About

About Me

I’m AJ, and I design and build every Alexander James watch myself, here in Chicago. I’ve been assembling watches since 2014 and started the brand in 2015.

How it started

I wanted to start wearing a watch to work, but my daily wearer wasn’t quite right for the office and client meetings. While browsing watches online, I thought it would be pretty cool to customize a dial, so I started researching and fell down the Seiko modding rabbit hole on the WUS forums. I got obsessed and ended up modding far too many Seikos.

Making my own parts

When I started modding, there were really only two big parts shops, and neither had much variety. I wanted to make watches in vibrant colors, and those parts just didn’t exist, so I decided to try having them made myself. That led to opening a parts store of my own.

Those parts eventually went into small runs of watches here and there, and when a Reddit post blew up, I spun up a separate website just for the watch brand. For a while after that, I stayed focused on the parts business and did watch releases, Kickstarters, and so on in between.

Focusing on the watch brand

In 2023, I shifted more of my focus to the watch brand and started designing the A3 Omen. It let me break free from the proportions and compatibility limits of the mod space and design watches from scratch.

What I’m doing now

Lately I’ve been working on dual-texture, dual-material dials in combinations I haven’t seen before. I like my watches to skew a little dressier, so even my sports watches are GADA (go-anywhere, do-anything) in structure but lean dressy in materials.

I’m always working on watches that I’d be proud to wear, and hopefully something you will be too. The coolest thing to me is coming up with designs and other people being as excited about it as I am! 

Say hi

If you’re a watch nerd, or you just want a piece you’ll enjoy wearing, I hope you find something here you like. I’m a one-man shop, so I’m the one answering every DM and email. And if you’re local to Chicago, I’m always happy to talk watches over a coffee or a beer!