MING, J.N. Shapiro, Fleming Announce Formation Of Alternative Horological Alliance
The AHA, announced at Geneva Watch Days 2024, is launching with a tantalum bracelet.
Independent watchmaking brands are the darlings of the collector world, but they face enormous challenges that larger brands, especially those making watches at an industrial scale, do not. One of the biggest is the problem of supply chains – smaller independents, especially those creating watches with unusual technical or design features, often struggle to have unusual requests filled, even from suppliers who have the technical capability to do so. Another issue is distribution – without the clout of a recognized brand name, developing the relationships necessary to enter a new market can be an uphill battle to put it mildly.
The Alternative Horological Alliance was just announced at Geneva Watch Days 2024, in order take advantage of the capabilities and special skills of its founding brands – MING, J.N. Shapiro, and Fleming. The Alliance may, in the future, accept new member brands as well. According to the AHA charter, among the activities in which the founding brands will collaborate in the future, are creating and hosting events, pooled procurement and supply chain support, identification and development of talent, and collaborative projects.
At Geneva Watch Days, the AHA announced its first collaborative project, and it’s a doozy – a tantalum bracelet, with a five-link design, each one of which will be made to order, and which can be produced with 19mm, 20mm, or 21mm end links, and which can be fitted to watches from all three AHA member brands.
The bracelet’s design is by MING, and manufacturing is by J.N. Shapiro.
Joshua Shapiro says, “The development and prototyping of a tantalum bracelet from scratch in under four months demonstrates the kind of things we can do together under the AHA umbrella. The design was originally conceived by MING but pushed by our curiosity and machining expertise at Shapiro to produce. Due to the shape and number of links in this bracelet, it is exponentially more challenging to do in tantalum versus more generic and less organic bracelets It would have been much more difficult to do this as individual brands and the economics would not have worked. But now our customers benefit from a rare tantalum bracelet that is easily adaptable to different watches.”
As a first collaborative project, a tantalum bracelet is, as they say, a major flex. Tantalum is a beautiful material, with a greyish-blue luster, and it’s a great technical material for watch cases and bracelets thanks to its hardness and resistance to corrosion – it’s almost totally resistant to corrosion even by some pretty nasty reagents, including aqua regia (a cocktail of hydrochloric and nitric acid). Its hardness – it’s right next to tungsten on the periodic table – and its propensity for rapidly dulling and breaking cutting tools has conspired to make it a niche material in watchmaking. One supplier of tantalum components describes the metal as ” … having a strong tendency to seize, tear and gall,” and, like platinum – another metal notoriously difficult to machine – it’s “sticky,” and apt to adhere to cutting edges.
Each of the founding members has a particular design and horological identity, and production capabilities which have evolved to meet their needs. These include Fleming’s partnership with Jean-François Mojon of Chronode, J.N. Shapiro’s network of suppliers which have enabled the creation of a truly “Made in the USA” watch (and its ability to create highly complex guilloché dials) and MING’s broad experience in the creation and realization of groundbreaking technical innovations, such as the lume-filled laser-etched voids on the dial of its 20.01 S3. Creating a tantalum bracelet is a spectacular debut for the new Alliance; it’s a strong statement of intent as well as technical prowess, and moreover it’s created a great deal of curiosity in the industry and among collectors as to what the AHA is going to do next.
To find out more about the AHA, its charter, and its founding members, visit AHA.watch.