Monochrome - Interview In Conversation with Rich Park, Founder of Minutes+Hours, One of the Biggest Watch Shows in America.

From independent brands to established players, Los Angeles-based watch enthusiast Rich Park rapidly expanded his events and brand partnerships to rival some of the best in the US.

By Erik Slaven

With all attention focused on Watches & Wonders Geneva 2025 last month (one of the most important industry events of the year), it’s important to remember that some very interesting events also take place in the United States, such as Windup Watch Fair and WatchTime New York. You won’t see the likes of Rolex or Audemars Piguet at these shows, but most highlight a different segment of the market with a focus on accessibility and variety. Think Oris, Baltic, Studio Underground and Christopher Ward (with some more expensive brands at WatchTime). Minutes+Hours is among the biggest of these events, with three scheduled for 2025 – a very successful Chicago event just ended with Los Angeles coming July 26th – 27th and Austin coming November 15th – 16th. I recently had lunch with Rich Park in Studio City, California, to talk about his passion for watches and the future of Minutes+Hours (and how it all came to be).

Erik Slaven, MONOCHROME – What is your early history with watches? Did you get a gift from your parents, perhaps a graduation gift? How did it all start?

Rich Park, Founder of Minutes+Hours – Many years ago, we had a family jewelry store in Chicago, and I’d tool around as a kid on the weekends, and I was always just interested in watches. My first serious watch was an Omega Constellation that was given to me by my parents as a college graduation gift. But I’ve always liked watches, kind of starting with the plastic Swatches with those rubber crystal guards back in the day.

I had many of those back in the day myself. There was nothing cooler than a Swatch Watch. So, how did this evolve from an interest and passion into a career?

Well, my second nice watch was a Grand Seiko that I bought myself, and I did an unboxing on YouTube. I wasn’t really thinking about starting a permanent YouTube channel, but it got a lot of views, so I just kept going. So, all of this basically started from that first video about my Grand Seiko. I got that first taste of success.

What was your background before watches and consumer shows? What did you study in college?

I have a communications degree and was in retail management for a few years prior to this, which is completely unrelated to what I do now. It was my career at the time, but not a passion.

When and how did you make the shift away from what you were doing and dedicate yourself to the watch industry?

First of all, if you’ve ever worked retail, you know that the hours aren’t friendly, even brutal at times. After a few years, I just knew that it wasn’t for me. I wouldn’t look back and say I hated that time, but it just wasn’t what I saw myself doing long term. It was definitely scary jumping from a stable job to the unknown, but with persistence, I carved out a new career doing what I love. Of course, there’s not much tangible income at the beginning as I tried to establish myself, but I’m very fortunate to have found a handful of great brand partners and put together an amazing team, and it quickly expanded to a full-time career. You know the saying, “if you love your work, you’re never working”

You’re first real work in the industry was a YouTube channel, but you transitioned into consumer shows with LAmicroLUX in Los Angeles. This initially focused on smaller independent brands, but represented that big shift in your career.

Back in 2018, I had the idea to start this kind of event and hosted a couple of small brands in a restaurant hoping that it would generate some interest and people would show up. I just put out some flyers and we all came to a packed restaurant. It was surprisingly successful, so I continued with more brands and then established LAmicroLUX in 2019 with sixteen brands. All small independent brands, or microbrands as they say, but I ultimately wanted to put independent brands and major established brands together under one roof. 

Of course, this wasn’t an easy sell at first as larger brands were hesitant to share the floor with smaller players. They wanted to be among brands that were considered equals. Fortunately, our shows generated a lot of attention and as we grew a bigger audience, a couple of large brands came in and more soon followed. Before long, we had a large mix of independent and major brands – Seiko, Hamilton, Rado, Maurice Lacroix and so on. For example, our recent Chicago event hosted over 60 brands with many well-established watchmakers mixed with smaller independent ones. With this new dynamic, we changed our name to Minutes and Hours as this better represented our shows. LAmicroLUX was focused on smaller brands and initially in Los Angeles. Now we’re much bigger and spread across multiple states in the US.

How did you come up with the Minutes+Hours name?

