Ming 17.09 and the new-microbrand economics
A 38mm titanium watch made in Kuala Lumpur, sold direct to a waiting list, and the model it has built around itself.
Ming Thein started making watches in Kuala Lumpur in 2017. He had been a photographer, a McKinsey consultant, and a collector before that. He makes watches now because, by his own account, the watches he wanted to own at the price he was willing to pay did not exist. Six years in, Ming is producing around a thousand pieces a year across a range that now includes dive watches, dress watches, a GMT, and several special-series editions. The 17.09 is the piece that defines what the brand does.
The 17.09 is a 38mm time-only watch with a grade-5 titanium case, a sapphire dial, a domed sapphire crystal, and a Sellita-based movement with serious modifications. It costs around 3,000 Swiss francs. It does not compete directly with any established brand, because at that price, nothing else looks or feels like it does. The case is finished in ways that 3,000-franc watches are not usually finished. The dial, made from a single piece of sapphire with the indices behind the crystal, is a manufacturing choice that requires either a very expensive supplier relationship or an unusual willingness to work outside the Swiss supply chain. Ming has both.
The more interesting question is not what the watch is, but how Ming has managed to build a business making it.
The traditional independent watchmaker — Voutilainen, Rexhepi, Philippe Dufour in his most active period — makes somewhere between ten and one hundred watches a year, finished to a standard that only small production allows, at prices that reflect the labour. This is a viable business for a very small number of makers whose waiting lists run into years. It is not a model that can support more than a handful of brands at any one time.
Ming is doing something different. The 17.09 is not a hand-finished piece in the Voutilainen sense. It is a watch designed with the discipline of a collector who understands what makes watches look good, manufactured through a network of small Swiss and Asian suppliers, and sold directly to a waiting list of buyers via the brand's website. Ming has bypassed the boutique distribution model, bypassed the Watches and Wonders trade-show ecosystem, bypassed the Swiss watch-press cycle, and built a brand that communicates entirely through Instagram, its own blog, and word of mouth in the collector community.
This is the microbrand economics story. A decade ago, a thousand-watch-a-year brand could not exist because it could not afford distribution, could not afford marketing, and could not access suppliers willing to work at that volume. The internet changed the distribution problem. Social media changed the marketing problem. The growth of a Chinese and Taiwanese supplier ecosystem, combined with the increasing willingness of smaller Swiss suppliers to work with small brands, changed the manufacturing problem. Ming is one of a handful of brands — alongside Massena LAB, Serica, Anordain, and a few others — that have built serious businesses inside this new space.
The 17.09 is the cleanest expression of it. The watch looks and feels like it should cost two or three times what it does, and the reason it does not is that Ming has stripped out almost every cost that a traditional brand carries. There is no boutique. There is no trade show. There is no advertising. There is no marketing department. There is a small team in Malaysia designing watches, a network of suppliers making them, and a website taking orders.
The counter-argument is that the microbrand model is fragile. A brand that depends on a single founder's taste, a single country's political stability, and a single distribution channel's goodwill is one disruption away from failure. This is true. It is also true of most small businesses.
The more interesting point is that the model exists at all. Ten years ago, a watch with the specifications and finishing of the 17.09 at 3,000 francs was not possible. It is now. Whatever happens to Ming specifically, that category is not going back.
For the collector — particularly the collector who does not want to wait three years for a Rolex or pay 75,000 francs for a Rexhepi — the 17.09 is the current strongest argument for the microbrand category. The watch is good. The price is honest. The supply is limited but not punishing. You can buy one this year if you are quick.
Most of the established brands cannot say the same.