A small American watch company cannot grow on branding alone. It needs benches, people, and a place where the work happens. The story behind Towson Watch Company's new local watchmaking foundation in Maryland — and our work with Baltimore Watch Company.
A watch brand is only as strong as the hands behind it. You can have the designs, the history, the supplier relationships, and the story — but in the end, someone has to sit at a bench and do the work. That has always been true of Towson Watch Company, and it is the reason I want to explain what we are building next.
Where we come from
Towson Watch Company was founded by Hartwig Balke and George Thomas — two craftsmen who set a standard the brand has carried ever since. They built watches by hand, in Maryland, with an obsessive attention to how a timepiece is actually made. Everything we do still answers to that standard. It is the inheritance, and it is not negotiable.
The international thread
From the beginning, Towson has carried two worlds at once. Hartwig brought relationships from Pforzheim, Germany, and from Switzerland — rare, family-run workshops that produce cases, dials, components, and finishing at a level very few brands can access. Those relationships are still essential to us, and nothing about them is changing. The craft chain that defines a Towson Watch runs straight through Europe, and it always will.
The piece that was missing
What we did not have, honestly, was enough local depth. For years, Towson's watchmaking lived in a serious but scattered network — real skill, real history, but not enough bench strength, continuity, or a clear path for an owner who simply needed their watch serviced. The talent was never the question. The structure was.
What we are building
That is what our work with Baltimore Watch Company is really about. Led by Alan Tsao, Baltimore Watch Company is a serious local operation — the kind of shop, infrastructure, and bench culture a brand like ours needs around it to grow. It gives Towson real watchmaking resources a short drive away, in Baltimore, rather than scattered across the country.
Two people make that especially meaningful to me. Eugene, formerly of Maryland Watch Works, is a designer and watchmaker in his own right — someone whose work I respected long before any of this came together. And Antonio was trained directly by Hartwig and George, which means the brand's original watchmaking culture is not a memory or a marketing line. It is in the room, at the bench, in the next generation of hands.