Bring up this brand and you’ll get eye rolls from anyone who has even a cursory understanding of watches.

Invicta, once a Swiss brand, was purchased by a Florida based company some time ago and it’s about what you’d expect from a company headquartered in America’s wang. Many of their watches are over the top in flash and gaudiness. They put astronomical MSRPs on and then sell them with huge discounts for $200-$300. People love to hate on them because they straddle a bunch of dichotomies.

On one hand they try to claim their Swiss lineage but they’re now American owned. They use Japanese movements and many of their watches (not all) are now assembled in China. They try to use design to look flashy, they market themselves as high end but then slash the price. The gaudiness ends up looking cheap. Many of their designs are about as subtle as an Ed Hardy T-shirt. The type of people that would stereotypically love this brand would enjoy Affliction T-shirts, energy drinks, lifted pickups, and MMA fights. Surprisingly not along ago the Invicta Watch Group also purchased another Swiss brand, Glycine, which is much loved by many fans and has a classic design language that’s muted compared to Invicta’s.

I almost purchased a diver from them a few years ago, but decided instead to get a digital watch instead. Recently getting back into watches and wanting to build a dealership, I purchased several Invicta watches because I was able to source them for well under $100 and in one case, new in the box with tags. I wanted to practice working on a few watches without risking a lot of cash if I damaged them. Last week I disassembled one and promptly destroyed it, so it was good thinking on my part :).

After spending some time with them, I love Invicta. I like their logo, I like their designs. They have unusual cases and interesting dials. I like that the watches are large and fit my big wrist nicely, . I like that they’re heavy. I like that they have a lot of options. Their name sounds good. I like that they sponsor motorsports teams, and that they’re headquartered in America. The gold GMT watch I have in the photo is Swiss Made which means that 60% of the expense in making the watch has to come from Switzerland and it has to be cased there, so they still do have some options for people who want something made outside of China and at a lower price point.

Their best watches are homages, or clones of other famous watches. They get flack for that too, people dislike their original designs and then dislike their homages for being copies of other classic designs. I guess you can’t please everyone and the brand is criticized for being too creative and also not creative enough. Their automatic diver can often be found for under $100 new and it has a Seiko movement inside that’s probably worth nearly all of that if you buy it retail. it’s a riff on a classic Rolex design and it just looks good.

I’ve seen cheap watches and I own a few, Invicta watches are not expensive but they’re a good value for the money and honestly the gaudiness can be fun. A lot of watches are status symbols snobby people wear to show that they’ve accomplished something or have enough wealth to throw it around on a luxury watch.

Invicta is a watch brand you don’t wear to impress other people. Invicta is a brand you wear for yourself. They make watches you would wear because you like it and you don’t care what other people think about it and that’s exactly what I intend to do with mine.