Kobold - Made in U.S.A

Dear Friends of Kobold,

2026 is here and I am very happy to announce that Made in USA Kobold watches are coming back!

In 2014, Kobold became the first U.S. watch company in over half a century to unveil a new in-house casemaking operation.

The launch event was attended by my mentors, the founding fathers of the Kobold brand of watches. Gerd-R. Lang, the master watchmaker, flew in from Munich, Germany. Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the British explorer and Kobold brand ambassador-in-chief arrived from England, and 83-year-old Carnegie Mellon University Professor Jack Roseman drove up from Pittsburgh.

These three men were instrumental in turning Kobold into a trailblazer of American watchmaking and I was proud to show them our brand new CNC equipment with which we were gearing up to produce watch cases in-house. The machines had just arrived a few weeks earlier and were not yet in operation, but this did not detract from the evening’s excitement.

Left to right: Michael Kobold, Gerd-R. Lang, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Jack Roseman inaugurate the Kobold Headquarters. 

After a steep learning curve, I acquired the skills necessary to produce watch cases on these machines. Thanks to Jake Skovira, our master CNC operator, I was soon able to operated the CNC equipment independently. It felt like magic, not unlike how a pilot must feel during his first solo flight. I have fond memories of getting up at the crack of dawn on weekends and spending many hours with the machines, turning out one case part after the next.

The first few dozen cases (or was it a few hundred?) I made myself were all out of gauge and therefore could not be used to make Kobold watches. Each part had to be re-machined by Jake and in the process I almost always incurred the unbridled wrath of his Irish temper. However, just as quickly as he ironed out the problems on the parts I produced, Jake’s temper always dissipated. He was by far the best instructor I could have asked for and I promised Jake his very own Kobold watch made on our CNC equipment after we got all of the backorders filled.

 

The backlog had grown disproportionately owing to the fact that it took us far longer to make the first small batches of cases than I had estimated in my worst case projections. This was due to several unexpected problems, the first of which was very costly to fix.

The CNC machines were situated in a brand new building we erected an hour north of Pittsburgh. The building lacked the 3-phase electricity required to power the new CNC machines. A new line would have to be put into the building, the power company informed us. However, due to its rural location, this process would take quite some time. In their various rounds of assessing the situation, the power commpany’s engineers, technicians, and construction workers were as methodical as clockwork. They were also as slow as a magnetized watch.

In due course, four months after the opening event, the power company finally laid the cable at considerable expense. If I recall correctly, the cable alone cost more than 10% of the total value of the brand new CNC machines.

Had we constructed the building closer to the country road alongside our property, we would have saved a cool ten grand, but that would have meant putting a 2-story tall structure right across from Mr. Taylor’s house. He and his wife Mary, a diminutive creature with a temper that rivaled that of Jake the animated Irish-American CNC genius, had been living there for many decades and I wasn’t going to ruin their view of our park-like property.

No sooner had the power cable arrived in the new CNC building did we discover that a special converter was required to power the machines. Sourcing and installing this converter took even more time, but after it finally arrived and the machines were hooked up it felt like Christmas and Thanksgiving fell on the same day.

A few weeks later, Haas, our U.S.-based supplier of the CNC machines, sent up one of their technicians to program the machines. This technician, a friendly Italian-American named Dominic, referred Jake to us. “He’s the best in the field,” he said. Why didn’t we have our own CNC technician on hand, you the alert reader wonders?

Well, we did but that person found another job in the time it took the machines to be operational.

Meanwhile, almost half a year had gone by and so I was greatly relieved when Jake Skovira pulled up in his giant pick-up truck. Not much taller than Mrs. Taylor, and almost as wide as he was tall, Jake was in disbelief that we had purchased two of the smallest CNC machines Haas made at the time, a MiniMill 2 and ST-10 lathe.

“If you had asked me for advice, I’d have told you to buy completely different machines. You could have bought just one machine to do all the jobs required on your cases,” Jake scolded me. Most of what came out of Jake’s mouth the first few weeks seemed like scolding, but by some magic he quickly forgave me for the countless beginner mistakes I made.

