Nicholas and Josh Hacko describe Australian watchmaking as a gradual shift from repairing and trading Swiss mechanical watches to designing watches in Sydney and learning to manufacture components locally. In a 27 February 2023 interview with Monochrome Watches, they trace that path through the early Rebelde, the MK2’s hand-finished titanium dial and their work with Timascus. Their account also shows how the family’s precision-manufacturing business grew beyond watches.
Why the Hackos began making watches
Before 2011, the family business focused on servicing and trading high-grade Swiss mechanical watches. Nicholas Hacko, a third-generation watchmaker, says the direction changed when Swiss firms restricted spare-parts supply and repair licensing. He recalls Australian spare-parts accounts closing within six months. That is the Hackos’ explanation in the 2023 interview, not an independently established account of the Swiss industry as a whole.
The family responded by developing its own watches. The first model was called “rebelde,” Spanish for “rebel.” The name reflected the challenge they faced: the interview frames the project as a response to being told independent repairers would not be able to repair Swiss watches.
The start of the journey and the first watch are not the same date in the available accounts. The Hackos describe their change of direction as beginning in 2011; the Australian Manufacturing Technology Institute Limited (AMTIL) profile says their first watch was made in 2013 and that its initial model used a Swiss movement supplied as an assembly.
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From Sydney assembly to manufacturing
From 2011 to 2016, Nicholas and Josh say they sold more than 700 watches designed, assembled and adjusted in their Sydney workshop, using components from 11 suppliers around the world. Those figures come from their account in the 2023 interview and are not independently audited. AMTIL gives a separate historical figure of about 640 watches sold in its profile; because that profile’s publication date is not established here, the two counts should not be combined as if they were measured at the same time.
Josh, Nicholas’s son, handles technical work and oversees manufacturing, according to the interview. AMTIL describes him as the fourth generation of Hacko watchmakers. The shift from assembly to making components locally was a different kind of challenge: AMTIL says the family had no prior manufacturing experience and had to develop repeatable processes largely from first principles. In particular, parts made at different times still need to be consistent enough to work together.
The Hackos say they decided in 2016 to build a manufacturing facility and make components on Australian soil. By the interview’s publication in February 2023, they described that development as having taken six years and many millions of dollars. Josh’s remark that “There’s no culture of precision manufacturing in Australia” is his opinion as quoted in that interview, not a statistical finding about Australian industry.
What the MK2 shows about their approach
The Hackos call the MK2 their best attempt at dial and hand manufacturing to that point. The 40 mm watch was inspired by Curl Curl beach, which the interview identifies as the beach closest to their Sydney workshop. Its dial and hands are Grade 5 titanium, with applied indices; the interview says these components are decorated by hand.
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A Kern Micro HD CNC machine was used to produce the dial’s guilloché pattern. The combination illustrates the distinction between machining and finishing: CNC equipment creates the pattern, while hand decoration remains part of the process described by the Hackos. The interview does not provide enough information to establish the MK2’s movement source, a complete list of Australian-made components, a current price or its present availability, so it should not be read as a full specification or a claim that every part is locally made.
In January 2023, the interview reported that the first MK2 batch had been delivered. Nicholas and Josh expected production of about 50 watches a year and planned another batch before June 2023. Those were a dated expectation and plan, not confirmation of later output. The interview offers an image of an independent operation working at modest scale, rather than evidence of current production volume.
Timascus: a difficult titanium composite
The Hackos describe Timascus as a composite made from three different titanium alloys. Anodizing can color the alloys separately, bringing out a figured pattern in the material. They discuss the difficulty of machining it and say they used it in internal components of the NH2 and NH2.1, followed by some components in the NH3.
The interview presents the use of Timascus in internal watch components as the Hackos’ achievement; it does not independently verify a priority claim. Its significance in their story is practical as well as visual: working with an unusual material requires the manufacturing knowledge they were building alongside the watches themselves.
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallNH Micro takes precision work beyond watches
The interview says NH Micro was formally separated as a business in 2021 to pursue high-precision manufacturing for industries beyond watchmaking. The Hackos describe work involving medical, space, quantum-computing, optics, semiconductor and scientific-instrumentation sectors, including parts used in space, advanced research telescopes, medical devices and manufacturing facilities. These are descriptions in the interview; it names no clients or specific projects.
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They also say techniques developed in other industries inform their watchmaking. The relationship runs both ways: watchmaking demands careful control of small components, while work across other precision fields can expose the team to different materials and manufacturing approaches.
A business built through incremental steps
The Hackos’ account is less a story of a single breakthrough than of successive changes: servicing watches, assembling their own designs with internationally sourced parts, then investing in the capability to make components. Nicholas and Josh sum up their perspective in the Monochrome interview: “If we learned anything in the last 12 years, it’s that watchmaking is a marathon; small incremental successes are always more sustainable than huge projects with ambitious outcomes.”
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