When a brand first reaches out to a watch development partner, one of the most common early questions is: which brands have you worked with?
It is a reasonable instinct. You want to know that the partner has experience, that they have worked at the level you are aiming for, that they understand the kind of brand you are.
But there is a version of this question that reveals something important about the partner’s relationship with confidentiality — and it is worth thinking about before you ask it, and before you evaluate the answer.
If a development partner answers that question freely — naming clients, describing their projects, showing you work that a brand trusted them to keep private — they are telling you something about how they will treat your project when you become one of their clients. The same openness that impresses you in the sales conversation is the openness that will be applied to your brand when the next prospect asks the same question.
This is how we think about it at HTIMES, and it shapes the answer we give.
Why We Don’t Name Our Clients
We have worked with more than 45 brands since 2009 — across fashion, accessories, lifestyle, sports, and licensed IP. Some of those brands are well known. Some are not. All of them chose to work with us with a reasonable expectation that the relationship would remain between us.
In the watch industry, as in most accessories categories, brands are protective of their supply chains. Knowing which manufacturer a competitor uses is commercially useful information. Knowing the direction a competitor’s next collection is taking is even more useful. Brands that work with a development partner are trusting that partner with both.
When a new prospect asks us which brands we work with, we do not name them. Not because we have nothing to show, but because naming them would be a breach of the trust those clients placed in us — and because a partner who breaches that trust for the sake of a sales conversation is not a partner whose confidentiality commitments can be relied upon.
What we can tell you is the nature of the work we have done — the categories, the types of brand, the kinds of development challenge we have navigated — without identifying the brands involved. That should be sufficient to establish our experience. If it is not, we understand. But we will not resolve the uncertainty by disclosing information that belongs to someone else.
Why should a brand be cautious about a watch manufacturer that freely names their clients?
A watch manufacturer that freely names their clients in sales conversations is demonstrating that they treat client relationships as marketing assets rather than confidential partnerships. A brand that chooses that manufacturer is choosing a partner who will, in the next sales conversation, name them. For brands that are protective of their supply chain, their design direction, or their competitive positioning, a development partner’s willingness to name clients is a more meaningful signal than any portfolio or case study — it reveals how the partner thinks about the relationship between confidentiality and credibility.
How We Protect Your Design Throughout the Development Process
Our approach to design confidentiality is not a policy statement. It is a set of operational practices that apply to every project, from the first conversation to the final delivery.
Before the project begins: the confidentiality agreement. Before any design information, brand references, or project details are exchanged, we sign a confidentiality agreement with the brand. This is not a formality. It is the formal establishment of the terms under which the relationship operates — what information is covered, how it will be handled, and what our obligations are if the project does not proceed.
For brands whose projects involve significant commercial sensitivity — a major category launch, a licensed IP with contractual confidentiality requirements, a collection tied to a product announcement — a more comprehensive NNN agreement (Non-Disclosure, Non-Use, Non-Circumvention) is appropriate. We can discuss the right instrument for your project. For legal advice on registration and enforcement in your specific markets, a China IP lawyer is the right resource.
During the project: design files stay within the project team. Design files shared during development — brand identity files, reference images, dial artwork, technical drawings, colour specifications — are handled within the team working on your project. They are not accessible to the broader organisation, and they are not shared with teams working on other clients’ projects.
This applies equally to the design directions that emerge through collaboration. When a design direction is developed through the brief and sample process — through the conversations, the references, the specific decisions that make your watch feel like your brand — that direction belongs to your project. It is not applied to another client’s collection.
During sampling: design ownership is documented. When we produce technical drawings, engineering files, and colour references before sampling begins — the confirmation step that closes the gap between design intent and physical sample — those documents are produced as your assets. The files belong to you. At any point during or after the project, you can request and receive all design files created during the development process, without conditions. The specific documents confirmed at each sample stage — and how they establish a clear record of design ownership throughout the process — are covered in detail in the sample stage explained.
If elements of the design were developed collaboratively during the project — a case shape proposed by our team, a dial layout developed through the brief process — ownership of those elements is assigned to the brand in the project agreement. Our contribution is a service, not a co-authorship claim.
After the project: your collection is archived, not showcased. When a collection is completed and delivered, the project files are archived internally. They are not added to a public portfolio, not used in marketing materials, not referenced in conversations with other prospective clients without your explicit permission.
This means we cannot always show prospective clients the full range of work we have done. We consider that an acceptable trade-off. The brands we work with should be able to trust that their collection remains theirs — not a credential we deploy to win the next conversation.
What specific protections does HTIMES put in place for a brand’s watch design during development?
HTIMES applies four operational protections to every development project: a confidentiality agreement signed before any project information is exchanged; design file access restricted to the project team throughout the development process; explicit design ownership assigned to the brand for all files and design directions created during the project, with the brand able to request all files at any point; and post-completion archiving of the project, with the collection not used in marketing materials or referenced in client conversations without the brand’s permission. These are standard operating procedures, not special arrangements — they apply to every project regardless of the brand’s size or the scale of the collection.
What the Right Questions Actually Sound Like
There is a version of the “which brands have you worked with” question that a development partner can and should answer: not by naming clients, but by describing the nature of the work.
Ask about the types of brand they work with. Fashion labels, accessories brands, lifestyle companies, sports teams, IP holders — a partner with genuine breadth of experience will be able to describe the range without naming names.
Ask about the types of development challenge they have navigated. First-time category entries, licensed IP with approval processes, collections with tight release window timelines — the way a partner describes these challenges reveals their experience without disclosing client identities.
Ask how they handle confidentiality. The specificity of the answer tells you whether their confidentiality approach is operational or rhetorical. A partner with real confidentiality practices will describe them in detail — the agreement, the file handling, the post-project archiving. A partner whose confidentiality approach is a policy statement will give you a policy statement.
Ask directly: if I become a client, will you name me to the next prospect? The answer to this question is the clearest signal of all. A partner who says yes — that they would ask your permission first, but otherwise would reference your brand — is being honest about how they operate. A partner who says no, without qualification, is the partner whose confidentiality commitment you can rely on.
For a broader guide to evaluating a watch development partner’s trustworthiness and operational practices before committing to a project, how to evaluate a watch development partner covers the full assessment in detail.
For a practical framework of the questions worth asking in a first development conversation — including how to raise confidentiality early without it feeling adversarial — the questions to ask a watch development partner before you commit is a useful starting point.
When you are ready to have that conversation with us — and to understand specifically how we would handle your project — we’re here.