Worn & Wound
Stowa General Manager Kevin Müller Continues the Brand’s Long Enthusiast Legacy
Change is a scary thing. Change at a small, enthusiast-favorite brand is downright terrifying. As watch collectors and enthusiasts, we’re constantly on the lookout for the next thing - the new exciting brand, the unexpected novelty, the rising watchmaker yet to be truly discovered. But that search for the ‘new’ is only possible thanks to the reliable backstop certain brands have built for enthusiasts since the modern enthusiast market developed in the latter part of the 20th century. Stowa is absolutely one of these backstop brands. A reliable step on the ladder for developing enthusiasts, Stowa - which was founded in 1927 but has existed in its modern form since 1996 - has sat squarely at the heart of the watch community as long as I’ve been interested in watches. As long as I’ve been aware of them, Stowa has been the place to go for high-quality, affordable pilots’ and marine watches, and has paired those standards with elegant Bauhaus-inspired dress watches and chronographs (among other things). That much is absolutely still true, but you’d be forgiven for expressing concern when, in 2021, Jörg Schauer (who had owned and operated the brand since 1996) sold Stowa to Tempus Arte, the German watch group best known for their ownership of Dresden-based Lang & Heyne (who in turn are best known for their highly finished tri-lugged case architecture). Since then, there has been a tremendous amount of hemming and hawing over the existential question of Stowa...