Description
Studio Underd0g has built its following on taking familiar watchmaking formats and colouring outside the lines — fruit-themed chronographs, a Passion Fruit collaboration with H. Moser & Cie, the more accessible Gimlet with Fears. The 03SERIES Chan3ad is the British independent's first properly localised edition, and it is aimed squarely at the Gulf.
Created with Ahmed Seddiqi — the UAE's leading luxury watch retailer and the organiser of Dubai Watch Week — the watch takes its name from the chan3ad, or kingfish, one of the most prized and culturally significant fish in the United Arab Emirates and the wider Gulf. The idea is carried through the entire watch rather than stuck on as a caseback engraving: colours, dial textures, numerals and even the strap material all point back to the fish.
It follows Studio Underd0g's participation in Dubai Watch Week 2025, and at AED 9,600 (roughly €2,300) for a Swiss hand-wound monopusher chronograph limited to 100 pieces, it is one of the more interesting regional exclusives of the year.
Design
The case carries over the 03SERIES proportions unchanged: 38.5 mm across, 13.6 mm thick (10.8 mm without the crystal), 44.5 mm lug-to-lug, in 316L stainless steel with three-part construction, a signed crown and a screwed display caseback. The single rectangular chronograph pusher sits at 2 o'clock and handles start, stop and reset.
The dial is where the concept lives. It is a two-layer construction: the upper layer carries a blue-grey degrade finish meant to evoke the kingfish's scales, while the cut-outs reveal a pale pink lower layer referencing its flesh — notably lighter than the darker tone of the brand's earlier Salm0n edition. The tachymeter scale and the subdials are marked in Eastern Arabic numerals, a first for the brand. The layout is the familiar 03SERIES arrangement, with an oversized 30-minute counter at 3 o'clock and running seconds at 9, plus central hours, minutes and chronograph seconds. The chronograph hands are tipped in yellow — a reference, the brand says, to the lemon traditionally served with the fish. Hour and minute hands carry Super-LumiNova.
Specifications
- Reference: 02KIB-EA (Chan3ad / Kingfish)
- Case diameter: 38.5 mm
- Case thickness: 13.6 mm (10.8 mm without the crystal)
- Lug-to-lug: 44.5 mm
- Lug width: 20 mm
- Case material: 316L stainless steel, three-part construction
- Crystal: sapphire
- Caseback: screwed sapphire display back
- Crown: signed
- Water resistance: 50 m
- Dial: two-layer, blue-grey degrade upper layer, pale pink lower layer, Eastern Arabic numerals on tachymeter scale and subdials, yellow-tipped chronograph hands, Super-LumiNova on hour and minute hands
- Movement: Sellita SW510 M, hand-wound cam-operated single-pusher chronograph, Elaboré grade
- Complications: monopusher chronograph with central seconds and 30-minute counter, small seconds
- Decoration: bespoke ruthenium anthracite-finished bridge with Cotes de Geneve
- Jewels: 23
- Frequency: 28,800 vph (4 Hz)
- Power reserve: 63 hours
- Accuracy: -5 / +5 seconds per day
- Strap: 20/16 mm black salmon leather by The Strap Tailor (Iceland), quick-release spring bars, stainless steel pin buckle; additional 20/16 mm Milanese mesh bracelet included
- Limited edition: 100 pieces, individually numbered
- Assembly: Studio Underd0g's D0ghouse facility, Great Britain
- Price: AED 9,600 (approximately €2,300)
- Availability: exclusive to Ahmed Seddiqi boutiques from 17 September 2026
What's Exciting
Regional editions usually mean a flag on the dial or a skyline on the caseback. This one does the harder thing: the concept reaches into the movement-side finishing, the numeral system, and even the strap leather — salmon skin, sourced from Iceland, on a watch about a fish. Putting Eastern Arabic numerals on the tachymeter and subdials is a small decision with real weight, because it treats the regional market as the primary audience rather than a novelty add-on.
The value case is strong too. A Swiss hand-wound monopusher chronograph is a genuinely uncommon configuration at any price — the single-pusher layout is cleaner than a two-register chrono and mechanically more demanding to operate well — and the Sellita SW510 M in Elaboré grade with a bespoke ruthenium bridge and 63 hours of reserve, for the equivalent of about €2,300, undercuts most of what else offers that architecture. The limitation to 100 pieces through a single retailer is the constraint: this will be difficult to find outside the UAE, and the secondary market will reflect that.
History
Studio Underd0g arrived with the 01SERIES chronographs, powered by the hand-wound Seagull ST-1901, and built a reputation on colour combinations that larger brands would not attempt. The 02SERIES field watches followed, using the manually wound Sellita SW210-1. The 03SERIES was previewed through the H. Moser & Cie collaboration and then formally introduced with the Salm0n edition in 2024, moving the brand onto a Swiss-made hand-wound monopusher chronograph platform — a meaningful step up in both cost and complexity.
Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons, the partner here, has been the UAE's dominant luxury watch retailer for decades and since 2015 has run Dubai Watch Week, which has grown into one of the few genuinely enthusiast-driven watch fairs in the world. Studio Underd0g's appearance at the 2025 edition is what set this collaboration in motion, and the Chan3ad is the result — the brand's first watch designed around a specifically Gulf subject.
Sources
- Monochrome Watches — Introducing: Studio Underd0g and Ahmed Seddiqi Go Fishing in the Gulf with the 03SERIES Chan3ad
- WatchPro — Studio Underd0g dives into Ahmed Seddiqi partnership with UAE-inspired limited edition
- Time+Tide — The Studio Underd0g 03SERIES Chan3ad serves up a fresh catch for the Middle East
