“There’s a time and a place for beautiful watches,” says Edward Margulies, co-founder of Split Watches. “But sometimes people hide behind their gold Rolex or their Richard Mille and it can be superficial. Every aspect of what I’m trying to do is about connecting people honestly and creating real conversations.”
Within moments of speaking to Margulies, 53, it’s clear this isn’t going to be a typical watch story interview. Speaking from his West London home, where he launched his new watch company in July, the entrepreneur tells a very personal story.
Margulies began his career in watches more than 30 years ago, learning the ropes in Switzerland with brands such as Longines and Vacheron Constantin, and spending time at Blancpain under Jean-Claude Biver, who would later turn Hublot into a household name. In the UK, he would work for the retailer Asprey and the ill-fated Ratners jewellers, then in distributing luxury watch brands, before spending three years in the 2000s managing Marcus, his father’s namesake Bond Street high-end watch store that closed in 2017.
“It was a very successful period, but honestly, with the brands we had, anyone could have done it,” says Margulies with disarming self-deprecation of his time running the store. Back then, the Marcus boutique was known for its exceptional collection of pieces from the likes of Audemars Piguet, Franck Muller and Hublot, as well as for championing a new generation of independents, such as Greubel Forsey and Urwerk.
Behind the glamour and the record sales, though, all was not well. “I never felt right in that environment,” Margulies admits. “At parties, I’d have what we’d now call imposter syndrome. I was lucky to work with some incredible brands who did incredible things, but certain parts of the industry didn’t sit well with me. There was a huge amount of status and ego.”
It would lead to what he now calls “a wobble” and significant mental health problems. “I would smile at the school gate and tell everyone I was OK, and then drive away and cry in my car for a couple of hours,” he says. “I needed some time away from the luxury watch industry to focus my energies on my family.”
He may have fallen out of love with the watch industry, but never with its product. “I love tradition and heritage and I’ve always loved watches,” he says. “Life is so complicated now and we have so much information thrown at us all the time, but a simple mechanical watch is a beautiful thing.”
Having found help and got back on his feet, a couple of years ago, he and consultant friend Dara Amjadi decided to create a new watch company that combined their love of watches with a mental health message. Split Watches was born and in July this year it introduced its first collection, a drop of three 250-piece limited-edition watches called the MC-1, MC-2 and MC-3 in beige, black and blue respectively, named in homage to the 1960s counterculture US rock band MC5.
Designed in England and powered by automatic Seiko movements from Japan, they’re sports watches with bicompax (twin-counter) chronographs, cases made of a soft-touch but highly scratch-resistant ceramic and polymer material called Ceramod+, and set on straps made of FKM, a heat- and bacteria-resistant rubber, which Margulies says is more expensive than a stainless steel bracelet. Each strap has a space for an optional personalised message that Margulies says is handwritten and varnished by a local calligrapher.
The watches cost £1,800 and come with a promise. “We’re giving an hour’s therapy to the Anna Freud mental health charity from the sale of every watch,” says Margulies, adding that the per-watch donation will be £100 minimum. “They focus on helping youths and young people and that felt important to me.”
Margulies says his watches aren’t designed to convey status. “People have been willing to spend £300 on a logo T-shirt made in Taiwan,” he says. “But they’re now questioning that and why they spent that much money on a product that doesn’t cost that much to make. I wanted to create that meaning and make people feel connected. We’re all humans and we’re all far more connected than we realise.”
The most immediate symbol of Split’s ethos is in its marketing campaign. Where most watches are photographed with hands at 10:10 because they form a smile, Margulies opted for 7:20. “We call it the ‘Brave Face’,” he says.
“It creates a frown. When you’re having a bad day, you can hide behind a smile, which can be very harmful. I wanted to make people aware that a frown or a sad face doesn’t need to be hidden away.”
What about the name — Split Watches? “I’ve always loved how split-seconds chronographs and bicompax chronographs look,” says Margulies. “But it’s also about our split personalities and how we often put on a smile when everything’s not OK. And then there’s how we’re a bit split from one another at the moment, too. I didn’t want to put my name on a watch, so this felt like the right thing.”
Further versions of the watch in bright yellow and green have now joined the collection, and Margulies says he has a chocolate brown iteration and a white version that glows in the dark on the way. In the spring he’ll launch a GMT collection, also powered by a Japanese movement, priced below £1,000.
Collaborative limited-editions based on “opening real conversations” are in the pipeline, too, and he says they’ll come with a larger donation to Anna Freud. He’s already worked with musician and Radio 6 DJ Don Letts — “he’s a hugely kind and trustworthy human being” — and the actor and hip-hop artist Jordan Stephens.
Margulies is also planning a podcast where he will interview members of the watch community who are “comfortable to talk about their personal journey”. His five-year goal, he says, is to introduce a sub-brand selling watches for under £100 “that everyone can afford to buy” and that will send all its profits to mental health charities.
Split Watches arrives in a difficult moment for watchmaking, with sales of Swiss watches depressed and the economic turmoil created by factors such as wars in Europe and the Middle East and US tariffs causing headaches for brands.
“It’s a tough industry at the moment and those moments I’d had thinking of selling out in a few minutes, well it wasn’t to be, but we’ve had solid sales,” says Margulies. “I’m in a saturated world and what I’m doing will push people out of their comfort zones. I just want a watch to go back to what it was meant to be — a watch.”