Some things come back to you at the right moment. A place. A person. A watch you had almost forgotten you loved.
The Klokers story at 52 GAGE starts in 2014 - long before the store existed - and it starts, as the best stories do, with a friend.
A Watch That Stayed With Me
In 2014, a friend who was distributing Klokers at the time handed me one of the first pieces. I wore it for years. The sliding rule mechanism - inherited from the calculators and instruments of the 1960s and 70s - is unlike anything else on the market. It does not just tell the time. It makes you look at the time differently.
Then came the Apple Watch years. Data, steps, notifications, sleep tracking. Useful, perhaps. But somewhere along the way the watch stopped being something you wore and became something that wore you.
When I got tired of being tracked and wanted to go back to something with presence and personality, I put my Klokers back on. Almost immediately, people started noticing. Compliments in the lift, questions at dinner, strangers stopping me on the street. "Where did you get that?" they would ask.
After enough of those conversations, the answer became obvious: bring it to Hong Kong.
A Trip to the Basque Coast
To carry a brand properly, you need to know the people behind it. So Jean and I went to meet the Klokers owners at their home base in Saint Jean de Luz - a small, beautiful town on the Basque coast of France.
It was not a difficult trip to justify. Saint Jean de Luz happens to be close to where Jean was born, and a place we both return to regularly on holiday. We know its streets, its light, the particular quality of the air coming off the Atlantic. Going there to meet the people behind a brand we already loved felt completely natural - almost inevitable.
What we found was a couple who are as inspiring in person as their watches suggest. Passionate about craft, about the history of measurement and timekeeping, about creating objects that have genuine meaning and a long life. The kind of people who could talk for hours about why a particular mechanism works the way it does - and make you want to listen to every word.
What Makes Klokers Different
Klokers was founded in 2014 with a single idea: reinterpret the sliding rule - the analogue calculating instrument used by engineers, pilots and scientists before digital calculators existed - as a contemporary watch design. The result is the KLOK collection, where the time is read not from rotating hands but from sliding scales moving across the dial.
It is immediately readable once you understand it. It is also immediately striking to anyone who has never seen it before - which, in Hong Kong, is almost everyone.
The watches are Swiss made, with movements assembled in Switzerland - a detail that matters in a category where provenance is everything. The straps are interchangeable - one of the most practical features on any watch at this price point - and come in a range of colours and materials. Klokers is not a luxury watch brand in the traditional sense. It is a design object that happens to tell the time. That distinction matters.
Why It Works at 52 GAGE
We are not a watch store. But Klokers is not really a watch brand - or at least not only that. It is the kind of object that starts conversations, that reveals something about the person wearing it, that clients discover and immediately want to share with someone else.
That is exactly the kind of thing 52 GAGE exists to carry.
The Klokers collection is available at 52 GAGE, 52 Gage Street, Central Hong Kong, and online at 52gage.com. Come and try one on - we promise the first question will be "how does it work?" and the second will be "which one suits me?"
Where can I buy Klokers watches in Hong Kong?
Klokers watches are available at 52 GAGE, 52 Gage Street, Central Hong Kong. The collection is also available online at 52gage.com. 52 GAGE is the exclusive stockist of Klokers in Hong Kong.
What is a Klokers watch?
Klokers is a French watch brand founded in 2014. Its watches are Swiss made, with movements assembled in Switzerland. They are based on the sliding rule mechanism - an analogue calculating instrument used by engineers and scientists before digital calculators. The time is read from sliding scales rather than rotating hands. Klokers watches feature interchangeable straps.
How do you read a Klokers watch?
A Klokers watch displays the time using sliding scales inspired by the slide rule calculators of the 1960s and 70s. The hours and minutes are read from two parallel scales that move horizontally across the dial. It is intuitive once you try it, and unlike any other watch mechanism available today.
Why did 52 GAGE choose to carry Klokers?
52 GAGE co-founder Antoine has worn Klokers since 2014, when the brand was first created. After years of wearing the watch and receiving constant questions and compliments from people in Hong Kong, he approached the brand about bringing it to the city. Jean and Antoine subsequently visited the Klokers founders in Saint Jean de Luz, France, and brought the collection to 52 GAGE in Central Hong Kong.
