How Abingdon Co. Is Building a Home for Women in American Watchmaking

Las Vegas has always been a city where unconventional ideas have room to breathe, a place where risk-taking is woven into its identity and a landscape that encourages experimentation. It is, however, not the first place you might think of when someone says watch-making. The city, famous for risk-taking, glitzy casinos, and never ending parties, is now home to a much safer bet: Abingdon Co.’s brand new flagship store, assembly facility, and watchmaking school. But who are Abingdon Co. And why is this so important for the American watchmaking scene? 

A Brand Built by Women, for Women. 

Abingdon Co. is a female built and owned brand, dedicated to creating functional tool watches for women (and also for other wearers with smaller wrists). Established in 2006, after the founder, Abingdon Mullin, went searching for a tough and reliable pilot’s watch that could withstand the demands of aviation AND fit her wrist. Most options on the market fell horribly short on the latter. Working with a group of pilots and women who do more, Mullin decided that she was going to tap into this hugely underserved sector of the market. Idea quickly found its footing among aviators, divers, military personnel, and women in fields where gear needs to perform, not just look the part. Armed with this conviction about the need for high-performance female oriented pieces, the company has grown fast, gaining traction with a range of professionals and collectors. Women’s watches are not just jewellery with a movement inside, they are tools. Fast forward to today, Abingdon Co. is stepping into a new chapter with a project that feels both ambitious and grounded.

The company is opening a combined showroom, watch technician school, and small-scale assembly workspace, all under one roof. It’s a move that underscores what the brand has stood for since the beginning: not just making watches for women, but creating access, building community, and giving women a path into the horological world that has traditionally been difficult to enter.

And importantly, this expansion isn’t about chasing grandiose claims or waving a flag for full American production. It’s about investing in people and skills. It’s about creating a space where curiosity can turn into capability, and a space where women can take their place in the future of watchmaking. Having primarily been online and events based, the Las Vegas expansion marks a significant milestone. For the first time, the brand is establishing a permanent physical home, one that will help reinforces its mission and provide launchpad for the next steps. Instead of just designing tools for women, Abingdon Co. is helping teach the skills behind those tools.

A Working Showroom

The showroom is the public-facing element of the new space, but it’s not crafted in the typical luxury-watch mold. Instead of polished marble floors or minimalist vitrines, this is a place meant to feel accessible, hands-on, and intentionally lived-in. Visitors can try on watches, handle prototypes, and talk directly with the small team behind the brand. This level of accessibility is rare and usually reserved for journalists and massive clients. 

For many enthusiasts, being able to interact with the watches in person, especially ones from a smaller independent brand with a strong identity is hugely attractive. For Abingdon, the space also becomes a hub for meet-ups, workshops, and community gatherings. It’s a place where the brand’s customers and followers can build connections with one another, not just with the watches. Undoubtedly, this will reinforce the already strong relations with the community.

A Watch Technician School 

At the heart of the expansion is the technician school. An educational program designed to teach the fundamentals of watch repair, movement basics, part handling, assembly, and service skills, this is not just investment in Abingdon’s future but also an investment in the future of American watchmaking talent. The goal isn’t to produce master watchmakers overnight. Instead, it’s to provide a foundation: a real introduction to the craft that can spark deeper exploration. Students will have access to a fully equipped facility, kitted out with top-grade tools, microscopes, components, and most importantly guidance in an environment that treats horology as a skill worth sharing, not some secretive art. 

Horology education in the United States is notoriously limited and somewhat on the decline. Programs are few and far between, often expensive, and historically male-dominated. Abingdon’s school is intentionally structured to make the experience approachable, inviting, and encouraging for women who may have never considered watchmaking as a possibility. Instead of just designing tools for women, Abingdon Co. is helping teach the skills behind those tools.

Whether someone wants to pursue a career or simply gain an appreciation for the mechanics inside the watches they love, the school opens a door that’s been closed for too long. Made possible by the structure of the programme, as well as by the series of public workshops and classes that have been planned, this hopefully the catalyst for an era of accessible watchmaking. 

Local Assembly Facility

The inclusion of an assembly workspace brings a practical dimension to the project. Here, small-batch assembly, regulation, and quality control can be performed locally. It’s not meant to imply full domestically produced watches, Abingdon is deliberately transparent about that. That is, however, their long-term goal with this project: they want to be able to say that they ‘manufacture watches from start to finish in Las Vegas. Notoverseas. Not partially. All of it. Here in Las Vegas’.  And this space represents the first meaningful step toward doing more work in-house, building technical capability, and creating an environment where students can gain experience with the realities of watch assembly.

In an industry where “American-made” can sometimes feel like more of a marketing phrase than a technical standard, Abingdon’s ambitious  and transparent approach is encouraging. Rather than overpromising, the brand is investing in incremental growth building local expertise step by step with a realistic strategy.

Why This Matters? 

For many women, watchmaking can feel intimidating from the outside. It’s a field steeped in tradition, much of it centred in Europe, and filled with institutional gatekeeping. By creating a school specifically designed to welcome women into the craft, Abingdon is lowering barriers that have been in place for decades. The skills taught in the technician school go far beyond hobby-level tinkering: it will provide a substantial professional foundation,  that will hopefully lead to careers, apprenticeships, or simply a lifelong appreciation for mechanical skill. Access is definitely a major challenge in the watch industry, and this is just the start of it changing: representation has historically lagged far behind interest, but not for much longer. 

There’s a reason that brands like Panerai and Audemars-Piguet have their houses in major hubs around the globe: their community need somewhere to call their own, a space that helps anchor the brand geographically. And Abingdon Co.’s new Las Vegas space is no different. Highly dependent on their community and devoted collectors, the brand now has a physical space to call home, a space where they can welcome enthusiasts, students, professionals, and curious newcomers. Over time, the location has the potential to become something rare: a watchmaking community built organically around learning, mentorship, and support. Really, this is just the next logical step in Abingdon’s progression. 

Final Thoughts 

Abingdon Co.’s new Las Vegas home represents a different kind of expansion, one that prioritizes education, empowerment, and access over spectacle. By giving women a place to learn watchmaking, handle tools, ask questions, and discover the mechanics behind the craft, the brand is opening pathways that could influence the industry for years to come. Doubling down on creating a sustainable foundation from which a new generation of American watchmakers can launch their careers is also an incredibly significant development for the industry as a whole: who knows, Las Vegas might be the North American equivalent of La Chaux de Fonds? With this triple-pronged expansion, Abingdon are cementing themselves into several categories, reaffirming that they, like their customers and watches, do not fit in just one lane. 

Find out more about Abingdon Co., their watches, and their expansion here.