July 28, 2026 · Microbrand
Golby is about as literally a family business as watchmaking gets. Craig Golby started out selling watch straps, picked up watchmaking as an extension of that, and now runs the brand from Solihull with his wife Sarah — Craig handles the technical side, Sarah brings the colour sense, and by their own account they’ve had their niece design a caseback and their eleven-year-old sketch dial concepts that may well show up in a future release. Neither of them has quit their day job for this, which by their own telling is exactly why the spec sheets keep punching above the price point: there’s no pressure to maximize margin on watches they’d rather just be proud of.
The Skipping Stone is their newest release, and the headline feature is a genuinely useful one: an internal rotating chapter ring, numbered 1 through 12 and controlled by its own screw-down crown at 2 o’clock, sitting alongside the main time-setting crown at 4. Rotate it and you’ve got a second time zone tracked at a glance, without the added case height a GMT hand and 24-hour bezel usually demands. It’s a properly practical complication for the price, not a gimmick bolted on for the spec sheet.
Golby’s signature oil-pressed dial gets a ripple texture across four colourways — Sunset, Seashell, Sandy Shore, and Aqua — each limited to just 50 pieces, with cut-out hour markers revealing BGW9 Super-LumiNova underneath and a set of skeletonised lighthouse hands to match the coastal theme. The case is a wearable 39mm, 10.5mm thick, 45mm lug-to-lug, machined from hardened 1000 HV stainless steel, with a flat sapphire crystal carrying five layers of internal anti-reflective coating and 100m of water resistance. Inside sits a Miyota 9015 — 24 jewels, 4Hz, 42-hour reserve, hacking seconds — visible through an exhibition caseback with a custom-designed rotor. The bracelet carries Golby’s push-button micro-adjust clasp and quick-release spring bars, so swapping to one of their leather or suede straps takes seconds rather than tools.
My honest take
What I like about Golby generally, and this piece specifically, is that the family-business framing isn’t just a nice story — it actually shows up in the product decisions. A second crown and internal chapter ring is a more expensive, more failure-prone thing to engineer than just printing a 24-hour scale on a bezel, and at £495 that’s not the corner-cutting choice, it’s the opposite. Fifty pieces per colourway is properly limited too, so this isn’t one to sit on if the coastal palette appeals. Does a genuine dual-time function change your read on a watch like this, or is a rotating internal ring still more novelty than daily-use tool at this price?
The short version
| Model | The Skipping Stone (Sunset / Seashell / Sandy Shore / Aqua, 50 pieces each) |
| Case | 39mm x 10.5mm, 45mm lug-to-lug, hardened 316L steel |
| Movement | Miyota 9015, automatic, hacking (42h reserve) |
| Water Resistance | 100m / 10 ATM |
| Availability | Shipping from August 3, 2026 |
| Price | £495 |
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