Feb 13, 202612 min read

⚡ Key Takeaways

• ✓FTS AmeriQuartz Caliber 7129 Moonphase movement (assembled, tested, and regulated in Fountain Hills, Arizona)
• ✓Two Super-LumiNova planets indicating hours and minutes (unconventional non-traditional hands)
• ✓44mm × 16mm hand-finished 316L stainless steel case
• ✓Hesalite domed crystal (the same material used by NASA on space missions)
• ✓U.S. Horween leather straps with ridges modeled on texturized space gloves

The San Francisco Bay Area gave the world the Apple Watch, houses the planet's most valuable tech companies, and sits at the epicenter of innovation culture. With 7.8 million people, billions in venture capital flowing through Sand Hill Road, and more disposable income per capita than almost anywhere on Earth, you'd expect the region to be an American watchmaking powerhouse.

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Instead, the Bay Area hosts just three consumer microbrand watch companies.

Three. Total.

Los Angeles has four. Chicago has six. Even Miami—a city known more for cruise ships than craftsmanship—has carved out its own niche with LIV Swiss Watches' Kickstarter dominance.

What happened? Why did the birthplace of Silicon Valley's smartwatch revolution never develop a thriving mechanical watch scene? And who are the three brands stubborn (or inspired) enough to build watches in America's most expensive real estate market?

This is the story of Treehut's sustainable wood watches handcrafted in San Francisco proper, Xeric's space-age Kickstarter phenomenon from Danville, and Bespoke Watch Projects' hand-engraved intaglio dials from an Oakland artist's studio. It's also the story of what happens when an entire region chooses Apple Watches over automatics—and why mechanical romance couldn't compete with software-scale returns.

The Bay Area Scene: Smaller Than You Think #

Before diving into the three brands that actually call the Bay Area home, let's clear up some common confusion. The Bay Area watch scene is so small that several brands from other regions often get mistakenly associated with San Francisco.

Original Grain? Not San Francisco—they're based in San Diego, about 500 miles south. Founded by Oregon brothers Ryan and Andrew Beltran in 2013, they pioneered whiskey barrel wood watches but relocated to Southern California.

Rotate Watches? Also not Bay Area. This woman-owned DIY watch kit company operates out of Los Angeles, where their mechanical watch building kits are designed, assembled, and shipped.

Farr and Swit? Despite sometimes appearing on "San Francisco watch" lists, they're a Chicago brand through and through. Their Seaplane Automatic GMT takes direct inspiration from the Chicago River.

The actual Bay Area microbrand scene consists of:

Brand	Description	Price Range
Treehut (San Francisco proper)	Sustainable wood watches handcrafted by husband-wife team Joe and Julia	$75–$350
Xeric (Danville, East Bay)	Unconventional space-age designs from Kickstarter kings Mitch and Andrew Greenblatt	$139–$500+
Bespoke Watch Projects (Oakland)	Hand-engraved intaglio dial masterpieces from designer John Beck McConnico	$475–$1,500+

That's it. Three brands across the entire 8,000-square-mile Bay Area region. To understand why, we need to talk about April 24, 2015.

The Day Everything Changed: April 24, 2015 #

That's the day Apple released the Apple Watch. Tim Cook unveiled it in Cupertino—the heart of the Bay Area—and it became the most successful smartwatch launch in history.

The timing couldn't have been worse for anyone dreaming of building a mechanical watch company in Silicon Valley.

2013 to 2018 was the golden age of American microbrand launches. Oak & Oscar launched in Chicago (2015). VAER started in Venice Beach (2016). Nodus began in Long Beach (2017). Weiss had already established itself in Los Angeles (2013). These brands found their audiences, built communities, and proved that American watchmaking could compete on design and value.

But in the Bay Area? The Apple Watch became the tech uniform almost overnight.

Walk through any tech campus today—Google, Meta, Apple, the venture capital firms lining Sand Hill Road—and you'll see Apple Watch Ultras on nearly every wrist. Not Rolex Submariners. Not Omega Speedmasters. Certainly not $500 microbrands from Chicago or LA.

The Apple Watch offered everything Silicon Valley values: fitness tracking for those obsessive morning runs, Slack notifications without pulling out an iPhone, Apple Pay at Blue Bottle Coffee, and most importantly—it screamed "I'm part of the future, not the past."

Mechanical watches? Those became collector's items for tech millionaires shopping at Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry in Menlo Park, dropping $50,000 on an MB&F or Urwerk as trophy pieces.

The Venture Capital Problem #

The middle ground—the $500 to $1,500 microbrands that thrived in other cities—never found purchase in the Bay Area.

Why buy a Nodus dive watch when your Apple Watch Ultra tracks your actual dives? Why wear an Oak & Oscar field watch when your smartwatch tells you your heart rate, sleep quality, and whether you've closed your activity rings?