Finding the right CNC equipment had taken my colleagues and me years. I dispatched one of our watchmakers to Germany to scope out the equipment used by Fricker, a company that enjoyed some renown at the time for producing high-end watch cases, including several Kobold cases.

When we presented the findings of our industrial espionage to several U.S. CNC machine distributors, they informed us that the machines were not suitable for making our cases. 

I was perplexed. 

I phoned Roland Kemmner, the former right-hand-man of Walter Fricker. Mr. Kemmner had become my good friend over the years. I trusted him and knew he would be candid in his assessment of the situation. “Mr. Kobold, I have to regretfully inform you that all of your cases were made in China. We never made your watch cases in-house. We only created the technical drawings and sent them to China.”

I was stunned once again at this revelation. However, German regulations governing the Made in Germany mark made it perfectly legal for Fricker to use Chinese cases and label them German.

Fricker and Kobold had meanwhile parted ways, owing to a staggering number of watch components being sent and billed to Kobold that were never ordered. In addition, the invoices were hugely inflated. At the time, Kobold had been growing by leaps and bounds. I was often away from the office, traveling to meet customers around the U.S. When I saw that we had been paying for parts that we didn’t order I put a stop to all payments to Fricker. We sent the parts back that we didn’t need. 

Fricker sold these and other cases and case components to no-name customers, tiny watch brands nobody ever heard of. This gave rise to a number of knock-offs of iconic Kobold watches like the Seal. This didn't trouble me all too much, however. As any watch enthusiast surely knows by now, even the world's biggest luxury watch brand (rhymes with FedEx) has to live with the fact that countless knock-offs of its cases, dials and complete watches are available on online platforms, regardless of how much effort is put into curtailing the sale of these items. 

After severing ties with Fricker, I boarded a flight for Hong Kong and spent weeks visiting case factories in Shenzhen. If Fricker can have Kobold cases made there, then why not us? As I soon found out, the production cost of a finished case produced in China is a small fraction of what we had been paying Fricker for years.

I decided to order a number of cases to help bridge the gap between then and when we would be ready to produce cases in-house. These Asian cases would go on to be a lifeline for Kobold, because as I would soon find out, the manufacture of cases in the U.S. is infinitely more complex than just sending an email with drawings to a supplier in China.

Fortunately, around the same time, the Kobold Made in USA endeavor was kicking into higher gear. Kobold had started outsourcing the manufacture of watch cases to a number of U.S.-based CNC shops. This was hugely expensive and time-consuming.

American CNC fabrication shops of all sizes are far keener on producing endless streams of components for the military industrial complex than for little independent watch companies with relatively miniscule order volumes. In addition to the lack of economies of scale, producing watch cases is far more complicated than making armaments because the tolerances are often smaller and the finishing is of equal importance. Nobody cares about the material finish of a missile, but to certain watch aficionados the way a case surface has been finished is of the utmost importance.

Time after time our U.S. CNC fabrication partners bowed out after the first or second batch of cases. After sinking tens of thousands of dollars in set-up costs and tools, I made the decision to accelerate our in-house CNC project.

Within a year, the new CNC facility was erected a comfortable distance and out of sight from the Taylor’s tiny one-story bungalow. Almost another year went by before we were ready to produce cases in-house. By this time, the backlog of watches had grown to a staggering number and so I was very keen on making as many case components in as little time as possible.

Each Kobold watch model has a unique case and each case consists of a number of components that must be machined from a solid block of stainless steel or titanium. Each component requires a number of operations, which means lost time for setting up a given workpiece on a given machine. I became fanatical about efficieny. Standing at the machines, I carefully noted the times it took to complete a particular operation on workpiece.

A caseback is the easiest part to manufacture, a midcase the most difficult part unless the finished product is supposed to be a Kobold Soarway case, with its characteristic notched rotating bezel. I was proud to make the parts myself but I realized that my time would be far better spent designing new watches and creating marketing campaigns around them than producing watch cases. To wean myself away from CNC machining required the iron will a parent musters when taking away a smartphone from a child.

