Written by Menswear Style in Interviews on the 27th January 2021

CODE41 is not a brand in the traditional sense of the term; it’s more of a community project. The aim is to gather enthusiasts around a watchmaking project, to help it to become a reality. In the process, members become project Creators. The brand was founded by luxury timepiece designer Claudio D’Amore in 2016. Having designed watches for the biggest Swiss brands such as Tag Heuer and Montblanc for 10 years, he set his sights on a new venture that would create watches of the highest quality with the help of an engaged community who play an active role in the design process. The company is based in the heart of the Swiss watchmaking industry, its spiritual home. The project has been built with a policy of total transparency of origin, price and production – meaning that their community are safe in the knowledge that they are investing in an excellent watch at a fair price.

In a recent episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we interviewed Claudio D'Amore, Founder of CODE41 about his watch design background and how he first launched his brand via Kickstarter. The Swiss watchmaker offers complete costing transparency and invites their community to participate in the design process. Our host Peter Brooker and Claudio also talked about offering a fair price by cutting out middlemen, the collaborative design process, the power of storytelling, and the magic of viewable movements.

“I was trained as a product designer, mostly designing watches. In 2016 I launch my own brand, which is called CODE41. The brand is a bit different than the usual watchmaker because we operate online and provide total transparency. We explain everything about the origin, cost, and the community can participate in the design process and strategy. We develop our own mechanical movements in Switzerland too. When you talk about watches - something that has emotion attached to it - I think it's important that people can be part of the product and tell their friends they participated in creating it. I've always loved the mechanical part of watchmaking and was frustrated as a designer because most of the time you have quite boring watches with a plane dial. I wanted to create watches where you can see the mechanical movements because it's so magical to see. That's why on our watches we have made movements where you can see everything inside. With our new NB24 chronograph watch it has a peripheral oscillating weight integrated into the dial side so you can see all the mechanical movements. We’re offering this at £3,500 which would be sold at £20,000 by our competitors.”

This is a shortened transcribed edit of episode 109 of the MenswearStyle Podcast with Claudio D'Amore, Founder of code41watches.com. You can listen to the full version below or listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast player.

We sit down with Claudio D'Amore, founder of CODE41 watches about the watchmaker's latest release, the NB24 Chronograph featuring a peripheral oscillating weight.