The cultural shift was seismic. Before 2015, newly minted tech millionaires wore Rolex and Panerai as status symbols post-IPO. After 2015, those same watches collected dust in safes while Apple Watches became daily wearers.

And if you were a talented designer or engineer in the Bay Area with a passion for watches? You had two choices: join a wearable tech startup (Oura Ring, Whoop, Fitbit) with venture capital backing and the promise of a billion-dollar exit, or bootstrap a mechanical watch company making $40,000 a year while your college roommate pulled $300,000 at Google.

The math wasn't hard.

Mechanical watch companies don't fit the venture capital playbook. A typical microbrand sells a $500 watch that costs $250 to make. Gross margins around 50%. Maybe you sell 1,000 watches the first year if you're lucky. That's $500,000 in revenue, $250,000 in gross profit, and after marketing, operations, and your own poverty wages, you're thrilled to break even in year five.

Now pitch that to a Sand Hill Road VC. "Where's the software component?" they'll ask. "Where's the network effect? Can you add sensors? What about subscription revenue? How do we get to a hundred million users?"

The answer: You don't. Watches are hardware. Beautiful, mechanical, lovingly-crafted hardware that will never scale like software. No venture capitalist wants to hear about 5-year breakeven timelines and artisan manufacturing when they're hunting for the next 100x return.

So the talent that might have built Bay Area microbrands? They pitched smartwatch startups instead. Oura Ring raised hundreds of millions. Whoop became a unicorn. Fitbit sold to Google for $2.1 billion.

Mechanical watches couldn't compete with those economics. Not in a region where "disruption" and "exponential growth" are secular religion.

Real Estate: The $3,500 Rent Problem #

Try bootstrapping a watch company when your one-bedroom apartment costs $3,500 a month.

That's the median rent in San Francisco. Commercial workshop space? Figure $5 to $10 per square foot. Now imagine you're making maybe $30,000 to $50,000 your first few years selling watches, burning through savings, hoping to break even by year five.

Compare that to Chicago, where you can find commercial space for $2 to $4 per square foot and rent a decent apartment for $1,500. Or Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where RGM Watches operates in a small town with overhead a fraction of Bay Area costs.

The economics simply don't work. The same $100,000 in seed capital that might fund three years of operations in Chicago buys you maybe 18 months in San Francisco—and that's if you're living lean.

It's no accident that Xeric operates from Danville, a suburban town 35 miles from San Francisco. Or that Bespoke Watch Projects shares workshop space with an apparel company to split costs. These aren't downtown San Francisco operations with Marina District lifestyles. These are businesses that survive by keeping overhead manageable.

Treehut ($75–$350, San Francisco) #

Founded circa 2013–2014 in San Francisco by husband-wife team Joe and Julia, Treehut is the only microbrand actually headquartered and manufacturing in San Francisco proper.

Treehut delivers handcrafted wooden watches from their San Francisco studio using sustainable materials including walnut, ebony, zebrawood, and olive wood. Their Ocean Waste Collection incorporates recycled ocean plastics, and all wood is FSC-certified.

The Watches #

All-Wood Collection ($100–$200): 100% wood construction with Japanese Miyota quartz movements offering up to 5-year battery life. Minimalist dial designs, hypoallergenic, lightweight, with each watch featuring unique wood grain patterns.

Wood + Steel Hybrid ($150–$300): Wood dial/bezel combined with stainless steel case and bracelet. Scratch-resistant mineral crystal, splash-proof (not swim/dive rated).

Marble + Wood Collection ($150–$250): Marble stone dials with wood accents, each one-of-a-kind with natural patterns.

Automatic Watches ($250–$350): Mechanical self-winding movements with exhibition casebacks, representing Treehut's premium tier.

Ocean Waste Collection ($150–$300): Recycled ocean plastic components demonstrating environmental responsibility commitment.

Customization #

Treehut's "secret sauce" is personalization at scale. Custom engravings on caseback or wooden gift boxes ship from California in under 2 business days. Their Watch Builder tool allows customers to choose materials, size, price points, and wood grain varieties across 17 different collections.

Why They Matter #

As the only microbrand actually in SF proper and a Bay Area Made member, Treehut represents authentic San Francisco artisan culture. Their $75–$350 range democratizes wood watches compared to $500–$1,000 premium wood brands, with Amazon Prime availability alongside direct website sales.

Xeric ($139–$500+, Danville, East Bay) #

Founded in 2013 by brothers Mitch and Andrew Greenblatt, Xeric operates from Danville, California—about 35 miles east of San Francisco in the East Bay.