However, I had hired a full-time CNC machinist to take over from Jake and me. This piratical-looking character turned out to be a godsend. Shortly after he started at Kobold, I departed for Nepal in order to put the finishing touches on a grand Kobold adventure called the Nepal Fire Truck Expedition.

I arrived in Kathmandu in September 2015. Nepal was suffering under a crippling secret economic blockade orchestrated by the Indian government on orders of the C.I.A. It was the first of several unsuccessful regime change operations in Nepal designed to oust the first China-backed prime minister in Nepal’s history, a Communist politican named K.P. Oli.  The geopolitical symantics were of little interest to me, I simply wanted to bring fire trucks to Nepal and have a number of well-heeled and/or famous Koboldians driving them through that beautiful country.

When I was summoned to meet Prime Minister Oli in his official residence, I learned of the full extent of the humanitarian crisis his country found itself in thanks to the U.S-Indo economic blockade: Tens of thousands of Nepalese had already died and, according to UNICEF, hundreds of thousands of children were at risk of death or disease if the blockade continued. Prime Minister Oli asked me to use the fire truck expedition as a publicity tool in order to shed light on the secret blockade. I found myself in a conundrum.

My heart had always beat for America and I had a very long history of supporting its military. I had even been trained by U.S. Navy SEALs to prepare for my 2009 and 2010 expeditions to Mount Everest, where I held the Navy SEALs’ trident flag on the summit. That flag was put in a showcase and hung in the entrance of the SEALs’ headquarters in Coronado, CA.

My life’s ambition -to bring watchmaking back to America- had turned out to be a huge success. Today there are dozens of U.S.-based watch brands, but to date none have achieved what Kobold did by producing its cases in-house. Back in 2015, I was put in the difficult position of having to choose between helping a Communist politician fend off the greatest humanitarian disaster in his country’s history - the blockade was a far greater calamity than the two back-to-back earthquakes earlier in the year - or turning my back on the situation and ignoring the dramatic human suffering the blockade caused to 30 million Nepalese. Helping the Nepalese was the right thing to do, but it would mean going up against some powerful individuals inside the C.I.A. 

“America sucks,” Jack Roseman, my Carnegie Mellon entrepreneurship professor once said to me over lunch, “but it’s the greatest country on earth,” he continued. At the time, I had no idea what Professor Roseman really meant, but sitting in the prime minister’s frigid office in Kathmandu, I reflected on this phrase and decided to help the Nepalese overcome their blockade. I even used a Navy SEAL friend to help me eavesdrop on senior Nepali politicians more loyal to India. In Nepal’s history, India has enacted four blockades, the first three of which lasted between 12 and 18 months. Thanks to considerable luck and my well-honed persuasive skills I was able to help shatter the fourth blockade in the middle of its fifth month.

It was the middle of February 2016. If the blockade had continued, tens of thousands of more Nepalese would certainly have perished. Without the help of my trusty SEAL friend, as well as Nepal’s ambassador to the U.S., Dr. Arjun Karki, and Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse this success -which I consider my greatest- would not have been possible. However, the price I paid for this ad-hoc endeavor would turn out to be considerable.

For some time before and during the blockade I had conducted freelance intelligence assignments for the U.S. Government. Nothing dramatic and certainly not anything I would categorize as very dangerous, but I was honored to help my adopted and beloved home nation in more than just the field of horology. It is this same patriotism that compelled me to emblazon the dials of Kobold watches with Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

This small feat would not have been possible without the help of James Gandolfini. The iconic actor and I were close friends and Jim was always keen on taking Kobold to the next level - sometimes even more so than I.

“Michael, you should move to New York. We should open a watch shop together. You’d sell a lot more of your watches,” Jim once told me. When I scoffed at the idea, he offerred to buy the store’s location, pay for the renovations and its build-out, as well as for the launch party. “If I sit in the store once a week and smoke cigars with your customers, you’ll sell enough watches to at least pay the rent.” And if I can’t, I asked? “Then it’s my problem,” Jim quipped.

