There are many stages of note during the developmental lifecycle of a brand and its models. More than most manufactures, NOMOS Glashütte has been through the major ones in full view of a never-more discerning public thanks to it not having history to hide behind. Founded in 1990 with its first watches hitting the shelves in 1992, the fact that just thirty-one years later the modern success story of former East Germany’s watchmaking mecca is now a fully-fledged manufacture producing multiple calibers and fitting them to multiple unique product lines almost beggars’ belief.

But the way in which NOMOS has gone about its rapid rise to independence sheds some light on how it was, against all odds, possible.

The brand’s success can be attributed to its founder, Roland Schwertner’s, frequently uttered motto that, after three years working for the brand as one of its international Sales Execs, I still have ringing in my ears.

“Fleißig und besheiden,” Roland would say. It’s a simple saying. Good advice for life, too. Translated, it means “hardworking and humble.” That’s what we were all to be because that is exactly what the products themselves were. We were extensions of them or they were the same of us. Either way. It didn’t matter. And that was the point. Everything about the company was knitted together from the get-go. There was no wild speculation, no mad marketing endeavors, no bank-balance-bazookering partnerships with Hollywood’s flavor of the week. Everything with slow and deliberate and masterfully within itself.

It’s staggering now to think how little experience Schwertner actually had in brand building because he executed a jaw-dropping ascension from absolutely nothing to absolutely something with barely a single misstep. There is always the argument that the brand could have done even more under different leadership, but the problem when it comes to making that argument is, while it is certainly plausible, Schwertner simply hasn’t made any of the major mistakes one would normally expect to see from an ambitious emerging brand.

Throughout his time at the top of NOMOS, he has, on occasion, bewildered colleagues with his ability to ignore trends and, instead, remain laser-focused on a plan that, oftentimes, is clear to no one but himself. And yet, he continues to be right (or at least right enough) to ensure NOMOS never veers from the path he has painstakingly laid for it. These latest models prove that however much longer it might take to get where the brand needs to go than might be absolutely necessary, when it reaches its destination, the payoff is huge.

The Club Sport range needed this diameter. While 39.5 mm may not seem like the most commercial of sizes — for most brands it would be regarded as a little on the small side — for NOMOS, it is the absolute sweet spot for wearers used to donning 41–43 mm timepieces, given how the watches’s thinness causes them to wear a little on the large side. Previously, the Club Sport sub-family had been available in 37 and 42 mm diameters and the five-millimeter gap between the two was clearly too glaring to leave unaddressed.

The 200-meter water resistance continues to put rival models of similar dimensions to shame while the abundance of luminous material applied to the Club Sport dials is a marked improvement on every other attempt at low-light legibility the brand has ever made. Although the now-extinct Glühwürmchen series is still my personal favorite foray into the shadows, the brand learned from its functional shortcomings and pivoted in a most unexpected way.

On the Club Sport dials, lume is not just applied to a flat surface. Instead, the numerals are first engraved into the dial so there to make space for much more luminous compound without it disrupting the sleek appearance of the dial’s surface. Of all the improvements NOMOS has made to its watches over the years, this is probably the one that surprised me the most. I never expected the brand would listen to the market in such a clear and obvious way, but perhaps it is telling how long NOMOS resisted levering lume into models that had no aesthetic need for it and waited to deploy this new technique on the range that, by its nature, required the upgrade. After all, whatever the brand does, if form cannot be said to follow function, it wouldn’t be able to look itself in the mirror.

The tagline for this watch on the NOMOS Glashütte website is “Anyone who wears this watch will realize how much it had been needed.” I really appreciate that kind of confidence from a brand that is learning to lean into its widespread popularity, but also the veiled admission that NOMOS had been sitting on something it knew the market desperately required.

Ever since the Rolex bubble left our stratosphere, there has been a cacophonic craving for something, anything, to fill the hole left by the Oyster Perpetual. A couple of release cycles ago, thanks to the OP line blowing up the internet with the green, red, yellow, blue, and pink dials, and NOMOS soon after releasing 36 and 38 mm versions of the Club Campus in a vivid fuchsia and a laid-back purple, watch lovers started to draw the line between the two families in a way that might have seemed farcical several years ago. All those 36/38 mm Club Campuses needed was a bracelet. If only NOMOS could produce a solid — it really didn’t need to be remarkable — bracelet for the Club collection it would simultaneously banish the old concerns that the Club’s lugs were overlong and also slot right in as a ready-to-wear Oyster Perpetual killer.

The 37 mm Club Sport model from last year was a gargantuan step toward fulfilling that destiny; these three new references have seen that destiny fulfilled.

Keep an eye on this platform next year: if we don’t see some summer shades to match these autumnal tones, I’ll eat my hat.