And yeah, that’s a good thing we say at Northern Watch Co magazine, because for all the perfection and art of Grand Seiko, and the unbeatable value of a cooking Seiko 5 model, you need more to survive in the modern world where every jackass with money wants an AP Royal Oak or a Rolex Daytona.

You can never be that Swiss Tony fashionista brand, so what do you do? Embrace the fanboi base you have; innovate, learn, adapt and bend like the tree.

Hats off then to Seiko for recognising that MOD means remixing the elements of a brand, or a model line, to make your fave watch. By asking its fanbase for inspiration, Seiko shows that it has a keen interest in what its buyers want to see. That is a refreshing change from the Swiss brand ethos of `take it or leave it.’

Here’s the word from Seiko;

Seiko is proud to announce the winning Seiko 5 Sports watch from the CUSTOM WATCH BEATMAKER campaign.

Participants created their original Seiko 5 Sports watch by selecting and combining five watch parts on the website and voted on their favourite models. Each watch was paired with one of 32 original pieces of music created by eight up-and-coming artists who share the same value as the brand’s concept ‘‘Show Your Style.’’

The campaign ran from October 2020 to January 2021, and the winning watch with the most ‘‘likes’’ was selected from over 48,000 original designs and won about 8,500,000 votes out of the 16,000,000 total votes worldwide.

This watch incorporates a gold colour dial combined with a bezel with red and blue accents, adding a fresh timepiece to the Seiko 5 Sports collection. It will be available as a limited edition of 2,021 on selected Seiko Boutique Online websites in August 2021.

The great thing is that this will inspire more Modders out there to create gold dial Seiko watches, and tribute watches using the NH35/36 movement.