It’s been an exciting year at The Watch Preserve. Just back in January, we announced our first retail partnership with Bulova. It was our biggest shift yet, offering new production watches right across from our vintage and pre-owned timepieces. But for Director of Sales and Partnerships Michael Pandolfo, it was just the beginning. There was one brand he knew The Watch Preserve had to get: Doxa.
Founded in 1889, Doxa has been producing Swiss timepieces for nearly a century and a half. Despite all that history, the brand is almost solely known today for the dive watches it produced during the mid-twentieth century. The SUB 300, 300T, and T-Graph were purpose-built underwater tools that, in the words of retailer U.S. Divers Co. from the period, showed “the world that you’re a diver.” They’re also fundamentally polarizing. The large cushion cases, small dials, and odd bezel insert make for an ungainly-looking watch that induces strong reactions.
“For me,” Michael said, “Doxa is sort of the perfect synthesis of watch collecting and community. They were always this sort of really aspirational thing, like ‘Oh, these things seem really cool. They have a great history. But back then, this was around 2017, 2018, nobody was wearing Doxa; it was still very niche.”
It eventually led Michael to his passion for SCUBA diving, which has connected him to a wider community of close friends in and beyond the world of watches. That draw to the community was key to why Michael knew Doxa would be a great fit for The Watch Preserve.
“The brands we bring in, we want to be enthusiast-centric and enthusiast-focused, and Doxa is still very much one of those brands,” Michael said. “They were aspirational when we first started because it was a higher price point, and it made us nervous at first.”
Owner Nik Libby had reservations. At the time, Doxa represented a blind spot in his collecting interests. Doxa fans, though loud, mostly existed in small corners throughout the watch collecting world. Then there was the deviation from what The Watch Preserve had been founded on — how would new retail impact The Watch Preserve’s focus on vintage and pre-owned? But, as Michael put it, his enthusiasm won Nik over. “If he can’t sell somebody a Doxa, then I don’t know who can.” His passion for the brand and its history has been instrumental in getting both Nik and Doxa excited about the partnership.
Still, a final push was needed. Then an idea struck: the bridge. Rather than being two disparate shores, a bridge connects vintage and pre-owned watches with new retail. Interest in one leads to the other, with traffic ebbing and flowing between them. But when a former colleague introduced what he called The Bridge Concept, things clicked for Nik and Michael, and the flow of conversation opened up with Switzerland.
The Watch Preserve proudly became Texas’ first — and to date only — Doxa retailer earlier this year, and one of the brand’s few independent retailers in the United States. The strong community of enthusiasts surrounding Doxa made the brand a natural fit for the store. It was a good fit from day one. The Watch Preserve has soared into Doxa’s top five U.S. accounts, sitting alongside major industry players like Watches of Switzerland.
Nik and Michael weren’t surprised, though. The Dallas-Fort Worth community showed up instantly. The DFW area is one of the fastest-growing metros in the country, and experienced collectors and burgeoning enthusiasts alike have shown up excited to learn about and experience the watches firsthand, with people traveling from across the state to see the newest addition to the store. Orders begin coming in from across the country as enthusiasts who have not yet experienced The Watch Preserve online called in their orders.
Now, the partnership is rising to new heights. The Watch Preserve and Doxa have partnered to bring a group of fourteen Doxa enthusiasts and veteran divers down to Panama City Beach, Florida, to dive the same waters where Doxa watches have made history. They will put some of Doxa’s most iconic models to the test, like the SUB 300, 300T, Army, and T-Graph, while also experiencing some of the brand’s most modern designs, including the Carbon, 200T, and 200 II.
Here’s the wild card: a Watch Preserve Doxa collector has been invited along for the ride. Thanks to sponsor partner Deep 6 Gear, a premier producer of precision, expedition-grade dive gear, not only will our collector be joining the adventure, but he’ll walk away with his own dive certification and memories of a lifetime with his own Doxa.
A lot has changed since the doors opened on Labor Day Weekend 2023, but the core philosophy behind The Watch Preserve has never wavered. “One of the guiding lights of The Watch Preserve is having something for everybody,” Michael said. “People walk in off the street, ‘What is this place?’ And then they’ll pick up a watch, ‘What is this?’ And then you give them a little five-minute history of the Elgin National Watch Company, and they walk away knowing something they were never going to learn.” That education and storytelling is at the heart of what Nik loves about watches. The Watch Preserve is an extension of that philosophy built around one idea: community.
That community-first focus is about to lead to The Watch Preserve’s biggest chapter yet. In late 2026 and early 2027, The Watch Preserve is expanding into the building next door to create a 2,500-square-foot space with dedicated new, vintage, and pre-owned spaces. The addition will create space for new brand partnerships, with Nik hoping to add brands like Zenith and Omega to the fold.
The new space will also increase The Watch Preserve’s event capacity, with Nik planning to create a space for enthusiasts to come and pass the time and expand after-hours programs for the Collectors’ Club and the local watch community. Despite all the changes, one thing is certain — this is just the beginning of the adventure.
Want to be the first to hear about new watches, exciting events, and stories like these? Join our Collector’s Club — it’s our vibrant Slack community where you’ll be able to interact with other enthusiasts and see the latest and greatest from The Watch Preserve.