After a long & distinguished career designing watches for leading Swiss watch brands, Hakim El Kadiri decided to pursue his long-time dream of creating his own brand. Nicknamed ElKa (short for El Kadiri, of course) since his early childhood, a name was quickly found. As a child of the 1960’s, the products and aesthetics of that era serve as the main source of inspiration for his newly formed brand – the Elka Watch Company.
Whilst researching the name, Hakim discovered that a watch brand named Elka had previously existed. The historical brand of Elka watches was created by Dutchman Louis Eduard Kiek in 1913, ELKA being an abbreviation for Edouard Louis Kiek Amsterdam. The family-owned company operated several Kiek boutiques in Amsterdam where prestigious brands such as Rolex, Ulysse Nardin, Vulcain, Breitling, Universal, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Blancpain watches were sold -often proudly co-branded with the ELKA signature, as well as wrist and pocket watches of their own ELKA brand. They were also particularly famous for their stopwatches, timers, and chess clocks. Somewhere in the 1970s, the ELKA brand quietly disappeared. The Kiek boutiques would continue to operate until the year 2000, after which the company was dissolved.
During this session Ace Jewelers’ Alon Ben Joseph will sit down with his long-time friend Hakim amd dp a deep dove into how he designed the watches for his Elka Watch Company, one of the collections – the X-Series- and how he got inspired by an aviation instrument created by Heuer for ELKA, which featured oversized Arabic numerals from 00 to 55.
Join us live and ask all your questions that Hakim will answer in real-time during the show.
A true watch fanatic and watch industry veteran, Guido Benedini, started a complete new concept in this tradition industry: Watch Angels. In the middle of the COVID pandemic, in 2020, Guido Benedini founded Watch Angels, creating the first manufacturer-to-consumer crowdfunding model for meaningful high-quality watches at factory direct prices.
In the previous episode of The Ace List live we sat down with Cedric Bellon, the first watchmaker featured on Watch Angels. In this episode Ace Jewelers’ CEO Alon Ben Joseph sat down with his Dutch friend Guido Benedini and discuss his evolution in the watch industry and why he has decided to found Watch Angels. Plus they discussed the upcoming collab between Cedric Bellon Watches & Ace Jewelers, a watch produced and sold by Watch Angels.
A true watch fanatic and watch industry veteran, Guido Benedini, started a complete new concept in this tradition industry: Watch Angels. In the middle of the COVID pandemic, in 2020, Guido Benedini founded Watch Angels, creating the first manufacturer-to-consumer crowdfunding model for meaningful high-quality watches at factory direct prices.
In the previous episode of The Ace List live we sat down with Cedric Bellon, the first watchmaker featured on Watch Angels. In this episode Ace Jewelers’ CEO Alon Ben Joseph will sit down with his friend Dutch friend Guido Benedini and discuss his evolution in the watch industry and why he has decided to found Watch Angels.
Cedric Bellon is one of the most talented and most modest watch designers of our modern day. And, he is a grand advocate of sustainability. That is the reason why Ace Jewelers’ CEO Alon Ben Joseph is a big fan of the person Cedric Bellon and all the watches his partners and him designed in the studio called Bellon & Partners.
Last year Cedric Bellon (finally) ventured out and made his own watch. Not only was it the first wristwatch ever made of recycled steel, but also created with watch start-up Watch Angels – a crowd funding platform for watchmakers. Obviously Alon Ben Joseph became a ‘Watch Angel’ as he supported the round and received a watch from the first batch bearing the Cedric Bellon brand name. He still wears it today.
From a young age Cedric Bellon was fascinated by sciences, nature and crafts. He first studied geology and then laureated in product design at L’Ecole de Design Nantes Atlantique. At the age of 26 he discovered watch design and sent some concepts to Swiss watch brands. Bell & Ross, TAG Heuer and Longines gave him a chance and became his first clients. From then on, he was hooked by horology and made watch design his full-time career in 2005. Cedric is an advocate for sustainability in the watch industry.
