The Ins And Outs Of Horage — An Underdog With The Spirit Of A Pitbull

Although we’ve covered the brand several times, Horage might not yet ring a clear bell for everyone. Let’s change that today. The brand has existed since 2008 when it introduced its first Omnium model. Amid a global financial crisis and without guaranteed access to a future supply of movements, that wasn’t the best timing. That’s why, in 2009, Horage hibernated while promising to make a caliber of its own. After six years, Horage’s K1 movement was ready to be revealed to the world. Together with the completion of a watch using the new K1 movement, the Horage brand was relaunched.

In 2015, Horage’s Jonas K1 model was launched through a successful crowdfunding campaign. One year later, the initial Omnium was updated with the K1 movement, and a second Kickstarter-funded watch, the Array K1, was successfully launched. Then, in 2017, Horage’s third Kickstarter project, Multiply, was successful as well. One might not think of Kickstarter as the place to build a premium watch brand, but for Horage, it worked.

Horage Supersede

The ins and outs of Horage

But let’s first go back to the period between 2009 and 2015 when Horage developed its proprietary movement. What were some of the significant challenges and victories in this six-year process? Although the main motivator was that ETA was no longer supplying movements to brands outside the Swatch Group, Horage’s goal wasn’t just to make ETA substitute movements. There was no point in developing another old-fashioned replacement movement, something others did already.

The road to K1

Horage’s goal was to make its first proprietary movement multifunctional. This meant giving it a modular construction. But it wouldn’t be “modular” in the way that most watch enthusiasts think of that term — for instance, a whole ETA base movement and a complication module from Dubois Dépraz, more or less bolted together. Rather, the base movement itself would need to be modularly constructed, offering variations, such as whether or not to sport a large seconds hand, small seconds at 9 o’clock, a big date, a regular date, a power reserve indicator, and so on. This led to the K1 caliber offering 18 different executions stemming from the same base.

Silicon

Besides being modular, Horage’s K1 must be technically advanced and not rely on old-fashioned techniques. In 2015, using silicon for certain parts seemed like a significant technological step forward. Initially, a process invented by Bosch, Horage contacted a company named Hahn Schickard, one of the key players in the silicon manufacturing industry in Germany. They had implemented the Bosch process to use for manufacturing watch parts. Thanks to this partnership, Horage managed to secure its very own silicon anchor, escape wheel, and hairspring. Silicon is used for these parts because of its antimagnetic properties, lower friction (making the movement more efficient), and longevity.

Significant and influential entities in the Swiss watch universe believed they had the exclusive right to use silicon for watch parts.

At first, significant and influential entities in the Swiss watch universe believed they had the exclusive right to use silicon for watch parts. However, this was not the case, and Horage managed to develop and produce their proprietary escapement components together with Hahn Schickard. The last thing I’ll mention about the K1 movement here is that Horage chose a 25,200vph (3.5Hz) frequency for it. This results in a greater power reserve than a 28,800vph (4Hz) frequency and less wear on the parts. Crucially, however, it still offers good accuracy.

Horage (Accurat Swiss) Jonas K1

Horage kickstarted back to life

As mentioned above, in 2015, the newly developed K1 movement was presented in a watch, the Jonas K1. Its name was derived from, and an ode to, Jonas Nydegger, a watchmaker and one of the driving forces behind the K1 caliber’s development. The Jonas K1 watch was designed to show off and sell Horage’s in-house movement through Kickstarter. At that time, the watch was promoted under the label Accurat Swiss, the name of the company that Horage established to carry out the movement’s development. Horage’s first Kickstarter appearance garnered £121,803 in pledges. It was more than its £100,000 goal, yes, but not nearly enough to finance the cost of developing a movement from scratch. However, that wasn’t the idea behind this Kickstarter campaign.

Autark T5

What followed

After introducing the Jonas watch with Horage’s proprietary K1 automatic movement, we saw quite a diverse range of models. The initially unsuccessful Omnium was fitted with the new K1 caliber, taking the name Omnium K1. The all-new Array K1 was kickstarted, as was the Multiply. After these Kickstarter performances, during 2019 and 2020, Horage independently released the Autark T5, Autark Hv, and the Solar Wind.

Lensman 1.1

Horage K-TOU

During the introduction of these watches, Horage didn’t sit still. Work had to be done to present Horage’s second proprietary caliber, K-TOU, a manual-winding flying tourbillon. Introduced in 2020, the K-TOU caliber was first fitted in the Horage Tourbillon 1. Later, two photography-inspired iterations of the Tourbillon 1 — the Lensman 1 and Lensman 1.1 — followed in 2021. As of January 2024, the latest Horage model sporting the K-TOU caliber is the Tourbillon 2, in which the K-TOU movement is enhanced with a power reserve indicator.

Tourbillon 2 and Supersede GMT

Horage K2

Then, also in 2021, the Supersede GMT project with Horage’s third caliber saw the light. The K2 movement, in fact, is a further development of the original K1, although each has an entirely different construction. Both are automatic watches, but while the K1 uses a full-size rotor, the K2 relies on a micro-rotor. Again, the K2 is a modular movement, but it offers 38 possible variants instead of 18 via three different height configurations — 2.9mm, 3.3mm, and 3.6mm. Compared to the K1, which measures 4.95mm thick, that’s a considerable improvement, although the K2’s diameter increased from 25.6 to 30mm. Besides a silicon anchor and escape wheel, the K2 caliber also sports a silicon hairspring. And last but not least, its power reserve, compared to that of the K1, increased from 65 to 72 hours. Meanwhile, three Horage watch models have been fitted with the K2 movement — the Supersede GMT, Supersede Date, and Lensman 2.

