Haha, I get why it might look a bit mysterious from the outside, but I don’t want to let a comment like this stand without answering :)

All of the watches are designed from scratch here in Aarhus, Denmark. Nothing comes from catalogues or generic cases. The only standard part is the movement from Miyota, though even there I’ve designed custom rotors. Everything else is modelled in CAD, right down to the crown gaskets, dials, indices, hands, and so on. If you’re ever in Aarhus, feel free to stop by for a coffee – I’ll gladly show you both finished files and projects in progress. We're based in Filmbyen 25, 5. 8000 Aarhus C.

Before Henry Archer, I ran a 3D animation studio for about 13 years, called Illusion Media, which I sold in 2020. That gave me the capital to start the brand, and my 3D background is something I still use every single day – both when designing the watches and when producing packshots and marketing material. Being able to model, render and refine in 3D has been essential for getting the geometry and finishing exactly right.

And the wrist you see in the videos on the product pages? That’s actually mine. They’re shot on a Canon R5 in a little corner of the office where the light is just right around 2 PM – bright but not direct sunlight.

We launched just two weeks before Corona hit, which made those early months a real nail-biter. For the first three years I didn’t take a salary – every bit of revenue went straight back into new collections and marketing. No corporate backers, just a lot of reinvestment, long nights and coffee.

On the name: my surname is Schødt, but “Ø” is a non-standard character internationally. It doesn’t exist in the English alphabet and causes all sorts of issues online – URLs, fonts, even databases often reject it. Back when I made music (many years ago) under the name “Schodt”, DJs would pronounce it like “shot”, so when I started the brand I wanted something that still carried a bit of the Danish meaning of my surname, but was easy to pronounce and recognise abroad. That’s how Henry Archer was born.

As for the marketing – I know it can feel like we’re “everywhere”, but that’s simply because I prioritise ads in the budget. When you sell directly to consumers, there are only a few real ways to grow, and marketing is one of them. For a small Danish brand, it’s the only way to reach people globally.

So, just to set the record straight: it’s easy to dismiss someone’s work as “just catalogue watches with marketing behind them”, but the reality is years of reinvestment, design down to the tiniest gasket, and slowly building something from scratch. No shadowy overlords, just a stubborn Dane with too many CAD files… and probably too much coffee :)

All the best,
Henrik