Xeric

Xeric's origin story stretches back further than the brand's own 2013 launch, into the personal history of founder Mitch Greenblatt, who received his first watch in 1998 and began collecting and blogging about unusual vintage timepieces, eventually becoming an influential authority on modern horology. What began as an eBay side hustle reselling the rare 1960s and 70s pieces he collected grew official standing in 1999, when Vogue reached out wanting to profile him — a brand name was needed for the story, and Watchismo.com was born. In 2007, a revived French watch brand seeking U.S. distribution for reissues of its 1970s models brought Mitch's entrepreneurial brother Andrew into the fold; the distribution deal itself didn't pan out, but the family partnership did, and the Watchismo e-commerce business took off from there. Having spent years sourcing the world's most unusual timepieces for Watchismo's customers, Mitch and Andrew kept noticing the same gap: nothing genuinely unusual existed at an affordable, mechanical price point. In 2013 they brought on Danny Hunsaker, who had direct watch manufacturing industry experience, and together the three launched Xeric — officially debuting that November with a Kickstarter campaign for the Xeriscope. Xeric has since run 25 successful Kickstarter campaigns, including what the brand cites as the most-funded mechanical timepiece in Kickstarter's history, and today describes itself as Kickstarter's most successful watch brand overall.

Xeric's stated mission is direct: to deconstruct the traditions of watch design and push the boundaries of how time can be displayed, creating what the brand calls 'conversation starters' rather than conventional watches — proof, in its own words, that a unique mechanical watch doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars. That philosophy plays out across an unusually wide range of alternative time-display mechanisms. The Wandering Hours family — Scrambler, Triptych, Vendetta II, and Vendetta X — displays the hour via a rotating disc or satellite passing behind a fixed indicator rather than a conventional hand, while the Retronaut and Retroscope lines apply jump-hour and retrograde mechanisms respectively, the latter serving as Xeric's current best-seller. The Invertor and Invertor II collections (the newest Invertor+ generation limited to 50 pieces, with a new dial font, redesigned minimalist rotor, and extensive luminous detailing) and the Omnigraph, inspired by a 1930s circular slide rule, round out the brand's most conceptually adventurous designs. The Timeline Retrograde and Regulator Automatic apply retrograde and regulator-style displays respectively to more classically proportioned cases, while the Halograph family — spanning the original Halograph Chrono through Halograph II and III in both automatic and chronograph configurations, and a Halograph Tourbillon at the top of the range — has become one of Xeric's most enduring design platforms.

Xeric has also built an extensive partnership with NASA, producing officially licensed watches across several missions and themes: the NASA Apollo 15 American Automatic and American Moonphase; the NASA Artemis Chrono and Artemis Tumbler Wandering Hour; the NASA Trappist-1 (in both standard and Apollo 11-badged automatic form) and the American Moonphase Trappist-1; and the NASA Voyager Automatic, a 1000-metre-rated dive watch. All Xeric watches are sold direct through the brand's own online store, complemented by a dedicated range of 20mm, 22mm, and 24mm aftermarket straps, an active restock and pre-order programme offering savings on returning designs, and continued new Kickstarter launches — including the Volta double-retrograde model inspired by 1980s and 90s automotive speedometer design — that keep the brand's three-decade lineage of unusual, story-driven watchmaking moving forward.