Furlan Marri Review: The Swiss Microbrand You Keep Hearing About

With a GPHG award, a head-turning, high-complication entry in the Only Watch Auction, and a buzz-worthy, retro-cool release in the Disco Volante collection, Swiss microbrand Furlan Marri has gone from Kickstarter to contender in less than five years on the market. Here’s what you need to know about the company, its philosophy, and what its collection looks like right now. 

[toc-section heading="Furlan Marri Origin Story"]

Furlan Marri was born from a partnership between two friends from different corners of the watch-enthusiast community — Andrea Furlan, a Swiss-born industrial designer plying a successful trade as a watch design consultant for major brands, and Hamad Al Marri, a watch collector and artist from Saudi Arabia. United by their mutual longtime passion for timepieces, the two joined forces in 2021 to launch their eponymous brand on Kickstarter. Its fast-track to success seemed an inevitability almost from the beginning, as the project was fully funded after 35 seconds on the crowdfunding platform, supported by an enthusiastic community of thousands that had formed around the founders.

Those first Furlan Marri watches that emerged from the initial Kickstarter kickoff campaign were vintage-influenced chronographs, taking clear design cues from forebears of the 1930s and ‘40s produced by brands like Patek Philippe, Lemania, and Vacheron Constantin. The cases were 38mm in steel (upsized a bit from the 34mm - 35mm norm of the era being paid homage), the dials were sectored and bicompax, with a tachymeter-scale border, and the movements were VK64 “mechaquartz” calibers sourced from Japanese giant Seiko. (Mechaquartz movements are essentially hybrids of traditional mechanical and quartz calibers, with timekeeping controlled by a quartz crystal oscillator and a chronograph driven by a mainspring barrel; you can learn more about them here.) To many historically minded fans, their stylistic inspirations could not have been more clear, with reference numbers, model names, and aesthetic elements that evoked classic timepieces of the past (most directly, Patek’s Ref. 1463 “Tasti Tondi,” with its pioneering waterproof case by Francois Borgel). 

It wasn’t just the rabid Kickstarter community of watch fans that took notice of the plucky Swiss-Saudi startup. The voters of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG), the watch industry’s version of the Oscars, awarded Furlan Marri’s Mr. Grey Ref. 1041-A model (above) the 2021 Horological Revelation Prize. Barely a year after it arrived on the scene, Furlan Marri was a microbrand to be reckoned with. The following year, the sold-out Kickstarter watches gave way to the first permanent collections. The first consisted of three mechaquartz chronographs descended from the retro-chic models in the first wave; the second, called Cornes de Vache and initially embodied in a single iteration, the Ref. 2116A “Black Sector,” marked Furlan Marri’s first foray into mechanical calibers, with a La Joux-Perret movement beating behind a 1940s-inspired, three-handed sector dial. 

In 2023, Furlan Marri built upon the momentum it had gained within the collector community by taking part in that year’s Only Watch, a biennial charity auction of one-of-a-kind timepieces in Monaco whose proceeds benefit research into Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. The unique piece that the brand created for the auction (above) incorporated a now-rare complication called a secular perpetual calendar, which differs from a standard perpetual calendar in that it fully accounts for the 400-year-cycle in a Gregorian calendar, skipping leap days not divisible by 400, and thus not requiring manual correction for centuries (while the latter requires correction as early as 2100). The founders partnered for the project with another pair of horological rock stars: Dominique Renaud, co-founder of high-complication movement maker Renaud et Papi, with whom Furlan had collaborated in the past; and Julien Tixier, a young, independent French watchmaker considered one of the best of his generation. (On the heels of their collaboration with Furlan Marri, this duo went on to form their own watchmaking partnership, Renaud Tixier, also in 2023.) The movement in this watch, which sold for 130,000 Swiss francs, or about $143,000, was not mechaquartz but the self-winding Caliber G100 by La Joux-Perret, specially modified by Renaud and Tixier with a stripped-to-the-essentials, 25-piece calendar module. 

Now firmly established as one of the Swiss watch industry’s most dynamic value propositions as well as one of its most closely watched in terms of visual and technical creativity, Furlan Marri forges ahead with its three permanent collections spotlighted below, as well as the occasional collaborative special edition. Unlike many of its peers in the “boutique” and microbrand space, the founders are also quite transparent about where all of their watches’ key components are sourced — mechaquartz movements and some movement components from Hong Kong and Japan, straps and related accessories from Italy and France, for example. Design and prototyping, from sketching to electronic renderings to 3D printing, are all centered at the company’s headquarters in Switzerland, and of course, Furlan Marri has also started acquiring Swiss-made mechanical movements from historical firms like La Joux-Perret and Peseux SA (today part of ETA). The company also focuses on direct distribution to its customers, rather than using traditional retail channels, though it remains to be seen if that will remain the case as it inevitably grows. 

Collection Highlights:

[toc-section heading="MecaQuartz Collection (2021)"]

The MechaQuartz collection carries on the tradition of 1940s-vintage chronograph designs that brought Furlan Marri to the watch-enthusiast party in the first place. Three of the five core models — all sized at 38mm with a 46mm lug-to-lug and 11.5mm thickness —  feature the sectored, two-register dial arrangement, with an outer scale for chronograph measurements, described above on the original Kickstarter pieces. These include the Sabbia Rosa (“pink sand”), with a 4N rose gold PVD coating on the case and a dial with beige and gold details; the Castagna (“chestnut”), with dark brown and taupe tones; and Rosso Grigio (“red gray”), with red and gray dial sectors matched with a burgundy leather strap. The Sabbia Rosa has a motorsport–inspired tachymeter as its scale, while the other two have an asthmometer scale, used for measuring respiratory breaths on so-called “doctor’s watches” of the early 20th century. 

