The Founding of Mimora

Mimora is a watch brand based in Timișoara, Romania, working in a neo-vintage design language. The brand took shape in 2025, though the work behind the name started well before it.

A debut, not a launch.

That line sits behind everything we do. A launch is an announcement, timed and amplified. A debut is quieter: the first time the work is finished enough to be seen. We would rather be judged on the watches than on the volume around them, and this article is a plain account of how the brand came to exist.

The Order of Things

The journey began in 2024, with the first equipment purchases. The tools came before the brand, and that order was deliberate. We wanted to know what we could make with our own hands before we decided what Mimora would stand for.

Much of that first stretch went into learning the equipment and setting a standard we could repeat. A watch is only as good as its least careful step, so we treated that early period as the foundation rather than a delay.

Brand work started in late April 2025. Over that spring and summer, the name, the design language, and the reasons behind each watch took shape. By the time the identity was finished, there was already a watch to put it on.

None of this happened quickly, and it was not meant to. The distance between the first equipment purchase and the first shipped watch was the point, not an obstacle to clear.

An Apartment Workshop

The first workshop was improvised, set up inside an apartment in Timișoara. The space was small and the limits were real, but it was enough to build watches to the standard we had set, and it stayed enough for the whole of the first collection.

Dial pad printing is done in-house. Keeping that step under our own roof means we decide how a finished dial reads, down to the print on its surface, rather than handing that control to a supplier.

How We Work

We are open about how we price. Our markup stays below three times the production cost. That is a ceiling we hold to, not a target we push toward, and it is stated plainly rather than left implied. Publishing the limit means a buyer can weigh what a watch costs against what it costs to make.

We design with intention, not convention. Every choice on a watch should have a reason behind it that we can explain. And our priority is the product, not rapid growth: we would rather make the next watch well than make many quickly.

The First Watch

The first watch Mimora ever made shipped on 18 June 2025, while the three models of the Debut Collection were still being drawn and redrawn. In our design files it had no model name; it was called simply "Core," because that is what it was. Steel case, sapphire crystal, Sellita movement, time and date, leather strap: the essentials of a good automatic watch, done properly, and then given the personality they deserved. That personality would become Buena Vista.