Q2 Microbrand Market Report: brands finally doubled GMT output and it still wasn't enough (~13,000 watches tracked)
Refresher, since it's been a few weeks: I run chronoscout.co, a database tracking ~13,000 watches across 325 indie and microbrands. Availability, prices, restock signups, continuously. Every quarter the data gets a report. Q2 is in, and this one includes us taking back one of our own findings from last quarter.
Brands moved on the GMT front.
Releases doubled (30 → 62), from twice as many brands. Demand's response: it didn't blink. The sold-out rate still sits at 38.2%, five points clear of the catalog average, despite double the supply. The Traska Venturer GMTs top the most-tracked list for the second consecutive quarter, all three still "coming soon." At this point that's not a product page, it's a waiting room.
Prices are barbelling, not rising.
"Average release price up 34%" sounds dramatic until you learn the median moved $699 → $745. There is a $51k release doing a cannonball into the pool, but even without it the average climbs double digits. The actual story is the mix: the $500-749 bracket collapsed from 37% of releases to 24%, with brands sprinting to $1,500+ and sub-$500 at the same time. Buyers did not follow. Sub-$750 still holds the highest sold-out rates and $500-999 holds 53% of restock signups. Brands are vacating the exact price range you're all camped in.
Releases sell out faster now.
24.2% of Q2 releases gone within 60 days, vs 18.6% in Q1. That counts only releases with a full 60 days on the market before our cutoff, so no credit for just being recent.
And the retraction: we killed our own under-supply story.
Last quarter we flagged 200-299m WR, 16mm+ cases and bronze as criminally under-supplied. High sold-out rates, barely any new releases, looked airtight. Then we pulled the piles apart. They're full of drop-model brands (Zelos has 96% of their entire catalog marked sold out, which isn't scarcity, it's the business model working as intended) and discontinued stock that was never coming back. Filter those out and every "under-supplied" bracket lands boringly close to the catalog average. Before anyone asks: yes, we ran everything above through the same filter. It all survives. GMT even keeps its premium (33.4% against a filtered catalog average of 29.4%).
Usual caveat: we don't see production volumes, so a 10-unit run and a 1,000-unit run both count as one sell-out.
Full report with all the tables, the methodology and the brackets that didn't make the cut here: https://chronoscout.co/en/blog/microbrand-watch-market-report-q2-2026-gmt-supply-responds-prices-barbell-sell-through-accelerates/F06d7kgiQ4qk8Km82pIDCw/
Happy to answer questions and get into the methodology in the comments.
Cheers,
Michel