Kobold Watchs

Kobold Watchs

Humble Beginnings

Founded in 1998 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as part of an entrepreneurship class at Carnegie Mellon University, Kobold had an initial investment of $5,000. The company became an early trailblazer during the Dotcom boom by being the first watch brand to sell its products directly over the Internet. The company's mission was simple: to offer unique and exciting designs. Despite its humble start, Kobold has always had a fiercely independent streak. It has historically placed a disproportionate emphasis on manufacturing its own products, going against the grain in an industry that has incredibly come to rely on third party suppliers. 

Early Focus on Watches

We started out by making tool watches geared for use by pilots, divers, military and law enforcement specialists, as well as explorers, adventurers and scientists. Since our company's founding, we have been at the forefront of American watchmaking and have widely been credited with being one of two U.S.-based brands to ring in the renaissance of the American watch industry.

In 2006, Kobold released the manually-wound Spirit of America, the first serially U.S.-assembled mechanical watch in a generation. In 2008, the Spirit of America Automatic followed with the first serially-made U.S.-made watchcase in almost four decades.

By 2014, Kobold progressed to manufacturing watch cases in-house at Merry Oaks Farm, our U.S. headquarters near Pittsburgh in rural Northwestern Pennsylvania's Amish Country. There, Kobold turns out the highest quality watch cases in its 20+ year-long history. Finished by hand, each U.S.-made Kobold watch case is a small work of art and carries a unique serial number. Kobold watch cases are also produced in factories in other countries, such as Italy and Switzerland where our gold cases are fabricated. 

Kobold influence on U.S. watch culture runs deep. The company has turned out iconic designs such as the legendary Seal, a dive watch of enormous proportions that owes its genesis to a design by the late actor James Gandolfini. The unique design of the Seal has been imitated by countless companies, from fly-by-night outfits that came and went, to some of the biggest players of the watch industry. 

Kobold also set the stage for the founding of Red Bar Crew, the fabled group of American watch aficionados that has contributed enormously to the recent mainstream success that watch collecting has enjoyed in the U.S.