WATCHES BY THE COUNTRY
The Watchmakers of New Zealand
Where the Southern Alps, glacial lakes, and the wide Pacific are wound into steel and bronze.
Image: source
New Zealand has no centuries-old manufacture tradition, no valley of family ateliers passing loupes down the generations. What it has instead is something quietly thrilling: a scene built almost entirely on independent microbrands, run by founders who treat the country’s dramatic geography as a design brief. Dive watches summon the Pacific. Field watches answer to the high country. The result is a horological identity defined by passion rather than heritage — and one that consistently punches above its weight on the global microbrand stage.
That craft culture has a backbone, too. A growing community of collectors, alongside the Watchmakers Institute of New Zealand (WINZ), gives new makers somewhere to learn, trade, and grow. The two brands below are among the country’s best-known names — proof that you don’t need a 19th-century pedigree to build watches people genuinely covet. As the enthusiast site WhichWatch.org notes in its survey of Kiwi makers, the local roster is small but characterful, with these two leading the conversation.
The Makers
Magrette Timepieces
Magrette Timepieces is, for many collectors, the face of New Zealand watchmaking. Founded in Auckland in 2006 by passionate collector Dion Wynyard McAsey, the brand was conceived around the romance of yachting and “a mysterious older world,” and it has built a loyal following on robust, high-quality dive and sport watches released in restricted batches. Its catalogue runs to automatic mechanical movements under sapphire crystal, with strong Māori cultural threads woven through models like the Moana Pacific. Magrette’s most distinctive flourish is its occasional hand-engraved cases — one-of-a-kind work that pushes the brand from accessible tool watch into genuine collectible territory — alongside GMT complications for the traveler. It’s the rare microbrand whose name carries weight well beyond its home shores.
Image: source
Draken Watches
If Magrette looks to the sea, Draken Watches looks to the land and sky. Based in the small town of Waipu and founded in 2015, Draken builds hard-wearing field and outdoor watches with original designs rather than off-the-shelf homages — gear meant to be used hard and worn often. The standout is the Aoraki Flieger, named for New Zealand’s highest peak and blending vintage aviation styling with the kind of robust specification that survives real adventuring, all at an accessible NZD price point. Draken’s appeal is its honesty: tough, legible, purpose-built watches that wear their rugged intentions plainly, with a value proposition that has won it fans among everyday adventurers and collectors alike.
Where to Find Them
- Magrette Timepieces — magrette.com
- Draken Watches — drakenwatches.com
Two brands, one small nation, and a watchmaking spirit that owes everything to landscape and nothing to inherited prestige. New Zealand proves that horology doesn’t require a heritage manufacture — just founders willing to translate mountains, oceans, and culture into objects you can wear on your wrist. Keep an eye on the Kiwis; the best of this scene is still being written.
And at Spot.Watch — that’s always worth noticing.