Ming Thein started MING in 2017 to make the watches he wanted to wear. A small team, two GPHG prizes and a great deal of sapphire later, the dial is still where the ideas go first.
Who is behind it
Ming Thein is a designer, a photographer and an engineer, and MING reads like all three. He founded the brand in 2017 with one aim: mechanical watches made for the way people live now, that keep their value whatever they cost. The work is split between two places. Design, engineering and the final quality check happen in Kuala Lumpur; production and assembly happen in Switzerland, where the brand also has a base in La Chaux-de-Fonds.
The team has grown around him: Praneeth Raj Singh runs the company, Mauro Egermini its operations and Luc Bourgeois its production. MING is also a founding member of the Alternative Horological Alliance, a group of independents who promote watchmaking outside the big groups.
Light as a material
A photographer thinks about light before anything else, and so does MING. Its watches lean on transparent materials, sapphire and borosilicate glass, stacked in layers so that the markers seem to float above the dial. Some dials are made of sapphire with the lume set inside, so at night the whole face glows rather than a few dots. The brand even has its own name for its white lume, MING Polar White, and a ceramic-fused luminous material it calls HyCeram.
The same curiosity shows in the metals (pure titanium, tantalum, magnesium alloys) and in the Polymesh, a 3D-printed bracelet that wraps the wrist like fabric.
Made with specialists
MING designs; it works with specialists to build. Among its named partners are Agenhor, La Joux-Perret, Sellita, Helfenstein Mechanik and Degrees of Freedom. Some pieces bring in another hand altogether: the 37.06 Lightning has a titanium dial engine-turned by J.N. Shapiro in Los Angeles and heat-coloured by Ming Thein himself, and the 29.06 Peepshow runs on a Schwarz-Etienne for MING calibre.
Two prizes in Geneva
The Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève noticed early. In 2019 the Copper 17.06 won the Horological Revelation Prize, given to a young brand to watch. In 2024 the 37.09 Bluefin won the Sports Watch Prize, against makers several times MING's age.
The families at PRJKT8
The 37 series is MING's everyday watch: a 38 mm case with sapphire dials, from the near-empty 37.02 Minimalist to the starry 37.08 Twilight and the hand-turned 37.06 Lightning. The 57 series is the more complicated side, with the 57.04 Phoenix and its radiating dial. The 29 series plays with light most of all: the 29.06 Peepshow has polarised sapphire hands that black out the dial as they cross, then give it back in colour.
PRJKT8 is an authorised MING retailer, at Moda Mall, Manama.
