Custom Tudor Dials: What’s the Deal?
From the 1950s through the early 2000s, Rolex sold numerous watches with customized dials featuring company and government logos, but they no longer offer that service. Some notable vintage “logo dial” Tudors also exist, perhaps most famously the Cotton Bowl award Tudors of the early 1970s, but Tudor really only ramped up their custom dial program in 2015 or so. We’ll explain everything you need to know about custom Tudor watches and how to procure them.
Minimum Order Quantity for Custom Tudor Dials
Currently the minimum order quantity (“MOQ”) for Tudor watches with custom dials is 40 units.
What Can You Customize?
There are really only three things that you can factory-customize on a Tudor:
- Logo/text on bottom half of dial: The chronometer and depth rating text can be replaced with a logo, text of your choice, or nothing at all.
- Caseback: Custom caseback engravings can range from simple text to complex laser-etched images. Custom caseback engraving comes with all custom-dial Tudors, although you can certainly just get caseback engraving if you want.
- Text outside the minute track: You can write custom text around the edge of the dial, outside the minute track–including replacing or removing the “Swiss Made” text if desired. (Doesn’t work on Pelagos)
You can also push the chronometer text down slightly if you’d like to keep that while still making room for your own logo. Nyman’s, the biggest watch dealer in Stockholm, Sweden, did this for a batch of 51 custom Tudor Black Bay 58’s they ordered for their 170th anniversary. Vu Bui shared his example:
If you’re wondering if you can mix up the color of the hands, bezel, or dial, the answer is unfortunately no. IWC would be happy to hear from you about that sort of thing, but their minimum order quantity is 300 watches.
What Models are Available?
Custom Tudor dials are available for all models except for colored Black Bay Chrono models, and anything released in the last year.
Custom Tudor Price and Buying Process
Expect to pay full retail price for a batch of custom Tudor watches–no more, no less. And expect to pay upfront. Simply talk with your local authorized Tudor dealer to get the ball rolling! Just make sure to allow plenty of time for them to process your order.
How Long Do Custom Tudor Dials Take?
Typically, about six months is the production timeframe for custom Tudor dials. If you need the caseback engraving to be aligned upright, that can be done–but it pushes the timeline to about nine months. The Black Bay 58’s made for the clothing company Rowing Blazers are a good example of the aligned casebacks.
The authorized Tudor dealer that sells the most customized logos is in Silicon Valley, California (shout out to Thor at Shreve’s), which is unsurprising when you consider how many tech companies have thriving employee watch clubs. You may have seen dials with a Facebook logo, the Google Chrome dino, a little Amazon scuba dude, military insignias, or logos for casual organizations like the Cars & Chai meetup group. Ed Sheeran even gave special Tudors to the crew of his Divide tour. And all you need to get a batch of Tudors with a custom dial of your very own is 39 friends and a couple hundred grand or so!
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