Elliot Brown began with a goal to build the most wearable, affordable, toughest watches on the planet.
Long term friends Ian Elliot and Alex Brown share many years of totally unique watch making skills from the world of extreme sport and it’s this knowledge that forms the bedrock behind their extraordinarily capable watches. They are values that sit firmly behind every timepiece the company makes and give an insight as to how the brand naturally collaborates with organisations including, the Armed Forces, Mountain Rescue England & Wales, Land Rover, government agencies and blue light services.
The business was conceived working late nights and weekends for two and a half years until they were ready to throw off their career comfort blankets and open the doors to Elliot Brown in 2013. Elliot Brown’s raison d’etre is to make the absolute best of breed watches, that exceed expectations, that are 100% fit for purpose, who’s stories of survival and real world testing are honest and genuine.
“We started with a blank sheet that gave us the freedom to imagine just how good we could make a watch. No corporate restrictions, no preconceptions, armed with 20 years of unique skills needed to build the most naturally durable watches on the planet – no corners cut, every detail built up to our own high standards, not down to a price.”
Ian Elliot, Co-Founder, Elliot Brown Watches
Every watch is inspired by their coastal lifestyle in Dorset, built to the highest standard with specialised components and immense durability. With an obsessive, engineering background, they utilise deep reserves of specialist watch making knowledge from careers in extreme sports to bring to life the watches they’ve always imagined.
One of the best examples of this is the Beachmaster® timepiece which was several years in development while they took time to let their naturally obsessive natures get to work. The original idea for Beachmaster® came from a team of Royal Marines who asked if we could design a mission timer capable of counting down to the start of an event then counting up to show the elapsed time or to a target rendezvous time without sub dials or anything extraneous.
Undaunted by the fact that apparently no-one had ever designed anything like this before, and almost three years since inception, they were still tweaking, honing, adjusting line weights, case details, bezel design, chamfers, undercuts, brushing, polishing, lume colours, hand dimensions and finishes.
A true GMT watch displays the time in a second time zone via a separate 24 hour scale. They started sketching hands with two reference pointers, one for the outer mission timing scale and one for the inboard to reference an inner 24h.
Ian and Alex spent many hours researching whether they had arrived at a unique way of determining the GMT function, and after a lot of looking and not much finding, they began to consider the possibility that the watch they’d designed was actually a brand new idea. The next step was to go for a patent application, which after an agonising wait, was approved.
Every watch shares the same unique capabilities including shock resistance, total water protection and ruggedised with weapons grade materials wrapped in functional, fit-for-purpose designs.
Elliot Brown continually hone and develop new ways of ruggedising watches that perform better, last longer and provide immense value. They believe that wearing one of their watches takes the anxiety out of watch ownership because they never need to be removed when the going gets tough.
This is achieved by working with specialist branches of the military, emergency services, and professionals who hike, climb, row, cycle, swim, skydive, ski, snowboard, surf, sail and run to the far corners of the globe as they understand how the watches (and straps) perform.
Elliot Brown’s mission is to build the best damn watches and straps, with years of highly specialist knowledge that allows them to follow their own unique path and never cut corners for a quick win. They are on a path of continual development, sometimes spending hours developing an internal component no-one may ever see or hear about but it’s these details that are so important and what gives customers a tremendous sense of comfort in the knowledge that they’ve sweated late into the night and lifted the unturned stones to make sure the watch wearing experience is as effortless as it is a pleasure.
This really sums up the company well and we look forward to seeing what exciting developments come next.
For more information please visit Elliot Brown Watches