Feature: Kudoke

With close to 8 billion people on this planet, it seems likely that at least one of them would have figured out how to make great watches that are reasonably priced. And I don’t just mean mass-produced, decent quality timepieces like Seiko, I mean true, traditional, hand-made watchmaking. It seems the odds are in our favour, because that’s exactly what Stefan Kudoke has done.

Kudoke KudOktopus

I say Stefan—I actually mean Stefan and Ev. Like all good watchmaking brands, this is a partnership of two people, the brains and the brawn if you like. Stefan is the watchmaking muscle, putting close to thirty years of experience to good use at the tools, and Ev is the captain of the Kudoke ship, pointing the business in the right direction and making sure it puts food on the table.

Usually the expression, “putting food on the table” is a loose metaphor to suggest keeping cashflow positive, but in the case of Stefan and Ev, it really means what it really means. Let me set the scene: these guys build their watches in the same house they live in. They’re working on an outbuilding to give them some of their personal space back, but for right now, they work from home in the most industrial way possible.

Stefan’s no stranger to working in a fancy, upscale workshop, mind you, cutting his teeth in the prototyping and development of complicated movements for brands like Breguet and Blancpain. He also has a Masters in watchmaking, which might leave you shrugging your shoulders, but I will also add here that Stefan is German, and the Germans do not take their Masters lightly. It’s basically one step down from being ordained by God.

The distinct lack of Ferraris and Lamborghinis in the Kudoke household-slash-workshop tells me that Stefan and Ev aren’t in it for the money. In fact, Stefan’s whole approach to watchmaking is about extracting the most for the least cost. I would say efficiency, but when talking about a German business, that seems a little on-the-nose.

He started—and this is where his passion still lies—with skeletonization. Like, proper hand skeletonization. This is efficient because it can be done to a pre-existing movement, like with this KudOktopus. No development cost needed. It’s exceptional because—well, just look at it. Every element of this watch that doesn’t look ordinary—hands included—have been cut, shaped and finished by Stefan’s own hands. That means little saws, little files and a lot of skill and patience. Trust me, if you had a go, you’d probably hate it.

Never mind big, white rooms filled with fancy, automated, multi-axis, high-precision CNC machines, skeletonizing a watch like the KudOktopus is as handmade as it gets. This is also in part because those fancy, automated, multi-axis, high-precision CNC machines are very, very expensive. What’s cheaper are old watchmaking tools off eBay that need a little bit of TLC. And that suits Stefan just fine.

Kudoke K1

It's what Stefan would do all day if he could get away with it. But the Kudokes need to put that literal food on the literal table, and so comes the aspect of the business that, whilst we can all appreciate the incredible skill demonstrated in the KudOktopus, is actually more likely to get watches sold.

The K1 was first announced back in 2018, and before I go into the detail of it, I want you to take a moment to absorb what’s happening here, because it’s really important to get a reactionary sense of this watch. It’s simple, two main hands with a subsidiary seconds. There’s no date or any other complication.

What we really want to notice, however, is the quality of the piece. The chapter ring, the sub seconds ring, the logo are all seated on raised, brushed platforms with finely polished bevels. The hands are heat blued and satisfyingly three-dimensional. That’s the symbol for infinity on the hour hand, a hint from Stefan that he expects these watches to last forever both in the design and the build.

The dial itself too is just gratuitously rich and simple at the same time, the frosting catching the light with the sparkle of glitter when the sun’s just right. In black, silver or salmon, it just works. It all just works. The 39mm steel or gold case carries on the theme of simplicity, but put it all together and you get a picture of not just quality, but of difference.

The Kudoke K1 is one of those rare watches that just looks right. It’s not bland, or uninteresting, but it’s also not needlessly overdesigned. It’s just right. Ev did the right thing in giving Stefan a kick up the backside to produce something with more universal appeal, because the result is just stunning.

