements, including Breitling, TAG Heuer and Chanel, putting Norqain in some pretty exclusive company. The Calibre NN20/1 movement in the Wild One is essentially the same movement as the MT5402 powering Tudor's popular Black Bay 58, as both are COSC-certified Kenissi automatics beating at 4hz and offering 70 hours of power reserve. Like the movement in the Tudor, Norqain's has no fancy decoration but it's a bulletproof performer, and I experienced chronometer accuracy, a smooth seconds-hand sweep and all of that generous power reserve during my time with the watch.
Norqain Wild One: Alternatives
The Wild One is unique, but that doesn't mean you won't find similar options on the market. The closest watch to the Wild One I can think of comes from Formex, another recently founded (1999) Swiss-based independent brand. Like Norqain, Formex packs a lot of innovation into its watches, but it lacks Norqain's provenance and is aimed more at the mid-market. Its Essence Leggera is an automatic, Sellita-powered chronometer in forged carbon with a shock-absorbing patented case suspension system that can be had for under two grand.
If you're looking to save even more dough, you've got Victorinox with the similarly styled I.N.O.X. Carbon Mechanical. It's got a robust carbon case with a titanium caseback and is powered by a Sellita SW200 automatic (non-chronometer) movement. It also comes with a rubber bumper that can be fitted over the case, and a pocket knife, all for $1,300. On the high end, you can look to Zenith, which offers its Defy Classic in carbon with a true in-house Elite automatic movement for just under $12,000 on a strap or just over $20,000 with a full-carbon bracelet.