Caliber K2 marks the end of K1

With so many improvements and just slightly higher production costs, Horage had little reason to continue making its K1 caliber, so the brand chose to discontinue it. To celebrate the end of an era, as of the end of 2023, the Horage offers a 25% voucher on K1-equipped watches until February 1st, 2024.

Bremont ENG300 — Image: Ethos

But isn’t it strange to ditch a relatively new and satisfactory caliber that took six years to develop? For Horage, it isn’t. And, although not confirmed, I think the intellectual property behind the K1 movement will be available to other brands if they’re interested. Horage doesn’t sell physical calibers, but it might sell the knowledge to other companies, enabling them to produce these movements by themselves, probably even with personal enhancements. It’s no secret that, in 2021, Horage/The+ sold the K1’s IP to Bremont, enabling the brand to produce parts for and assemble its K1-derived ENG300 movement in-house. A clarifying article on The Naked Watchmaker perfectly describes how Bremont adapted the K1 to turn it into a real British-made caliber.

Autark Tourbillon Salmon

Horage K-TMR

In terms of calibers, the K-TMR is Horage’s latest development and its next step in tourbillons. With a manual-winding flying tourbillon (K-TOU) and the knowledge gained about micro-rotors during the development of the K2, combining the two was a logical development, resulting in the K-TMR. A micro-rotor caliber with a tourbillon mechanism is one of the rarest combinations in watchmaking.

Micro-rotor tourbillons are challenging to engineer as micro-rotors and tourbillons have specific, often conflicting, needs within a movement. However, the modularity of Horage’s K2 allowed integration with the K-TOU tourbillon and resulted in one of the most efficient and accurate micro-rotor tourbillon calibers. The first watch to use the K-TMR will be the Autark Tourbillon, which Horage expects to deliver in the first half of 2025.

Overview of movements and models

Before investigating Horage’s activities any further, for your convenience, you’ll find an overview below indicating which Horage models use which caliber:

• K1 – central rotor automatic: Jonas K1, Omnium K1, Omnium Gen-2, Array K1, Multiply, Autark T5, Autark Hv, Solar Wind, US Biathlon
• K-TOU – hand-winding tourbillon: Tourbillon 1, Lensman 1, Lensman 1.1, Tourbillon 2
• K2 – micro-rotor automatic: Supersede GMT, Supersede Date, Lensman 2
• K-TMR – micro-rotor tourbillon: Autark Tourbillon

Sometimes, the model designations might seem confusing, but one can always find the logic. For instance, the Tourbillon 1 model had photography-inspired iterations, the Lensman 1 and Lensman 1.1. However, the actual successor is the Tourbillon 2. The Lensman 2 is a different watch than the other Lensman models and has a different movement (K2 instead of K-TOU), but it is a photography-inspired watch too. At first glance, looking at the appearance of Horage’s models to date, you might think of a somewhat disjointed collection. However, if we look further, there’s coherence in all kinds of areas.

Tourbillon 2 Grand Feu

What else?

You were wrong if you thought developing four new, highly innovative calibers from the ground up was enough of an achievement. While developing them, the brand looked at other challenges in the watch industry and beyond. As we can tell already, tackling the impossible is what Horage’s team of engineers does best. So Horage also decided to become educated in different fields not directly related to horology. Still, most of these fields have served a purpose on the brand’s horological path.

Horage Yi

Among other essential side projects, Horage developed Grand Feu enamel dials (used in the Tourbillon 2) and lab-grown diamonds. The latter resulted in Horage’s Yi, a K1-equipped premier timepiece sporting 100 internally flawless baguette diamonds. Meanwhile, Horage also now supplies respectable quantities of lab-grown diamonds to major Swiss watch and jewelry brands.

Amanda, one of Horage’s watchmakers — Image: Brian Griffin

Meet the people

I’ll finish this article with something that’s probably Horage’s most crucial asset — the people behind the company. First, there are Tzuyu Huang and Andi Felsl, the founders and owners of Horage. The next important name for the brand is Florian Serex. He was the director of Vaucher at the time that Huang and Felsl were still looking for suppliers of mechanical movements after ETA had announced that it would not supply non-Swatch Group brands anymore. A collaboration between the two companies didn’t work out, but Serex was so excited about Huang and Felsl’s plans for Horage that he left Vaucher and joined them. Although the brand relies on and needs many people to run the show, I want to mention Jonas Nydegger. He has been the company’s practical, technical backbone since the beginning. The last person I’ll mention here is Landon Stirling, Horage marketing manager, who runs an interesting Horage forum that you should most definitely visit and follow.

Conclusion

I just had to write this article after attending an event with Horage in Ronda, Spain. It was a fascinating experience in many ways. Not only were the evident management, sales, and marketing staff present, but everyone from the whole company was. I learned a lot and went from one surprise to another. Andi Felsl explained that they lost a few companies along the way, but the people are still here. They’re not working at Horage for their paycheck alone. Rather, they want to work for the company to be part of its story. That’s precisely how it felt, which indicates that Horage is doing something very good.

Image: Paoluzzo

It’s important to understand that “in-house” at Horage means that the brand has its intellectual knowledge in-house. This covers the ability to engineer an entire movement from the ground up, quality checks, and assembly. The physical production of parts — let’s say, the last practical step in the process carried out by CNC equipment — is carried out by the management at rented specialist workshops, such as Paoluzzo, just around the corner in Ipsach.

A beautifully executed 200-page book on Horage’s story, Engineering Swiss Made, is available through the brand’s online shop. If you’ve stuck around to the end of this article, this book is something that I’m sure you will enjoy reading. But there’s also a video that you should most definitely watch, Chasing Microns, produced by Eutopia Films with 2023 Oscar Award-winning director of photography Niki Waltl. Click this link and enjoy.

Did you learn something new about Horage today? If so, let me know in the comments below.