Kultuhr Tourbillon Watch

Review: @killdozer

Vote now: (5 stars = masterpiece)

Number of votes: 22 | average rating: 2

This is a great product for so many reasons (yeah, I bought one) it's hard to know where to start. This watch is a celebration of the Chinese watch industry (which has been secretly supplying parts and assemblies to the Swiss luxury market for years) and it's got lashings of technology and style. For a start, it's a classic early 20th century swiss design which works very well juxtaposed with vibrant Eastern colour schemes and Mandarin characters. The matching stitching on the strap and blue cabochons on the winder and lugs also give it a kitsch finish which would be lame on a swiss watch (sorry Cartier bling wearers).

Then you have the tourbillon movement itself. It's designed to minimise the effects of gravity on the mechanism to limit variations in accuracy (isochronism) originally designed by the master of all watchmakers, Breguet, in the 1780s. The tourbillon movement is one of the most complex mechanisms ever designed for mass production, and they still take weeks to produce... months in some cases. If this was a swiss watch, it would cost about £20,000. It's actually about 5% of that... the Chinese don't operate a pricing cartel on watches unlike the Swiss.

Kultuhr is an important new brand because it's an outsider. It's a Chinese/Californian manufacturer, with avant guarde designs and reliable, exclusive technology at a low price... creatively they've taken the essence of a luxury product and achieved the impossible, they've made it funky and mass market without dumbing it down. They've also created a credible brand and are innovating in the cut-throat and rather predictable world of luxury goods - proof that disrupting existing markets with low cost products is still a winning strategy.

Check it out