Jams Gandolfini was by far the best human I ever met. He had a heart of gold and -when unprovoked- was by far the kindest, most gentle man I've had the privilege of knowing. It’s therefore ironic that he would take on roles that often only portrayed him as a ruthless, violent criminal. Before I could accept Jim’s extremely generous offer, I suggested that we produce watch parts in-house in America. I phoned Roland Kemmner, the former Fricker manager, and invited him to New York.

A week later we sat on Jim’s couch in his Greenwich Street apartment and hammered out a plan. Chinese cases for the transition, followed by U.S. cases manufactured on our very own CNC machines. Jim agreed to foot the bill with an initial investment of $250,000. “Let’s go buy a duffle bag,” he said to me after we bid Mr. Kemmner farewell. I assumed Jim wanted to go and get cash somewhere and thus required a duffle bag. Instead, he just wanted to haul some stuff around between his home and the set of the film he was currently working on. A few days later, back in Pittsburgh, a check arrived by mail in the amount of $250,000.

These memories spun inside my head as I lay awake in the middle of the night in Kathmandu not long after the blockade had been lifted. My focus had meanwhile returned to getting the fire truck expedition off the ground, but no matter which strings I pulled, my team and I encountered an endless series of road blocks. Earlier in the day, it had become obvious why none of my political connections yielded any results: U.S. Government sabotage.

Earlier that day, I received a warning from a friend inside the U.S. embassy in Kathmandu that I -along with all of my contacts in the embassy- was being scrutinized by a team of spy hunters that had flown in from America. Unbeknownst to me, years earlier, a senior C.I.A. official who had previously served as the U.S. ambassador to Nepal had initiated a counter- intelligence investigation against me. This spook had watched closely as I used my contacts inside the U.S. State Department to help expedite the return of James Gandolfini’s remains from Rome, where he died of a heart attack in June 2013.

The U.S. embassy in Rome initially estimated 2-3 months as the turn-around time to repatriate Jim’s remains. “Even with the personal intervention of the ambassador we’re looking at 3 weeks,” Patricia Mahoney, the highly professional and helpful consular officer told me. I asked if it would be appropriate for me to short-circuit the Italian bureaucracy by phoning some friends in America once the sun rose on the east coast. “Mr. Kobold, anything you want to do to bring your friend home sooner is okay for us,” Patricia Mahoney said.

In the end, thanks to Koboldians like former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as a close personal friend working inside the U.S. State Department’s Citizens Services unit at the time, Jim was cleared to leave Italy just over 48 hours after he died.

Three years later, in Kathmandu, I found out from my friend at the U.S. embassy there that the aforementioned senior C.I.A. officer had identified me as a potential threat after observing the speed with which I was able to contact the individuals who effected Jim’s repatriation in such record time.

After careful scrutiny the investigators discovered that I had close contacts within Nepal’s power circles, as well as in the U.S. military. I was hence deemed a threat to national security. Not only had I helped breach the secret blockade, thereby inadvertently thwarting the C.I.A.’s plan to oust Prime Minister Oli, I had also accumulated substantial evidence that the C.I.A. had co-opted the Royal Nepalese Army in a plot to assassinate Nepal’s royal family.

Finally, I had incorporated a nonprofit organization designated to operate in Nepal and convinced a former U.S. ambassdor to Nepal to run it. What had simply been a benign gesture of goodwill and charity was mistaken as a secret intelligence operation.

Various mysterious incidents that occurred at Kobod Watch in the years following Jim Gandolfini’s death in 2013, can best be described as government-sponsored sabotage, or a death by a million cuts. Instead of growing by leaps and bounds, Kobold began to stumble. Instead of eliminating the backlog of watches following the successful implementation of our in-house CNC operations, the backlog grew even more.

In the end, everything came crashing down rather spectacularly. The CNC machines were auctioned off for pennies on the dollar, despite the outstanding debt their sale was meant to cover being quite small. In fact, any number of items could have been auctioned off in the CNC machines' stead in order to cover the debt. For example, Kobold Watch’s headquarters was filled with artwork by famous Koboldians such as Burton Morris and Peter Max. The collection was worth over $250,000. But auctioning off those items instead would have meant Kobold could continue producing cases in the U.S., albeit with a new team. In the end, even the brand new building and the farm it stood on were also auctioned.