Mitch's origin story begins in 1998 when he received his first watch and fell in love with vintage timepieces. By 1999, he was reselling vintage watches on eBay, earning a feature in Vogue Magazine's September issue. Watchismo.com was born. By 2007, a French watch brand approached Mitch for U.S. distribution, and Andrew joined to formalize the business. In 2013, they identified the gap for unusual yet affordable mechanical watches and launched Xeric with the Xeriscope Kickstarter campaign.

Kickstarter Mastery #

Xeric has completed 25+ successful Kickstarter campaigns since 2013, including the most-funded mechanical timepiece in Kickstarter history. Their cumulative Kickstarter funding exceeds $3.4 million, with $3M+ in sales during just their first two years.

The Trappist-1 Moonphase Series ($139–$350) #

Inspired by NASA's February 2017 discovery of the Trappist-1 solar system—seven Earth-like planets 39 light-years away—this collection features:

• FTS AmeriQuartz Caliber 7129 Moonphase movement (assembled, tested, and regulated in Fountain Hills, Arizona)
• Two Super-LumiNova planets indicating hours and minutes (unconventional non-traditional hands)
• 44mm × 16mm hand-finished 316L stainless steel case
• Hesalite domed crystal (the same material used by NASA on space missions)
• U.S. Horween leather straps with ridges modeled on texturized space gloves
• Limited edition: each colorway limited to 2,017 pieces commemorating the discovery year

A moonphase complication under $200 is remarkable—Swiss equivalents typically run $800–$2,000.

Other Collections #

Xeriscope: The original 2013 launch with skeletal open-heart design and visible mechanical movement. Halograph: Holographic time display using discs and rotating elements. Soloscope: Single-hand minimalist time display. NASA Collections: Official NASA partnership watches beyond Trappist-1.

Why They Matter #

Xeric proved crowdfunding is a viable luxury watch launch model, pioneering the approach before LIV and the broader microbrand boom. Their adoption of the FTS AmeriQuartz movement supports U.S. manufacturing revival. Mitch Greenblatt's horological credibility—from Vogue features to his Thames & Hudson published book "Retro Watches"—legitimizes Xeric's designs as informed artistry, not gimmickry.

Bespoke Watch Projects ($475–$1,500+, Oakland) #

Founded in 2014 by John Beck McConnico, Bespoke Watch Projects operates from a 1,000-square-foot North Oakland studio divided into a "clean room" for watch assembly and a "dirty room" for dial engraving, patina application, strap making, and prototyping.

McConnico studied architecture and furniture design at Otis-Parsons School in Los Angeles, spent 20+ years as a creative director for brands including Apple, Sony, and NBC, and maintained a parallel career as a fine artist. In 2012, after 25 years of collecting watches, he thought: "What would it take to design my own?" He learned through veteran watchmakers' mentorship, horological workshops, and self-teaching.

Intaglio Dial Specialization #

McConnico's signature technique: hand-drawn and digital art engraved onto patinated metals (brass, copper, sterling silver, gold alloy) via laser and mechanical engraving methods. Custom patinas and surface treatments are applied using proprietary "recipes" developed in-house. Each dial is essentially a unique piece of art.

The materials are recycled brass, copper, and sterling silver, creating aged vintage aesthetics with verdigris greens, copper oxidation, and brass tarnish. The result: watches that feel vintage and historical yet modern and fresh.

Custom Builds #

Bay Area customers can meet in person for consultations. Remote customers work through online consultations and email design iterations. An interactive Watch Builder tool on the website allows customizing dials, hands, cases, straps, and movements. Lead times for custom builds typically run weeks to months.

Specifications #

Mechanical automatic or hand-wound Swiss ETA/Sellita base movements, 38mm–42mm vintage-inspired cases in 316L stainless steel (with occasional brass/bronze limited editions), sapphire crystal with AR coating, and handmade leather straps using cut-offs and dead stock materials for zero-waste sustainability.

Why They Matter #

Bespoke is the only Bay Area microbrand genuinely assembling and finishing watches in-house. McConnico's hand-engraved intaglio dials are unmatched in the microbrand world—a technique rare even among Swiss independents. At $475–$1,045 for readymade models, Bespoke undercuts Swiss independents ($5,000–$50,000) while offering genuine artisan craftsmanship. The brand is a Bay Area Made member representing Oakland's maker culture.

Bay Area vs. Other American Scenes #

Bay Area (3) vs. Los Angeles (4) #

LA wins with VAER ($259–$935, largest independent U.S. assembler), Nodus ($479–$800, proprietary Extension clasp), Weiss ($950–$1,950, American-made Caliber 1003), and J.N. Shapiro ($26,000–$85,000, 148/180 components made in-house). LA developed its ecosystem before the Apple Watch cultural shift, with aerospace fabrication infrastructure and more affordable areas for bootstrapping.

