The Analog Boom – Watch Sales Surge to Start 2026 – Episode 87
About this episode
The episode discusses the surge in US watch sales and the rise of analog culture, featuring guest George Bamford from Bamford London.
This week we're proud to welcome Bamford London to the Collective line card. George Bamford is the OG of modern collaborative watchmaking, but it's his own designs — the D300 Ceramic Diver, the Monopushers, the GMTs — that pulled us in: pieces that read as instantly recognizable without ever aping the usual suspects, built from forged carbon, ceramic, and titanium, at a genuinely accessible price. They also slot perfectly into the decade-plus renaissance in English design and watchmaking. Then we get into the real subject of the episode, which is almost the opposite of Bamford's forward-looking material science: the rise of analog culture, and why it's quietly driving one of the strongest stretches the US watch market has ever seen. US watch sales jumped nearly 30% in the first five months of 2026 — and that's sell-through reported by retailers, not sell-in. We felt it in our own business, posting our biggest sales month ever before June was even over. But the more interesting question is why, and we make the case that this moment is fundamentally different from the COVID boom. That run was narrow and speculative: a handful of steel sports references, mania, watches as assets to…
More episodes of Openwork: Inside the Watch Industry
- The Rise of Tudor – How Rolex Wins by Letting Tudor Dare – Episode 88
- Bonus: Reviving the U.S. Watch Industry – Josh Shapiro (J.N. Shapiro) – Episode 41
- Bonus: The Watches of Armin Strom – Claude Greisler (Co-founder & Master Watchmaker) – Episode 86
- Tariffs on the Rise (Again) – New Justifications, Higher Rates – Episode 85
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