Relax! It's a Rifino.

I looked at American and Swiss manufacturers first. I wanted to be able to say “Made in the USA” or “Swiss Made” on the dial as much as anyone would. But I ran the numbers, and there was no version of that where I could sell you a watch at a price you'd actually want to pay. You either cut quality until the watch isn't worth wearing, or you charge four-figure prices for a brand nobody's heard of yet. I'm not a four-figure-watch guy, and I'm not building Rifino to be one.

That's actually where the brand's whole attitude comes from. Relax — it's a Rifino. You're not strapping a mortgage payment to your wrist. It's a genuinely solid watch that won't break, and it won't break the bank either. Wear it in the yard, wear it on a plane, bang it on a doorframe and don't think twice. That's the point.

So I looked at China, and thirty-plus years of playing guitar is what actually got me there. I've watched that industry up close for decades — early Chinese-made guitars in the '80s and '90s were genuinely rough, and everyone who played knew it. That's not true anymore. The good factories over there now turn out guitars that go toe-to-toe with their American-made counterparts, built by people who've spent entire careers getting good at exactly one craft. Forty-plus years of serious manufacturing experience does that to an industry — China isn't the cheap-and-unpredictable shortcut it used to be, it's become one of the best places in the world to get something made well, watches included. You just have to actually go find the right source instead of taking the first quote.

What that search actually got me was a relationship, not just a factory. I'm not dealing with a sales rep who disappears after the invoice clears — I have a direct, one-on-one relationship with my manufacturer, and we text daily. If something comes up, I'm not filing a ticket and waiting a week for a reply. I know they're available 24/7, because we've built that into how we work together from the start. That's not something you get from the cheapest quote in your inbox — it's something you get by actually vetting who you're in business with.

That's the whole sourcing story. Not “the cheapest option,” not “whatever's easiest” — the manufacturer whose quality held up when I looked closely, at a price where the watch can actually be worth it to you.

— Matt