Inside Hong Kong’s newly inclusive watch collecting community: how members’ clubs Watch Ho & Co. and The Horology Club are making timepieces cool – and accessible – for millennials and Gen Z

If you were a watch collector pre-pandemic looking for places to share your passion, seek insights from other collectors or just hang out to talk about your favourite pieces, you might have not known where to start. There were limited organised avenues of engagement with Hong Kong’s most prominent watch-loving communities of the time. Vintage Rolex Club and Hong Kong Watch Club, for example, may still be posting wrist shots on Instagram today, but when we messaged them to inquire further, we received no reply.

Times have changed, however, and 2023 has seen the emergence of more inclusive, highly visible watch communities. Indeed, it may be a combination of working around Covid-19 restrictions and creating alternatives to traditional watch gatherings that spawned two of Hong Kong’s most prominent communities today – Watch Ho & Co., and The Horology Club.

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“We were just a group of guys asking what we could do on the weekends with four people or less, and had to be home by 6pm,” remembers Watch Ho & Co. founder Jacky Ho. Around the end of 2021, the only place that the friends could meet was at members-only club Passage N, located on the 10th floor of the K11 Musea mall.

Ho ran his own private gatherings and oversaw a collaboration with the Digital Art Fair, until Clarence Cheung and Dickson Chin approached him near the end of 2022 to start something more formal together.

That resulted in the group’s official launch this May, when upwards of 100 people showed up from across the region to support, have drinks and talk watches. Since then, the group have maintained a mix of events large and small, ranging from brand visits from the likes of Bulgari and A. Lange & Söhne, to simple dinners.

Operating under the motto of “good vibes only”, approachability is the key to Watch Ho & Co. “No matter the value or quantity of your collection, as long as you come and want to meet like-minded people, see more watches and be in the company of people like you, you’re welcome,” Ho explains. “You can come to say as much or – because not everyone loves to speak – as little as you want.”

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It seems inclusivity is sorely needed, as Ho had also faced issues when attempting to reach out to the longer-established watch gatherings such as Hong Kong Watch Club, which appears to be a more traditional, clandestine sort of community. “They meet in secret locations,” Ho says, “have cigars, hang out, without lectures or big events, and they were happy enough without trying to bring in newer members or outsiders.”

Another newer group is The Horology Club (THC), whose founders Johnathan Chan, Carlos Pang and Helbert Tsang recently celebrated its second birthday with an event which saw a comforting combination of industry-heavy panel talks and huddles of collectors around the room admiring and discussing watches.

The trio too had issues with the existing culture around watches and sought to build a more inclusive and visible platform. “The whole reason we started this was to have a community like the ones we would want to join,” Chan explains. “[Pre-pandemic], there weren’t that many. There was Hong Kong Watch Club and Vintage Rolex Club but there wasn’t anything that was inclusive or had quite the same philosophy.”

In April 2021, the trio gathered a few friends to chip in on a collaboration with down-to-earth independent brand Habring², resulting in a 10-piece run of the Erwin THC School Piece. “They asked us what we wanted engraved on the back of the watch and we just came up with something – The Horology Club,” says Tsang. The rest is, as they say, history.

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However, it was a different ethos that resulted in the group’s astronomical growth to hundreds of members since its launch. Under their pillars “create, gather, educate”, the group follow a knowledge-based approach to their gatherings, mixing large events with smaller focused groups for brand visits, drinks and more. The trio have built a YouTube channel and have instigated potential collaborative pieces for their members with brands Cartier, Nivada Grenchen and Trilobe.

“I admire the guy who is able to study 10 years of horology, before deciding on the watch they want,” Chan quips. “This is way more informed than someone who needs to get their first watch just so that you can look cool, or even feel presentable at watch gatherings. You can come to The Horology Club with just an Apple Watch!”

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows for these organisers however. Both Watch Ho & Co. and THC find the cost of events and managing personalities the biggest headaches. Though Watch Ho & Co’s launch event was a success, Ho reveals it ended up losing them money.

“I used to get upset that people suspect we were doing it to make a profit,” Ho says, “because it takes a lot of work before, during and after the event to make sure things are in place and on time, that things run smoothly, and then to ensure clean-up afterwards – when those suspicious people are already heading home and posting about what a great night it was.”

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With size comes increasingly complicated group dynamics. “We went through some teething problems at the beginning,” Tsang says. “Letting people know the level of conduct that’s expected within the chat groups or events. I think we try not to get too involved in people’s discussion so they can speak freely – we don’t enjoy moderating what people are saying, but we do try to make sure everyone remains respectful to one another.”

All the effort ensures that newcomers are welcome and comfortable at any Watch Ho & Co. or THC gathering. But what can someone joining an event for the first time expect?

For one thing, it’s not about status or money. “A member once said to me after an event, that in the two to three hours they were there, not once did anybody ask what they did for a living,” says THC’s Pang. “It was all about watches and our passion for horology, and this is rarely found elsewhere.”

Both Chan and Tsang add that being able to speak to other collectors and trying watches at gatherings can shape your perspectives, adding to your collecting journey.

“We all have to start somewhere. I didn’t just wake up one day and have knowledge or a collection,” Ho says. “But if you’re in the right community, you’ll see there are many people who are at your stage or even at an earlier stage. There can be a lot of friendly, open people who will share this with you. Every collection starts at one watch.”