Behrens

Behrens is China's most internationally visible independent watchmaking brand — founded in Shenzhen in 2012 by Lin Bingqiang, a veteran of the OEM watchmaking industry who had operated his own production facility in Shenzhen for fifteen years before placing it in the service of his own creative vision. The brand's co-founder and International Business Development Manager is Eric So — an engineer who spent two decades as editor-in-chief and publisher of Spiral, Hong Kong's leading independent watch magazine, and who brings a collector's instinct and a press-world sensibility to the brand's positioning. The name Behrens is a tribute to Peter Behrens (1868–1940) — the legendary German architect, graphic designer, and product designer who pioneered the concept of modern industrial design and served as a mentor to Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier, three of the most consequential designers of the 20th century. That lineage — imagination, structure, and functional beauty — captures precisely what Lin set out to create in watchmaking. The brand has more than 20 in-house CNC machines and a dedicated 3D printing and prototyping department, giving it an agility that Eric So describes succinctly: 'What would take a year to produce in another structure, we do in three months.' Its watches are known for unconventional mechanical modules that reimagine how time is displayed — not aesthetically different from convention, but mechanically different.

The watch that first brought Behrens to international attention was the Rotary, launched in 2020 — a watch directly inspired by the rotary Wankel engine of the Mazda 787B, the car that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1991 and remains one of motorsport's most celebrated machines. In the Rotary, the twin counter-rotating triangular rotors of that engine are reinterpreted as the hour and minute indicators, driven by a Swiss Sellita SW200 base movement with a custom in-house module, and presented in a mechanical display that draws immediate comparison to the collaboration between MB&F and Urwerk — but at a price under USD 5,000. Its companion in 2020 was the Apolar — the first watch ever to display the Earth-Moon orbital relationship as a live mechanical system: a three-dimensional terrestrial globe at 12 o'clock rotates once every 24 hours as a day/night indicator, while a smaller sphere on an inclined ring around it traces the Moon's 28-day orbit in real time via a proprietary mechanism called the Moon Track.

Both the Rotary and the Apolar were nominated for the GPHG 2020 — the Rotary in the Challenge category and the Apolar in Calendar & Astronomy — marking the first time a Chinese brand had received dual GPHG nominations in a single year, and effectively announcing Behrens' existence to the international collecting community. Subsequent releases continued the cosmic and mechanical imagination: the Da Vinci Code (2021, wandering hour display), Project One (2021, Earth-Mars system where the Martian globe rotates once every 24 hours and 37 minutes — Mars time), Navigraph, Perigee (2022–2023, first in-house BM01 manual-wind calibre — 2.5Hz, 45-hour power reserve — with a chain-driven hour display whose chain traverses the full circumference of the dial carrying the three-dimensional Moon, paired with a retrograde minutes counter), Orion One, and the Dark Knight Batman-themed edition (2024). The Perigee's BM01 was developed over two years entirely in-house and is visible through a sapphire caseback whose skeletonised architecture reveals ruby bearings and interlocking gear pairs.

The current collection is structured across three tiers. The Original series — powered by Japanese Miyota 9-series automatics — includes the Star Trek, Starship, Astronomer, NaviGraph, and Space Traveler, at the most accessible price points. The Inventor series is the brand's creative core, powered by Swiss automatic movements with Behrens' custom mechanical modules — the Apolar, Rotary, Da Vinci Code, and Project One all live here. The Master collection represents Behrens' most ambitious collaborations, interpreting mechanical art through partnerships with recognised names in world watchmaking. The Kung Fu series was developed in collaboration with Mr. Qian Guobiao, a celebrated Chinese master watchmaker; the KWH Master Collection was developed with Vianney Halter — the visionary French independent watchmaker and co-founder of THA alongside F.P. Journe — a partnership that brought a genuinely significant creative intelligence to bear on the Behrens platform. The Dark Moon was a sold-out limited edition in collaboration with Label Noir, the Swiss customisation house. The Konstantin Chaykin × Behrens 'Ace of Spades' trilogy — three related pieces with dials and cases in crystallised titanium — sold as a set at the Phillips Geneva Sessions Spring 2024 auction for CHF 46,990. Behrens participated in Geneva Watch Days 2024 as the only Chinese brand invited, and was featured in a dedicated in-depth segment on CCTV-2 in 2021. Free worldwide shipping, import duties, and VAT are covered by the brand on all orders.