Worst of all, hundreds of customers’ watches weren’t shipped, including between 70 and 100 service watches that belonged to customers but that were stolen as part of the sabotage. So much for the United States Department of Justice and the Pennsylvania State Police acting in the best interest of American citizens!

Kobold has spent the last six years replacing these watches. This February and March, the last remaining watches will be shipped to customers: The Kobold NEC 5326 and Kobold Langley GMT. These watches, along with all other watches, could have shipped to customers years sooner, had the U.S. government sabotage not continued unabated after Kobold USA’s crash.

Instead, even Kobold Nepal and Kobold Germany were sabotaged. In Berlin we faced at least two break-ins during which a large number of watch components were stolen - including core components to make the Kobold NEC 5326 and Kobold Langley GMT. Priceless antiques and artwork were left behind and there were no signs of breaking into the premises.  

Fortunately, Kobold USA’s Keith Filbert had witnessed those parts being in stock shortly before the first break-in and testified to this fact in the presence a German police officer -a Koboldian who happens to be an instructor at the Bavarian police academy.

 

The NEC 5326 and Langley GMT customers who were affected by the sabotage are the last customers to receive their watches. To make up for this extreme delay, they are each receiving a second watch free of charge. So is every other Koboldian affected by the sabotage. There is no better way to signal that Kobold is back stronger than ever than by giving away free watches to all those individuals who were affected by the sabotage.

It is a huge reversal of fortunes for little Kobold Watch and one my team and I are capping with the announcement of our return to the old days: Kobold watch cases will once again be Made in U.S.A.

Keith Filbert has been a Koboldian since 2003. As one of the earliest Kobold customers, Keith has seen the rise and fall and reemergence of the little company from Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania's Amish Country that changed American watchmaking for the better. Keith has also participated in the Nepal Fire Truck Expedition and witnessed first-hand the effects of the U.S. Government sabotage operation directed towards the expedition. 

Perhaps it is Keith’s sense of justice that he has signed on to lead the operations of Kobold USA. Keith will be joined by Jake Skovira, the master CNC machinist and my mentor. Jake is now 78 years old and no longer machines parts, but he will be overseeing the Kobold CNC operations. 

In December of 2025, Keith and I met up in Switzerland to discuss the Made in U.S.A. CNC endeavor in more detail. 

Together with the rest of my new team of colleagues, Keith, Jake and I look forward to finally acquiring the CNC equipment deemed ideal to manufacture Kobold watch cases. It will be quite an emotional moment for me to see the first Kobold watch case since 2017 with the caseback engraved “Case Made in U.S.A.” My life’s biggest dream will have come true twice.

In the meantime, Kobold will continue delivering watches with cases made in China, Switzerland and in Germany (we fabricate certain case components in Germany and assemble and engrave the cases in-house). Once the CNC operations are up and running in Pittsburgh, Koboldians wishing to exchange their watches for ones with a Made in U.S.A. case are welcome to do so. If a watch was purchased directly from Kobold or one of our retailers, the surcharge is only $500, which is less than the cost of a U.S.-made case.

Those Koboldians who acquired their watches on the secondary market pay $1,000 for the U.S.-made case upgrade. To help fund the acquisition of the new CNC machinery Kobold has recently launched a number of extremely low-priced watches, including the Kobold Globetrotter, the Kobold Professional Chronographs, as well as the Kobold Limits. I encourage you to view these watches and ask you to consider adding one to your collection.

There is one other exciting development: Beginning in April '26, Kobold will issue a new certificate of authenticity for its timepieces. This certificate is identical to the one issued by the late Kobold founding father and master watchmaker Gerd-R. Lang - except that it proudly reads "KOBOLD - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania."

And with that, I welcome you to join Keith, Jake and me in making Kobold’s new Made in U.S.A. adventure a resounding success!

Thank you and very best wishes,

Michael Kobold