Meet the creative madman behind Ming, Malaysia’s first high-end watch brand
How an untrained photographer from Malaysia with no watchmaking experience took the world of horology by storm.

Ming Thein co-founded his eponymous watch brand from Malaysia, which has since become one today’s most in-demand watch brands. (Photo: Ming)
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The recent Golden Globes remind us that it’s not just the suspense of the winning announcements or the barely contained star power radiating from the Beverly Hills Hotel that makes awards shows so entertaining — it’s also the genuine surprise of nominees who never expected to win that truly warms the heart. (If you haven’t seen Tadanobu Asano’s acceptance speech, do yourself a favour and open a new tab.)
There’s something uniquely satisfying about celebrating the triumphs of underdogs, and the world of horology is no exception. Last year’s GPHG, often referred to as the “Oscars of watchmaking", saw an extraordinary number of victories by independent brands. Of the 20 categories, over half were claimed by independents — an unprecedented ratio. But perhaps no one was more stunned than Ming Thein, whose eponymous brand took home the Sports Watch Prize for the Ming 37.09 Bluefin diving watch.
“I was in Geneva for just 18 hours because I had meetings all week. I landed at 3pm, had five double espressos, went to the ceremony, and left the next morning at 10am. Oh my god, it was so surreal, I honestly did not expect to win anything,” he recalled. While the Sports Watch Prize category is new, similar brackets in the past decade have been won almost exclusively by Tudor. “I thought something weird was going on here, because we definitely feel like outsiders in the industry. So to be recognised is very strange.”

Thein isn’t being self-effacing. Despite the brand’s previous GPHG win in 2019 in the Horological Revelation category (reserved for brands under 10 years old), the Kuala Lumpur-based watchmaker remains one of the few prominent names emerging from this particular corner of the world. After all, Asian watchmaking is still predominantly associated with Japanese and Chinese brands.
That a Malaysian brand can go toe-to-toe with Swiss giants — and win — isn’t the only thing that’s strange. Thein is in charge of design, engineering, and photography for Ming, but has never been formally trained in any of those fields. After graduating from Oxford at age 16 — in physics, of all things — he wound up in the finance sector, “which frankly, I hated”. Photography as a hobby then became the salve that could soothe both his creative and technical urges, and, when paired with a budding interest in watchmaking, evolved into a career involving watch photography.
While deciding on his first watch, which would later end up being an Omega Dynamic chronograph, he turned to various collectors’ forums, where he encountered people in the community who were generous with their time, knowledge, and collections. “Photography allowed me to experience and put my own spin on the watches I couldn’t afford,” he said. Through those contacts, his watch photography portfolio soon included work with brands like IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Girard-Perregaux, and A. Lange & Sohne, to name a few.

By 2017, photography was no longer a piecemeal pastime but a full-blown calling. Thein was chief of strategy for Hasselblad and advisor to the board of Chinese drone manufacturer DJI. But his passion for mechanical watches persisted, and in that same year, he launched Ming with five other founders who believed in his creative vision. Ming’s first watch, the Ming 17.01, was released in two dial variations — blue or anthracite grey — and featured 38mm titanium cases with a textured dial centre and a modern font, and was powered by a Sellita movement.
Forgoing formal training in the relevant fields was a conscious decision on Thein’s part. “I have a natural stubbornness, so if someone says I can’t do it, I’ll just want to do it anyway. And it’s not like this is a field that involves life and death, like medicine or law,” emphasised Thein. “I didn’t want to risk being trapped in the same patterns, doing things the same way it’s been done for the last 200 years. Asking, ‘Why does it have to be this way?’ is very important if you want to have any kind of innovation.”
The brand has since released some 70 references, all unified by Thein’s insistence on strong, distinctive design and material innovation. Unconstrained by the conventional boundaries of watchmaking and watch design, Thein was free to push any envelope he wanted. In 2023, Ming unveiled the ultra-light LW.01, weighing an astonishing 8.8g for the manual version and 10.8g for the automatic, making it arguably the lightest mechanical watch in the world.
Last year saw the launch of the 20.01 Series 3, showcasing the stunning and unconventional Agenhor Agengraphe movement (customised for Ming) beneath a truly unique dial: crafted from borosilicate and laser-cut with 600 tiny cavities, each filled with a generous application of lume, it delivers a spectacular light show in the dark.


“Photographers spend a lot of time observing things,” said Thein of his source of inspiration. “There are things that will sit in my subconscious for a bit and eventually they combine and an idea will pop out. It might happen tomorrow, or five years from now.” One wall in the Ming office is dedicated to design ideas, and at any given time Thein claims there are over 150 concepts on it. “But it’s a 10 to one discard ratio.”
According to Thein, the most challenging designs are for the entry-level pieces, primarily due to budget constraints. However, this also makes the new Ming 37.02 Minimalist one of his proudest creations. “It’s difficult to try and reduce all of our key design elements into something minimal. But it’s well-considered and the cheapest thing we’ve made in a very long time.” He adds that fans of this CHF 3250 (S$4,885) model tend to be seasoned collectors. “They appreciate the reductivism and how it’s not missing anything. The newer guys will think it’s not ‘bling-y’ enough.”
Not that Thein ever much cared for catering to mass demand. “Trying to make a purely populist product is a mistake,” he declared. “You’re not going to be able to defend it. All my design choices are deliberate as opposed to, say, adding a slide rule to a pilot’s watch just because all pilot’s watches have them.” Indeed, it’s hard to find a diver’s watch as clean and sleek as the Ming 37.09 Bluefin. And despite many of the brand's references lacking the brand name on the dial, a Ming watch is instantly recognisable.

His ethos of defiance has certainly served him well. What began as a small team of six has expanded to 16, with offices now in Kuala Lumpur, La Chaux-de-Fonds, and Dubai. Engineering operations have also been fully brought in-house. Looking ahead to 2025, Thein hints at a brand-new core collection featuring a novel case design.
But Thein is not blind to the inconvenience of his production model. “The more typical approach is for high-value design and intellectual property work to be done in Europe, before being subcontracted to Asia for cost efficiency,” he explained. “We do the opposite. We handle the high-value work in Asia, then subcontract production to Europe, before shipping everything back to Asia for final quality control, and then sending it out again. I’ll be the first to admit it’s not an intelligent way of working.”
"I have a natural stubbornness, so if someone says I can’t do it, I’ll just want to do it anyway."
And that was before he started handing over more of the business administration, travelling, and customer-facing responsibilities to his CEO, Praneeth Raj Singh. Therein lies the perennial question for entrepreneurs: how do you stay sane? “Who says I am?” he countered flatly. “Seriously, which idiot thinks it’s a good idea to start a watch company in the wrong part of the world and with no experience? It’s also a bit masochistic and egotistical to go into an industry that is both antiquated and not particularly necessary. And to make it worse, you go in thinking you can do a better job than people who have been doing it for centuries. In what way is that sane?”
Touche. But perhaps a little insanity is exactly what this time-honoured (if a bit stuffy) trade needs.