The story of HODINKEE begins with a grandfather's Omega Speedmaster. Benjamin Clymer grew up in Rochester, New York, the kind of quietly obsessive kid who collected Bakelite rotary telephones and vintage radios before he was old enough to drive. When his grandfather handed him the Omega at sixteen, Clymer found the object that would organize his life. In 2008, while working in finance at UBS and facing layoffs during the Great Recession, he started a blog. He named it after the Czech and Slovak word for wristwatch — hodinky — using Google Translate to find something whimsical enough to cut through the pretension he saw in the watch industry.
The blog took off because Clymer did something nobody else was doing: he wrote about watches the way music critics write about albums, with enthusiasm, historical context, and personal voice. Within a few years, readers were spending six figures on timepieces based on his recommendations. He enrolled at Columbia's journalism school to sharpen his skills, and by the time he graduated, Time magazine had named HODINKEE one of its fifty best websites. The New York Times dubbed him "The High Priest of Horology."
In 2012, the platform launched its own e-commerce operation, beginning with handmade Italian leather watch straps that sold out instantly. Collaborations with brands including Omega, Vacheron Constantin, and Hermès followed. The company raised forty million dollars in a 2020 funding round, with investors that included LVMH Luxury Ventures, John Mayer, and Tom Brady. In 2024, British retailer Watches of Switzerland acquired the platform, and Clymer returned to active management as president.
The print magazine — a heavyweight, beautifully produced seasonal publication — distills HODINKEE's editorial ethos into something tactile and collectible. It's the physical artifact of a digital revolution: proof that one obsessive kid from Rochester could transform how the world thinks about watches.
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