Furlan Marri

Founded in 2021 by Andrea Furlan (Swiss industrial designer, ECAL graduate, former collaborator with Dominique Renaud of Renaud & Papi) and Hamad Al Marri (Saudi watch collector and artist) — two friends from different worlds united by a passion for watchmaking and storytelling.

The brand began with a Kickstarter campaign that was fully funded in just 35 seconds. Seven months later, Furlan Marri won the GPHG 2021 Horological Revelation Prize for its Mechaquartz model 'Mr. Grey' — a remarkable trajectory from crowdfunding to the industry's most prestigious award. Andrea's grandfather left him a watchmaker's cabinet filled with old tools and pocket watch components; Hamad's father gave him an Omega Seamaster at 14. Those two moments of inherited passion became the emotional core of the brand. The collections: Mechaquartz (Furlan Marri's signature format — Swiss-made mechaquartz movements, vintage-inspired dials with extreme attention to detail, including sector dials, salmon, sabbia rosa, and chronograph variants); Cornes de Vache (automatic watches with period-correct cow-horn lugs); and Disco Volante (a new design direction). The Community Design Lab invites collectors to participate in the design process directly. Components are sourced from Hong Kong, Japan, Italy, and France, with Swiss-made projects prototyped in Geneva. All design is done in-house in the Geneva office and showroom. 'We are two friends united by a common passion for watchmaking who strive for perfection, accepting that we will never arrive.'

What separates Furlan Marri from the microbrand pack is how quickly it has climbed into genuine high horology. For Only Watch 2023 — its first participation — the brand teamed with Dominique Renaud (closing the circle on Andrea Furlan's old mentor) and rising-star watchmaker Julien Tixier to create the Secular Perpetual Calendar, a unique piece built around an ultra-simplified, patented modular calendar just 1.25 mm thick that remains accurate through leap and secular years across the next four centuries, adjusted by a single corrector for the entire module. The execution matched the engineering: an arcap plate gilded with 18k yellow gold on a La Joux-Perret G100 base, a blue titanium dial anodised in-house, hands crafted by Tixier himself including a Maltese-cross month hand, hand-turned lugs, and a caseback engraved by Coralie Mercier of the Vallée de Joux, all in a rhodium-plated silver case and bracelet. The collector world's embrace has been just as telling in the accessible ranges: a flyback chronograph co-created with the legendary collector-scholar Auro Montanari (better known as John Goldberger) prompted serious commentators to ask whether it was the best Swiss flyback ever offered under three thousand dollars. Five years in, the trajectory is unmistakable — sold-out drops, a GPHG prize, a patented complication auctioned for charity, and a permanent three-pillar collection — a brand that could have comfortably coasted on Kickstarter nostalgia choosing, instead, to grow up into a watchmaker.