Bay Area (3) vs. Chicago (6) #

Chicago dominates with Oak & Oscar, Astor + Banks, Haim, Farr + Swit, Wolfpoint, and Hampden—six brands ranging $169–$2,650 with strong city-specific design themes (Chicago River, Horween leather, Wrigley Field). Chicago's industrial manufacturing legacy, affordable cost of living, and pre-smartphone watch community appreciation gave it structural advantages the Bay Area lacks.

Bay Area (3) vs. Miami (1) #

Both underperformed their potential. Both are Kickstarter-driven (LIV + Xeric are crowdfunding kings). Both lack ecosystem diversity compared to LA, Chicago, or NYC.

The Clicky Bezel Distinction: Retail vs. Manufacturing #

Clicky Bezel in Union Square, founded by YouTuber and watch enthusiast Chris, is a microbrand retailer, not a manufacturer. They curate global microbrands (including Baltic from France) and make handmade leather straps, but they don't design or assemble watches. This distinction perfectly illustrates the Bay Area's watch culture: consumption-focused, not manufacturing-focused.

Why No Bay Area Brand Uses Local Themes #

Chicago brands celebrate the Chicago River, Horween leather, and Wrigley Field. Detroit brands reference Art Deco architecture and automotive heritage. LA brands embed Venice Beach and California surfing culture. But Bay Area brands? Zero Golden Gate Bridge references. Zero Silicon Valley tech themes. Zero cable car or Alcatraz homages.

Why? Because Apple Watch equals tech culture, and mechanical watches represent the opposite. Because the founders aren't SF natives. Because the Bay Area's scattered geography (SF ≠ Oakland ≠ Danville ≠ San Jose) prevents a unified identity. And because tech wealth signals success with Swiss luxury, not local microbrand pride.

When to Choose Bay Area Microbrands #

Choose Treehut When: #

• Sustainable wood aesthetics are your priority
• You need personalized engraving gifts with 2-day turnaround
• You need a hypoallergenic metal alternative
• Supporting San Francisco family artisans matters to you
• You want an affordable wood watch entry point ($75–$350)

Choose Xeric When: #

• Unconventional time displays fascinate you
• Space and sci-fi aesthetics appeal to you
• You want an affordable moonphase complication ($139–$350)
• You appreciate Kickstarter microbrand history
• You want to support American quartz movement manufacturing

Choose Bespoke Watch Projects When: #

• Hand-engraved intaglio dial artistry is what you value most
• You want a custom, made-to-order build
• Oakland artisan provenance appeals to you
• The "accessible heirloom" positioning resonates ($475–$1,500+)
• You appreciate Modernist design and Art Deco aesthetics

Conclusion: The Irony of Silicon Valley Watchmaking #

The San Francisco Bay Area—birthplace of the Apple Watch, home to eight trillion dollars in tech wealth, the innovation capital of the world—produces exactly three consumer microbrands.

Treehut represents what could have been: a small, authentic family operation handcrafting sustainable watches in a San Francisco studio. Joe and Julia perfecting wood and steel combinations, offering custom engravings with two-day turnaround, building a loyal following one personalized gift at a time.

Xeric proves that microbrand success is possible in the Bay Area, but only by playing a different game entirely. Twenty-five successful Kickstarter campaigns later, they're one of crowdfunding's watch royalty—but they operate from Danville, not downtown San Francisco.

Bespoke Watch Projects exemplifies everything the Bay Area should celebrate: artisan craftsmanship, zero-waste sustainability, designer pedigree from working with Apple and Sony. John McConnico's hand-engraved intaglio dials are genuinely unique in the microbrand world. Yet a decade in, it remains a one-man operation in Oakland.

April 24, 2015 changed everything. The Apple Watch launched, and Silicon Valley made its choice: smartwatches over mechanicals, software over artisanship, exponential growth over patient craftsmanship.

The talent that might have built Bay Area watchmaking went to wearable tech startups instead. The venture capital that could have funded artisan manufacturing chased billion-dollar exits. The real estate that might have housed workshops became tech offices and luxury condos.

What remains is a thriving retail scene—Clicky Bezel curating global microbrands, Topper Fine Jewelers collaborating on limited editions, Stephen Silver selling Urwerk and MB&F to tech millionaires. The Bay Area consumes watches voraciously. It just doesn't make them.

The three brands that survived did so by being exceptional in completely different ways: Treehut's family artisanship, Xeric's design innovation, Bespoke's hand-engraving mastery. They're not just good microbrands—they're the only microbrands stubborn or inspired enough to build mechanical watches in America's most expensive, most tech-obsessed market.

And that's the ultimate irony. The region that revolutionized how the world tells time couldn't sustain a mechanical watch industry. The birthplace of the smartwatch became a desert for horology's oldest art.

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