Another traditional doctor-oriented scale, a heartbeat-measuring pulsometer, appears on the outer ring of the other two MecaQuartz models, the Ardesia Blu (“slate blue”) and Nero Sabbia (“black sand”), which feature the same dimensions in 316L stainless steel, the same pump-style chronograph pushers, and the same Japanese-made VK64 movement, but whose dials differ from their bicompax siblings with only a single 60-minute counter at 9 o’clock. The sector-style dials, in blue and black, respectively (the latter with a contrasting beige subdial), have a lacquered finish and double-printed text in contrasting colors. Furlan Marri’s MecaQuartz models retail for CHF 585, or about $730. 

[toc-section heading="Cornes de Vache Collection (2022)"]

The Cornes de Vache collection takes its name from the watches’ unusual and very retro-look twisting-lug design, which brings to mind the “horns of a cow” (the literal translation of “cornes de vache”). Vacheron Constantin, one of the historical watchmakers most associated with the style, uses the term for a neo-vintage chronograph watch within its Historiques collection, but few other modern watchmakers have embraced the style. Furlan Marri uses the distinctive cow-horn-lug case, here measuring 37.5mm in 316L steel, for an elegant three-handed watch, whose sectored dial hosts applied Breguet numerals at 12, 3, 6, and 9 o’clock, leaf-style hands, and a crosshairs motif in the center. 

The options in the Cornes de Vache series are Blue Sector (blue with polished steel and steel-colored details), Salmon Sector (finely grained salmon-colored dial with black PVD details), and White Sector (sandblasted, stamped white dial with steel-colored details and blued hands). Inside these watches, visible behind a clear sapphire caseback window, is a La Joux-Perret G100 movement, boasting a 68-hour power reserve and a host of high-horology finishing, including Geneva stripes, blued screws, and a tungsten rotor with galvanized palladium coating and gold engravings. All in all, most would agree it’s quite a value at the MSRP of CHF 1,250 or around $1,562.

[toc-section heading="Disco Volante Collection (2024)"] 

In 2024 came the Disco Volante collection, which introduced an entirely new case shape, and another Swiss-made mechanical movement, to the Furlan Marri portfolio. Despite possibly conjuring up late 1970s/early-1980s nightclub imagery, the name “Disco Volante,” which translates to “flying saucer,” actually refers to the case design, recognizable for its sleek, round, somewhat sloping shape and hidden lugs, the latter emphasizing the clean, symmetrical spaceship-like aesthetic. With stylistic roots in the 1930s, the Disco Volante case measures 38mm, a few notches up from the 36mm average of those predecessors, with a svelte profile of 8.10mm and a water resistance of 50 meters. The four-part dials deftly combine concentric circles and sharply crafted angles, with sleek, pointed central skyscraper-like hands; double-printed numerals and applied indexes for the hour positions; and a small seconds subdial at 6 o’clock. In a clever bit of attention to detail, Furlan Marri has applied different shades of Super-LumiNova to the circles surrounding the hours and minutes and small seconds indications, each chosen to echo the watch’s specific colorway. 

Those colorways include Disco Verde, with a dark-green- and cream-colored dial and aged-effect “Old Radium” Super-LumiNova (SLN) on the circles and the domed hands; Disco Celeste, with a blue-and-silver dial and BGW9 SLN on the glowing elements, which emits a white/sky-blue radiance in the dark; and Havana Disco, which combines salmon and brown tones on the dial and is finished off with Old Radium SLN that glows in bright yellow-green. The movement in all of the Disco Volante models is the Peseux 7001, a manually wound mechanical caliber first introduced in the 1950s and prized for its reliability as well as its thinness (just 2.5mm high). Furlan Marri ensured this vintage-evocative movement was ready for its close-up behind the watches’ sapphire casebacks, meticulously redesigning the bridges and applying black polishing, chamfering, and beveling to the crown wheel, screws, and other components. Each Disco Volante watch comes with two color-matched, vegetable-tanned Italian leather straps with tone-on-tone stitching. Prices are set at CHF 2,500, or approximately $3,125.

[toc-section heading="Red Hunter Anniversary Piece (2025)"]

For its fourth anniversary in 2025, Furlan Marri introduced its first watch sized at the very vintage-appropriate diameter of 36mm: the Red Hunter edition, which also features a hinged caseback that serves as a nod to historical pocket watches and early wristwatches. The style (you guessed it, also very rare in watches today) has roots in 19th- and early 20th-century timepieces made for hunters, equestrians, and military officers and was geared toward protecting the watch’s crystal from impacts. The lacquered dial is very different than any of its predecessors in the line, with curved Roman numerals and applied dot indexes, domed sword hands, a stylish railroad minute track, and a red central seconds pointer. The hinged, closed caseback opens to reveal a special anniversary engraving and a sapphire window showing the La Joux-Perret G100 automatic movement, with the usual array of elite finishing and a rotor coated in 4N rose gold. This watch, like many others launched by the brand as a limited edition, is no longer available through direct channels. But one can imagine more such special pieces coming to market as Furlan Marri gets more years of success under its belt.