Seiko continues to blur the lines between its brands.
Back in 2017, Seiko spun off Grand Seiko as its own separate brand (with its own separate branding). The move was intended to allow Grand Seiko to move upmarket and compete with other luxury brands, free from the association with a brand (Seiko) that at the time also sold some watches for around a hundred bucks.
But in the years since, Seiko itself has also moved upmarket, and sometimes the brand blurs the line between its own offerings and those of the higher-end Grand Seiko. (One example would be the Seiko SNR051, a Spring Drive-powered titanium sports GMT sold under Seiko’s Prospex line that retails for a whopping $5,500.)
The latest of these high-end, line-blurring watches from Seiko come from its King Seiko line, and they might just reignite the old rivalry between King Seiko and Grand Seiko.
Fit for a King
King Seiko’s origins go back to the early 1960s when Seiko was in hot competition with the Swiss to craft the world’s most accurate watches — which in the pre-quartz days amounted to the ultimate bragging rights for a watch brand.
The first Grand Seiko watch debuted in 1960 and was produced at Seiko’s Suwa Seikosha factory with the express purpose of making a better, more accurate watch than anything Switzerland was producing. But that wasn’t enough for Seiko. To keep Grand Seiko’s workers on their toes, Seiko launched King Seiko a year later.
