Neil Duckworth, a veteran of the British watch industry, started his own brand, Duckworth Prestex, just three years ago. But the company’s roots can be traced to 1869, with the opening of Prestons of Bolton, an English jewelry and watch retailer that introduced its own brand of timepieces, called Prestex, some 50 years later.
Prestons was owned by various relatives of Mr. Duckworth from the turn of the 20th century until 2008. It had been a retail mainstay of the town of Bolton, England, 210 miles northwest of London, with branches elsewhere as well. (Several Prestons survive, but under different ownership.) But the Prestex watch brand, created by his paternal grandfather, Frank Duckworth, has been defunct since the mid-1950s.
As Neil Duckworth, 68, put it, “Watches is in the blood.”
He was sitting in a meeting room at the Lansdowne Club in central London, about 25 miles from his home in Beaconsfield from which he runs the company remotely. His goal, he said, was to offer what the original Prestex line had aimed to: “an affordable price for a robust and well-made product.”
Duckworth Prestex watches range in price from £425, about $530, for a 39-millimeter quartz timepiece with a small subdial to £895 for a rugged 42-millimeter automatic stainless-steel timepiece. When he was forming the brand, “the price was critical” Mr. Duckworth said. “Why would anybody want to buy a watch from a newcomer at two- to three-thousand pounds? And secondly, it’s what I would spend myself.”
The brand did offer a pricier, £4,800 limited-edition watch this year — an 18-karat version of its stainless-steel Centenary tank. Mr. Duckworth proudly said it retailed for less than half the price of a comparable Cartier.
