J Watch in Millbrook: A new shop with a One-of-a-Kind Owner
Jamie Brown is Millbrook's own (and maybe America's only) female watchmaker.
In the back of her unmarked J Watch watch shop on Church Street in Millbrook, New York, Jamie Brown can be found hunched over her workbench, a magnifying lens in her eye helping her to line up the microscopic threads on a screw little bigger than a dust mote. Having the precision and steady hand it takes to balance the tiny gears or set a new flawless gem inside a $100,000 vintage Rolex is a skill Brown says she began cultivating as a child (even if she didn’t know it).
As the area’s only independent full-service watchmaker and repair expert, Brown stands out in her field, not just because of her experience and skill but because, as far as she knows, she’s the only woman who owns and operates a watch shop in the United States. And she has two; The Brooklyn Watch Shop was her first in 2009, then she opened the Chelsea Watch Shop in 2018. She closed the latter last August to open in Millbrook in an effort to stay safer during the pandemic and service clientele closer to her home in Clinton Corners. Brown is also business partners with renowned watch designer and Millbrook neighbor Neil Carpenter.
“It’s a boy’s club, for sure,” Brown says of her profession. “When people meet me and see I’m a woman they’re taken aback. They think I’m the receptionist. I love it. We don’t discriminate. We repair all watches, expensive and inexpensive because watches are very emotional to people."
Before starting J Watch, Brown was the exclusive USA distributor for Cyma Watches, a century-old Swiss company. Her journey into the business started accidentally as a teen. She had a boyfriend whose father was an executive for Tag Heuer. The company was in crisis due to bad bookkeeping and she knew QuickBooks. Despite her age she was able to help right the ship. She then worked with the executive when he moved to Cyma. Brown stayed with Cyma long after she parted ways with the boyfriend and the watch company parted ways with the father, choosing her to run U.S. operations.
While with Cyma she learned how watches worked and how to fix them from one of the repair pros, Antonio Macias, whose father had been a watchmaker in South America.
“He said, ‘Come sit. I don’t speak English but I speak watch,’” Brown recalled. “I worked with him for 10 years. I always found the guys out of expensive schools don’t have the technical skills. They want to design cases."
Brown grew up on a ranch in rural Texas. She loved to cook and tinkered with just about anything she could get her hands on.
“I always loved clocks,” she says. “I loved puzzles and Lego. Whenever I hire someone I ask them if they played with Legos. You have to have the fine motor function and be able to sit and concentrate for long periods. I spend half my time on my knees, looking for a tiny spring that fell on the floor.”
Brown talks fast and jumps from topic to topic. Beside all the specialized polishers, cleaners, lathes and other equipment in the back of her shop, there is an espresso machine, which clearly sees a lot of use. Despite her sign-less location on Church Street and opening just six months ago, Brown is already very busy in Millbrook, where she’s open by appointment primarily Friday through Monday. She works the rest of the week at the Brooklyn shop with her small, tightly-knit team. The men that work for her don’t have backgrounds in watches. Her two main guys have backgrounds in construction and set design. She says their skillsets transfer quite nicely to the micro-scale of watch work once they get the hang of it.
J Watch repairs and services all major commercial and eclectic brands from the ultra-luxury to the everyday. When Brown isn’t at the office she can be found on her farm, Fox and Fawn Farms, located in Clinton Corners, with her husband Joe Vassallo and their two dogs, a sheepadoodle named Snoopy, and an Old English Sheepdog named Olly. On the farm, Brown keeps bees and grows rare and heirloom varieties of everyday vegetables. At the Millbrook store, along with high-end timepieces, she also sells a selection of her seasonal produce, honey and beeswax products, and maple syrup.
Brown says she’d love to see more women and girls take an interest in the field of watchmaking. She’s had a few female apprentices but always has her eye out for mechanically inclined girls around town. While Brown’s status as the only female watchmaker is novel, it’s not her defining characteristic. She’s been successful not because she’s a woman but because she’s really, really good, and discerning watch owners already know it.
J Watch at the Millbrook Watch Shop
154 Church Street, Millbrook, NY
(212) 695-4270
service@jwatchusa.com
Open by apointment.
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