The one defining principle of KG&S is we’ve never questioned the fact that brands like Rolex have all but perfected the fundamental  design of its watches, the cases for sure. You only have to look at the overwhelming success of the iconic Submariner to see that. So where did they leave room for improvement?

There’s a saying, “you can’t reinvent the wheel,” it’s perfect, so why try? The answer for us was obvious, we didn’t need to do anything more than work on the trim. You only have to look at the side by side comparison below to see that we’ve actually done rather a good job. We’re not just saying that, we genuinely believe it.


That said, we don’t believe in being one of the run of the mill brands that churn out all but identical homages, with very little or no variation save for the logo. Our ethos just isn’t that way inclined. We wanted to set our own standards, put our own DNA into a design whilst paying respectful tribute to a proven design. Of course there’ll always be purists that will scream from the heavens that because we’ve dared use blue and red on a case, we’ve already conceded is at the apex of design, that we have to be a homage!

The truth is that any realist will instantly recognise that there’s a significant difference between the both, so much so that you’d be hard pressed to compare like for like. The Submersible, our design, has a ten-fold difference, literally. We made certain there were at least ten differences between the designs, from the design of the dial to the entirely different bezel. We even went to great pains to make sure our colour palette differed. Can you spot the difference?

We’ll give you a run-thru. We’ve already mentioned the bezel; the colours, the style, the thickness, markers, inner silver ring. Effectively there’s two parts to the bezel. The rehaut is completely different; the markers, the hands, the date window, even the GMT hand has subtle changes. That’s taken us past the ten already. We worked on the way the Rolex appeared clunky, we trimmed most things back and in the process have created the illusion that the face of the Submersible appears larger, or is it just that it is?

Ultimately it will always be the case that what suits one might not suit another. We've already said that we don’t plan on being “another Rolex wannabe,” we simply respect the brand too much. Do we want to compete? Unquestionably yes, but at a fraction of the cost.

Read more about our evolution and DNA here.