American watchmaking in 2025 is neither a nostalgic reenactment nor a copycat of Swiss orthodoxy. It’s a patchwork of artisans and small brands carving out distinct niches—some pursuing true manufacture on U.S. soil, others excelling at design, assembly, and finishing with global supply chains. The result is a healthier, more transparent ecosystem than a decade ago: fewer grand promises, more honest storytelling, better product, and a growing service infrastructure to back it up.

The Spectrum: From Full Manufacture to Design-Led Assembly

To understand the landscape, you have to think in spectra, not labels. There’s full manufacture, where parts like plates, bridges, and dials are cut, finished, and assembled domestically. There’s hybrid manufacture, where cases, dials, or key components are made in the U.S. but paired with Swiss or Japanese movements. And there’s design-led assembly, where the brand’s value comes from strong design, QC, and after-sales service while parts are sourced internationally. All three approaches can produce excellent watches; the difference lies in what kind of excellence you value—craft density, performance/cost balance, or graphic identity and wearability.

RGM: Pennsylvania’s Standard-Bearer

At the heart of serious American horology sits RGM in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania. For years, the company has quietly embodied the hardest version of the job: making watches the old-fashioned way, with in-house calibers, traditional engine-turning, and small-batch casework. RGM’s hand-cut guilloché dials aren’t a marketing flourish; they’re a proof-of-work you can hold. The firm’s Caliber 801 family remains a milestone in modern U.S. watchmaking—beautifully finished, architecturally traditional, and serviceable for generations. In 2025, RGM’s relevance is less about novelty and more about credibility: a workshop that can design, cut, finish, assemble, and service, all under one roof, with decades of institutional memory. For collectors who care about provenance and permanence, RGM is a North Star.

The Rise of Modern American Craft

In parallel, a newer wave of American independents has matured from youthful enthusiasm into disciplined craft. These makers often began as designers or engineers who fell in love with the tactile side of watchmaking—surface finishes, tolerances, and the choreography of small mechanisms.

• J.N. Shapiro embodies this shift with a distinctly Californian take on high craft. The brand’s fully American-made movement program, paired with jaw-dropping engine-turned dials, proves that domestic manufacture can aim for haute horlogerie, not just homage. The work feels modern—not a pastiche of early 20th-century forms—while still reverent to the techniques that made American watchmaking great in the first place.
  
  

• Keaton Myrick represents the atelier model at its most intimate: one maker, obsessive finishing, and an aesthetic that blends classical forms with subtly contemporary lines. In an age of “drops,” Myrick’s books remain a reminder that time is the rarest complication—and that patience is a feature, not a bug.
  
  

• Towson Watch Company in Maryland continues to iterate on the hybrid model: Swiss movements paired with American assembly and design. In 2025, its value proposition leans on community, serviceability, and the approachable pleasure of small-batch runs.
  
  

Design-Forward, Community-Driven Brands

A strength of the American scene is how many brands treat design and customer experience as first-class citizens. Instead of chasing movement one-upmanship, these outfits invest in legibility, wearability, and that undefinable “I want to put this on” factor.

• Monta (St. Louis) has refined the modern tool-watch formula with crisp casework and honest specs. It’s a Swiss-powered proposition that wins on proportion and QC—proof that real luxury often hides in tolerances and bracelet articulation.
  
  

• Nodus (Los Angeles) brings the enthusiast-to-brandowner pipeline full circle, with U.S. assembly and a transparent, iterative approach to product. The brand’s best pieces feel like they were designed by people who actually wear watches hard.
  
  

• Astor + Banks (Chicago), DuFrane (Austin), Vero (Portland), Lüm-Tec (Ohio), Tsao Baltimore, Autodromo, Brew, and Detroit Watch Company each add their own flavor—motorsport minimalism, coffee-bar charm, or city-pride storytelling—showing that “American” can be a palette rather than a single aesthetic.
  
  

• Shinola remains a lightning rod in discourse but deserves credit for keeping assembly jobs and service infrastructure stateside, introducing watchmaking to a wider audience, and creating its own design language of mid-century warmth and everyday practicality.
  
  

The common thread across these brands is relationship capital: responsive customer service, transparent specs, accessible pricing tiers, and limited runs that invite a sense of belonging.

What’s Changed by 2025

1) Radical transparency. The “where is it made?” debate has matured. Brands are clearer about what’s U.S.-made, U.S.-assembled, or internationally sourced. Collectors have rewarded that candor; nothing ages faster than marketing fog.

2) Better cases, better bracelets. A decade ago, microbrand bracelets were a coin toss. Today, tolerances, clasp design, and finishing are good enough that the bracelet is often a selling point, not an apology.

3) Finishing fluency. Laser-textured dials, CNC-assisted hand finishing, and old-world techniques like guilloché and fired enamel coexist. The magic isn’t “new vs old,” it’s knowing when to use each and why.

4) After-sales maturation. U.S. brands have invested in service centers, parts pipelines, and documentation. That back-end reliability makes a purchase feel less like a fling and more like a relationship.

5) Pricing realism. You can still find smart buys under $1,000. You can also spend six figures on true American haute horlogerie. The middle is now richer with $1,200–$3,500 pieces that deliver legitimately great build, finish, and wearability.

The Hard Problems (and Why They’re Worth Solving)

No one should romanticize how tough it is to make a watch in the United States. The supply chain for hairsprings, mainsprings, jewels, and high-precision escapement parts is still concentrated abroad. Achieving consistent domestic metallurgy for cases and the obsessive flatness/parallelism tolerances for bridges is capital-intensive. The FTC “Made in USA” standard remains a high bar that responsible brands take seriously. And training pipelines for watchmakers—from bench service to high-finish specialists—are still rebuilding.

Yet these constraints are precisely what channel the best work. You see focus: brands pick their battles, whether that’s dials and casework, assembly and QC, or full-fat manufacture on a tiny scale. You see collaboration: dial specialists working with movement experts, bracelet designers partnering with machinists. You see longevity thinking: parts catalogs, service documentation, and cross-compatibility to keep watches alive for decades.

Why Collectors Are Paying Attention

There’s a uniquely American satisfaction in wearing a watch that blends ingenuity with approachability. The watches are often comfortable—dimensionally honest, thin enough to clear a cuff, with lume that actually works and clasps that don’t pinch. The designs feel lived-in, not over-rendered. And the best makers talk like people, not press releases: here’s what we made here, here’s what we sourced abroad, here’s why, here’s how we’ll service it.

For some, the draw is craft density—a hand-cut dial from Pennsylvania or a domestically built movement assembled at a bench that smells faintly of oil and shellac. For others, it’s the community—owners who show up in comments with wrist shots, timing results, and clasp-sizing tips. Either way, the value proposition in 2025 is strong because it’s human.

Outlook: Patience, Quality, and Pluralism

The most exciting thing about American watchmaking in 2025 isn’t a single brand or breakthrough. It’s pluralism: multiple viable paths to a great watch, all coexisting. If you want an heirloom-grade piece with domestic manufacture and handwork, you can have it. If you want a bulletproof daily on a fantastic bracelet from a team that answers emails, that exists too. The middle is thickening, the top is ascending, and the base is healthier than it’s been in years.

RGM remains a living bridge between America’s pocket-watch past and a sustainable, craft-driven future. Around it, a constellation of makers—from California ateliers to Midwestern tool-watch specialists—has learned to be excellent at something specific and to say so plainly. That honesty, paired with steadily improving product, is why American watchmaking no longer needs to shout to be heard. It can simply keep time—and keep getting better.