This year Cedric launched a second watch it is actually on sale right now with Watch Angels. In this episode the gentlemen will discuss Cedric’s evolution as a designer and how he wants to improve sustainability in the watchmaking sector.
Pim Koeslag is a Dutch Master Watchmaker after spending more than two decades in Switzerland came full circle and returned to the Netherlands to become both co-owner and Master Watchmaker at the epic haute horlogerie watch brand “Christiaan van der Klaauw”.
Pim’s journey after graduating at the Dutch watchmaking school started in Switzerland with the Frederique Constant Group where he has not developed many in-house calibres for the watch brand Frederique Constant, but also co-founded the haute horlogerie brand “Ateliers de Monaco”.
In this episode Pim will sit down with Ace Jewelers’ co-owner Alon Ben Joseph and they will discuss Pim’s journey as watchmaker and obviously they will discuss the future of the master of planetarium watches: “CvdK Watches”. Join us live and ask all your questions that Pim will answer in real-time during the show.
Everyone that knows the contemporary Italian fine jewelry brand NANIS, knows the driving & creative force behind the brand: ravishing Laura Bicego. We also know that behind every strong woman, there is a strong man. Laura’s strong man is Piero Marangon, the CEO of NANIS Jewels. The magic duo behind this luxurious and colorful brand are life partners and co-founded NANIS Jewels back in 1995.
Where Laura is responsible for the designs and the creativity of the company, she also is unmistakably the face of the company too. As they are in such a symbiotic partnership, Piero takes care of everything else within NANIS Jewels. Where creativity is very important, craftsmanship & quality are equally important when manufacturing high-end handmade jewels. And, this is Piero’s responsibility.
Ace Jewelers is a family owned and run business, like NANIS Jewels. Ace Jewelers’ founder and father of current CEO used to do business with Laura’s father. So, the relationship between NANIS and Ace is warm and runs deep. We are very humbled that Laura has come on the show twice already:
And, although both our viewers and we would love to have her back on the show. We wanted to show the magic behind the designs: the craftmanship of NANIS. Piero is very humble and does not like to take the limelight, but it took us a few seasons of arm twisting to get him on the show. He sat down with Ace Jewelers’ Alon Ben Joseph and they took a deep dive into what makes NANIS so special.
The founder of leading online watch magazine SJXwatches.com, Mr. Jiaxian SU, sat down with Ace Jewelers own Mr. Alon BEN JOSEPH in this third season of The Ace List Live.
SJX has been writing about watches since 1997 for all major Singaporean daily newspapers, and started his own online publication in 2011 which grew to a global authority. For the last eleven years all of us at Ace Jewelers are great fans of SJXwatches.com as all the editors have a similar style to ours: minimalistic, very technically driven and even bit geeky 🙂
This turned out to be a fun talk about watches in general, the watch industry, the differences between Asia & Europa, the independent watchmakers and SJX’ journey as collector.
The Ace List – Live with Vincent Perriard of ORIGYN Foundation – S03E01
For the first episode of the third season of The Ace List Live we are very honoured that watch industry veteran and web3 innovator Mr. Vincent Perriard, co-founder of Swiss ORIGYN Foundation, sits down with Ace Jewelers’ own Alon Ben Joseph.
Vincent Perriard earned his stripes in the watch industry at TechnoMarine, Concord and HYT Watches. A few years ago he had the vision to co-found a DAO that developed a technology that can authenticate luxury objects by using the ‘micro structure traceability’ of the actual object. The certificate is then minted as a NFT and stored on the blockchain.
Ace Jewelers will be the first retailer to start issuing these ORIGYN certificates of authenticity for wristwatches. Read the full press release HERE.
The Ace List – Live with Frank Geelen of Monochrome Watches – S02E13
Frank Geelen, the founder of the prominent Dutch online watch magazine Monochrome Watches and our own Alon Ben Joseph of Ace Jewelers go way back and have been friends since the foundation of Monochrome.
Frank & Alon share a passion for the independent watchmakers and watch brands and therefore it became a fun talk about anything and everything watches.
Obviously they shared their passion for the Indies and answered any question the viewers asked live during this session.
