News · Marloe Watch Company

Marloe marks its new in-house workshop with five hand-assembled Watchmaker Editions

Marloe brought assembly and servicing in-house and marked it with five numbered watches, each carrying a British dial and a hand-wound Sellita, at 1,195 pounds.

Hen & Mills Editorial · 3 min read · 9 August 2026

A three-quarter view of the Marloe Pacific Watchmaker Edition showing the polished case, onion crown and coloured ring indices — Image: Marloe Watch Company

The hour markers are open rings, and every one of them is a different colour, sitting on a dial printed like graph paper. Stand the watch next to the photo on its own box and the joke clicks. Those are the colours watchmakers use to tell one screwdriver from another across a crowded bench. Small idea, played completely straight, and it gives a 40mm three-hander more to look at than another sunburst blue ever would.

The reason for it is that Marloe has built itself a workshop. Assembly, servicing and repair now happen under its own roof instead of being posted out to somebody else, and the Watchmaker Edition is how the brand is marking the day that room opened. Five watches, each numbered, each one put together at Marloe HQ by Alison, the head watchmaker. A brand throwing itself a party for its own back room is usually just marketing. This one has an actual change behind it.

The Marloe Pacific Watchmaker Edition, a white grid-pattern dial with coloured ring indices and a mint green sub-seconds dial, on a dark brown leather strap — Image: Marloe Watch Company

The Bedford dial and the words printed on it

The dial comes from Bedford Dials and is made in Britain, which at this money is rare enough to be worth reporting on its own. Small seconds sits at six, mint green with an orange hand. Printed on the dial are the words assembled in-house.

Marloe is careful with that phrasing, so we should be too. Assembled in house, not manufactured there, and the movement is Swiss. What has genuinely changed is that assembly, servicing and repair happen at Marloe rather than going in the post. That is the part you will care about the first time the watch needs work.

The exhibition caseback of the Watchmaker Edition showing the hand-wound Sellita movement with a Marloe M on the ratchet wheel — Image: Marloe Watch Company

Hand-wound, 12mm deep, 70.5 grams

Inside is a Sellita SW216-1: hand-wound, 23 jewels, small seconds, more than 46 hours of reserve. The case is 40mm across and 12mm deep on 20mm lugs, under a box sapphire with anti-reflective coating, and it weighs 70.5 grams before you hang a strap off it. Water resistance is 100 metres. The caseback is glazed, which is the right way round when there is no rotor sitting in front of the view.

Those numbers describe a watch that slips under a cuff and stays put, and the hand-winding is most of the reason it stays that thin. The SW216-1 is neither rare nor exotic. It is a sensible spine under a watch whose interest lives in the dial and in who assembled it.

1,195 pounds, and five of them

Marloe is asking 1,195 pounds. Dear against the rest of its catalogue, and not much at all for a numbered watch with a British dial that a named person built. There are five in existence, so it will not be hanging around. No Australian price, and on a run that size I wouldn't sit about waiting for one.

The objection is easy enough to make: 1,195 pounds buys plenty of Swiss watch from a brand more people have heard of. None of those arrive as one of five in the world with the name of the watchmaker who put yours together. Whether that is worth the difference comes down to taste. For the first thing out of a new workshop, I reckon it is.