Christopher Ward
Brand History
Christopher Ward was born in 2004 from an idea worked out aboard a houseboat on the Thames by three partners: Chris Ward, Mike France and Peter Ellis. The three had observed how much the final price of a Swiss watch could end up being worth several times its actual production cost, and decided to found a brand that would sell exclusively online, bypassing the retailer network and the marketing costs typical of the industry. The first watch, a C5 Malvern, was launched in 2005 from what the founders themselves jokingly described as a former chicken coop converted into an office on a Berkshire farm.
The business model remains the brand's distinguishing trait to this day: direct-to-consumer sales, a modest markup over production costs, and a catalogue spanning from accessible watches to more ambitious proposals, never passing through the traditional wholesale channel. In 2008 Christopher Ward struck a partnership with the Swiss manufacture Synergies Horlogères, based in Biel and led by master watchmaker Johannes Jahnke: a collaboration that in 2014 led to a full corporate merger and the launch of the SH21 caliber, the first in-house mechanical movement produced by a British brand in over fifty years.
In the following years the brand continued to grow while keeping its direct-to-consumer approach, opening a few physical showrooms (including London, Maidenhead and New York) alongside online sales, and developing further proprietary movements such as the manual-winding CW-003 caliber. In January 2020 co-founder Chris Ward left the company, which today is led by CEO Mike France; in 2025 Christopher Ward was named "British Watch Brand of the Year" at the WatchPro Awards, confirming the growing reputation it has earned in independent watchmaking.