Having drinks with my team after a great microLUX event in Chicago, we knew it was time for a more appropriate name to represent how we’ve expanded, especially as more major brands were coming on board. We kept going over different names and “Hours and Minutes” seemed like a good one, which naturally rolls off the tongue. Unfortunately, it was taken, and we didn’t want to try and bid for it, so we tried “Minutes and Hours” and quickly got used to it. And Minutes and Hours has great initials, so we can call the show M&H as well. If we say H&M… Well, that’s also a store. There’s no confusion with ours. It all worked out well.

How did you go about finding brands as a young US-based company when it seems to be such a European-focused industry?

One of our early brand partners was actually Czapek before it really blew up into the luxury brand it is today. Many people don’t know this, but Czapek started with a crowdfunding campaign in 2015, but is, of course, a very expensive, high-end watchmaker today. I just called on some contacts I had and asked if they wanted to join us in a restaurant atmosphere with an open bar and several other brands, and they happily accepted. I was very fortunate early on to have such a good reception. There were already enough established shows and overall interest in the US for overseas brands to show interest.

As our audience grew, bigger brands could no longer ignore us, and we saw Rado, Perrelet, Christopher Ward, Maurice Lacroix, Junghans, Tissot, Seiko, Citizen and many others join in. Today, we have a lot of established brand partners from around the globe, and we hosted over 60 brands from a dozen countries in Chicago on April 5th and 6th. We were even featured on television news stations, which is always great. I’d say we’re close in scale to the Windup Watch Fair at this point, which is a real achievement. That said, we want to always stick with quality over quantity, so I don’t see us really expanding beyond 70 or so brands, which can get overwhelming for both spectators and the brands themselves at a show.

Moving forward, our goal isn’t to try and compete with Watches and Wonders and bring on very expensive brands, but to stay in the accessible and mid-range tier up to around the $5,000 range. There are exceptions, of course, as some of our brands have gold pieces well north of $10,000, like Junghans, and we also partnered with Breitling in the past. If brands like Omega or Grand Seiko want to participate in the future, we would certainly be interested. That said, we don’t want to alienate our core audience and brand partners by introducing a host of very expensive watchmakers. That again is Watches and Wonders territory.

This year, you have three shows in the US – Chicago, Los Angeles and Austin. Do you see this expanding to either more than three per year and/or something outside the US?

Well, we do have other projects in the works other than shows, but as far as shows, Chicago and Austin are our two staple cities. We’re excited to add a third city this year, Los Angeles, but we’ll have Minutes and Hours in a different city in the summer of 2026 and beyond, again maintaining Chicago in the Spring and Austin in the Fall. Of course, we started in LA with LAmicroLUX, but haven’t been back in a couple of years. It’s a bit early right now, but my team and I have been discussing having a show outside of the US as well.

You also introduced a very cool workshop at the recent Chicago show, The Watch Academy by Cimier.

Yes, we are the first and only watch fair in the US to provide a comprehensive watch building workshop where participants get to learn about watchmaking and assembly, and also keep the watch they build during the class. It’s set up for adults of all skill levels and really provides a unique, hands-on experience and a special watch to take home.

You sell watches via your online store as well. Can you tell me more about that?

We sell watches and accessories with brands including Duckworth, Cimier, Laco, Perrelet and more. About ten brands so far. Prices are accessible, with the most expensive pieces falling just under $5,000, such as the Perrelet Turbine Titanium 41 Blue.

We were talking earlier, and it struck me how we both remember specific watches in movies and television. What are some that really stand out for you?

Well, I love the show Succession, and the characters had money and bought impressive pieces, but they were more power statements than anything, as they weren’t knowledgeable about horology. I remember when Shiv’s husband Tom tried to impress her dad and patriarch of the family by presenting him with a Patek for his birthday. And he wasn’t all that impressed as he didn’t seem to really know about watches. I might be getting some of the details wrong, but that was the gist of it. I really liked that show, and it was great for watch enthusiasts like us.

My favorite watch scene was in Glengarry Glen Ross when Alec Baldwin puts his gold Rolex Day-Date in front of Ed Harris’ character and says, “that watch costs more than your car.”

We always seem to remember watches in specific scenes. It’s all part of the fun.

Rich, it was great talking with you and congratulations on a very successful Chicago show. I look forward to seeing you at the Los Angeles show on July 26th and 27th.

Thanks, Erik, and I’m looking forward to the show and seeing you there!

See the full article at - MONOCHROME - https://monochrome-watches.com/interview-rich-park-founder-of-minutes-hours-one-of-the-biggest-watch-shows-in-america/