One evening in 2018, over dinner, Mig Reyes set a printed letter in front of his parents. It was an acceptance from Birmingham City University to study watchmaking in the United Kingdom — a program he had applied to without telling them. It was, in hindsight, the quietest and boldest decision of a life spent around small mechanical things.

Today, Reyes is the founder and master watchmaker of Watch Solutions PH, an independent luxury watch service centre in San Juan, Philippines. Watches from Audemars Piguet, Vacheron Constantin, Richard Mille, Patek Philippe and Rolex, among others, pass across his bench. Yet asked what a watchmaker does, he does not begin with the movement. He begins with the person wearing the watch.

The boy and the Seiko

Reyes's initiation came at 14, when his father gave him a military-style Seiko 5 — the first automatic watch anyone in the family had owned. What captivated him was not the dial but the mechanism: shake it, and it comes alive. To a boy, it felt like technology.

One watch soon became many. He was picking up a Seiko nearly every week, each acquisition tied to a specific target: a particular model to find, to hold, to finally own. Japan-market versions could not be bought locally, but a stretch of frequent trips to Japan allowed him to bring them home. To sustain the habit, he sold pieces through the Philippine Watch Club and OLX,, as he puts it, "you have to sell to buy more."

Collecting, he discovered, was also a community. The people who shared the passion became friends, and within that tight circle, knowing the right people meant being known from the provinces to Manila. Watches, he learned early, are rarely only about watches. They are about the people who find them, trade them and pass them along.

In 2016, he consolidated the entire Seiko collection to buy the vintage Rolex GMT-Master he had wanted from the very beginning. It was not a new model but something closer to an heirloom, and he owned one at an age when few of his peers did. Of everything he services today, vintage pieces still excite him most.

Choosing the bench

The thought of studying watchmaking arrived quietly on his way to college. His father's counsel was pragmatic: finish a bachelor's degree first, so there is always something to fall back on. Reyes enrolled in Legal Management at Ateneo, and within that year, with his sister's help and without telling his parents, he applied to study in the UK. It was, in its own way, a rarefied choice: full degree programmes in horology are scarce worldwide, and Birmingham City University's course is among only a handful offered anywhere.

The acceptance arrived just before the semester began. He had a fallback plan: if his parents said no, he would enroll in the next term. In the end, his father consented in two words — "sige na," meaning "go ahead." The letter was already on the table, and he did not want to be blamed for holding his son back.

Reyes left Ateneo after a year for the UK and graduated in Horology with first-class honours. He was alone abroad, missed his family and friends, and flew home every year. But he never once thought it was the wrong decision. He was learning what he wanted to learn.

What the bench teaches

Watchmaking taught him humility. School opened at 8 a.m., but a watchmaker's true adversary is time itself: hours are scarce, execution is demanding, and the work is never perfect. It is a constraint built into the trade itself: servicing a mechanical movement remains meticulous handwork that automation has never fully replaced.

It also taught him the difference between loving watches and serving them. Collecting is a hobby. Creating is something heavier: design, planning and the business sense to hold it all together.

A watch is worn by someone

That distinction shapes the workshop he runs. Watch Solutions PH is not simply a service centre; it is a meeting point where watches, watchmakers and the conversations between them become relationships. At its core is Reyes, who values relationships above all else, with friendships forged in the early days of collecting now continuing across the workbench. Workshops like his occupy an essential layer of the watch industry: independent service centres, alongside brand-run operations, are what keep mechanical watches — vintage pieces especially — in working hands.

His view of watchmaking centres on the wearer rather than the wristwatch. A watch is worn through years, given, inherited, remembered. What reaches the bench is rarely just a mechanism; it is part of someone's life. He aims to be a watchmaker who values reputation and respect, who explains honestly what a watch actually needs, and who treats each piece as a story worth keeping. It is the idea behind the shop's own line: "We preserve your story, not just your timepiece."

At 14, Reyes learned that a watch comes alive the moment it touches the human hand. Everything since has been dedicated to whose hand it rests in.

Source: BusinessWorld Spotlight — The Collector Who Became the Watchmaker