The funny thing is that Stefan openly admits that he’s not a designer, and just settled on what he thought was right. He doesn’t really seem to know or acknowledge that it is right, just that people seem to like it. What he does know is that it was something he needed to do, and so he went about it the only way he knew how: with 100% commitment. And we haven’t even mentioned the best bit yet…!

Kudoke K2

There are currently two watches in this series, the K1 we just saw and the K2. The K2 gets an extra bit of dial loveliness in the shape of a hand-engraved 24-hour sub-dial that’s even electroplated in three stages—including multiple layers of fiddly masking—right there in the Kudoke household.

What both get is the Kaliber 1, which I’ve been looking forward to talking to you about because it’s not just a lovely thing, it’s also an example of incredibly clever thinking. You can see right away that, like the front, it exudes a unique personality that is Kudoke’s own, something very, very important if you want your watch—or whatever product it is you’re making—to stand out in a crowd.

You might think that since the Kudoke’s are German, that they’d go for the typical German three-quarter plate look, but Stefan wasn’t interested. He’d done all that during his time at Glashütte Original, and he wanted to do something different. He was instead inspired by the stylings of English watchmakers around the time of Thomas Mudge, whose pocket watch movements were warmly coloured in brass and defined by their centrally cantilevered balances.

Yeah, that’s great and all, but it seems a bit out there for a German watchmaker to be copying old British watchmaking. Well, back in the day of Thomas Mudge, there was a German fellow called Hans Moritz von Brühl—the most German name in the world—who worked with Mudge and brought Mudge’s work back to Germany. And not just back to Germany, but specifically back to Dresden, where the Kudokes are based. Isn’t that just the most satisfying story ever?

It gets even more satisfying, because I’m sure by now you’re probably imagining these watches cost big, big money. Well, you might be in for a pleasant surprise then, because although a fancy pants movement like this should ordinarily cost millions to develop, the Kudokes went about making it in an altogether cleverer way.

With the family’s life savings—take that as literally as the food on the table stuff—Stefan and Ev Kudoke approached a local watch component manufacturer to help them realise their idea. Habring2 came on board as well—another husband and wife duo quietly changing watchmaking—to supply some core parts like the baseplate.

So, really, much of the movement already existed, and so only the very top layer needed development. Makes sense. Why pay to redesign a baseplate you can barely see? That left Stefan to work his magic on the parts you can see, and this is where it gets really clever. The Kaliber 1, with its centrally mounted balance cock, looks like a completely new architecture, but it’s not. It’s quite standard.

The ratchet wheel, crown wheel and click are all where they’d usually be. The going train, the main sequence of wheels, follow along the perimeter as usual, meeting the balance in the same place. It’s just clever design, superbly executed, that tells you otherwise. It’s all down to the attention to detail of things like the clickspring, which has been hidden beneath the wheels.

That leaves Stefan to do what he loves most: finishing. Each and every Kailber 1 is finished in the home of Stefan and Ev Kudoke. It’s all done by hand with old, traditional tools and no fancy jigs or holders to make it easier. It’s exactly the kind of work you’d expect a quiet family living in a German forest to do.

And there’s one last little perk: because Stefan really does finish these movements by hand, it means you can have yours how you like. A customer wanted the gear train skeletonised, for example, so they did it. Looks great, and now it’s an official option. If you like the hand engraving on the balance cock, you can have the whole thing done like that. Not only will you get a great watch, you’ll also be keeping Stefan happy too.

This is the kind of watchmaking that, at face value, appreciating the design and the quality and the difference, I’d be expecting to pay £20,000 for, if not more. The reality is that the K1 starts for less than eight. The KudOktopus isn’t much more, and the K2 not much more again at £10,500. Certainly not pigeon feed, but when you think a comparatively mass-produced watch from Rolex or Omega can be in the same ballpark as a watch like this, it really puts the achievements of Stefan and Ev into perspective. It’s the kind of watchmaking that I live for, that puts a smile on my face and makes me excited to discover more, and I hope it does for you too.