A long time ago, the First Moscow Watch Factory was founded to produce timepieces in the Soviet Communist style. As late as a couple of decades ago, it was producing millions of watches per year. They were simple and unadorned, just as the ideology dictated.

In the post-Cold War era, this attitude lives on in the recently-founded watch company, Tsovet. Its founder, Mr. David Bonaventura, was inspired by these Soviet designs. Additionally, he felt that it filled an important niche in the industry–one between flowery low-end watches and high-end, undifferentiated products. The result is the unpretentious Tsovet.

Perhaps we can delve a little bit deeper into whether or not Mr. Bonaventura has hit upon an interesting prospect. Does today’s watch market really resemble this characterization? The answer is somewhat surprising. Many people are under the impression that the industry is crowded, that there’s very little that can be done to stand out from the crowd. To a certain degree this is true. There are a vast array of manufacturers at every price level. As noted, the bottom is crowded with those who market their products as fashion accessories, while the top is stuffed with many elegant watches that appear quite similar. Frustrated by this reality, Bonaventura set out to change it by creating an “everyman” watch that combined high-quality with little aesthetic enhancement. He found a gap in the market.

Has he hit upon something which other makers were missing? It appears as though this might be the case. Tsovet’s timepieces are all created with the idea of simplicity and purpose in mind. In other words, it’s a watch, nothing more or less, and shouldn’t try to achieve something that is not part of its function. That function is the telling of time. Thus, a watch shouldn’t attempt to accessorize your suit or dress, and it shouldn’t draw attention to itself. Stripped to its most basic form, the Tsovet watch will be an interesting experiment, if only for the novel approach to the industry that it envisions.