Oldbury Watch Co. was founded in 2026 in Oldbury, England with a simple mission: to craft the most beautiful, high-quality, quartz dress watches we possibly can while honouring our local history and heritage. Watches that bring the past into the present and create: A NEW HISTORY.
The dress watch used to be the standard: well-proportioned, elegant watches for all wrists; now for most brands it is an afterthought. Not so at Oldbury Watch Co. We want to bring back the glory days of the dress watch with a focus on beautiful aesthetics AND excellent quality. A watch is more than the sum of its parts, but every component should still stand on its own merit; to be the very best it can be in its own right; while also forming a complete package. No compromises. No half measures.
Oldbury Watch Co. takes its name from the place where it was founded: Oldbury, a market town within an area called the Black Country in the West Midlands of England near to the much more well known city of Birmingham. The Black Country is a peculiar name for a place, but it is an historic nickname which simply refers to either the 30 foot deep coal seem which sits beneath the surface, or the high amounts of soot and air pollution caused by industry during its industrial past. The opening line to American author Elihu Burritt’s 1868 book Walks in the Black Country and Its Green Borderland famously reads: black by day and red by night, and it's this description which formed the inspiration for the Black Country flag which has been adopted by proud locals as a symbol of unity.
The Black Country was one of the heartlands of the industrial revolution especially renowned for glassmaking and metalworking. For example the glass for the world-famous Crystal Palace constructed in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851 was manufactured by Chance Brothers and Company of Spon Lane, Smethwick, a world-renowned glassmaking pioneer and the only glass company large enough to handle such a huge project; and the chains and anchors for the ill-fated Titanic were manufactured in Netherton near Dudley by Noah Hingley and Sons.
A Note From the Founder:
My name is Louis and I was born and raised in Oldbury, the town where Oldbury Watch Co. hails from. I have been a keen watch enthusiast and collector for many years and more recently I have been creating watch related content on Instagram and YouTube over the last 5 years or so under the name As Time Decides. I love dress watches, but find most modern dress watches to be soulless and unremarkable. So I started Oldbury Watch Co. to make the most glorious dress watches I possibly can and to connect with people like you who appreciate dress watches as much as I do.
