Founder of Elka Watch Co.Hakim El Kadiri
Elka is a brand that echoes my vision. ELKA Watch Co. was launched in 2022. How and why? I dreamt of developing my own brand but above all I wanted a brand with a story, truth & credibility. I chose to call it by my nickname, ELKA. Since I love the 60s, the products and the aesthetics of that era I have decided to make it my design line for this and future collections. When I wanted to protect the name, I realised that a brand called Elka Watch had already existed but had disappeared around the 60s & 70s precisely during the timeframe that I have chosen to base my designs on. This defunct Elka Watch was named after Eduard Louis Kiek from Amsterdam. I looked through its archives and realised that the brand had strong designs and had worked closely with other big names in the watch industry such as Ulysse Nardin, Heuer, Rolex, Minerva, to name only a few!
Why Elka
ELKA watches are inspired by the times when a product was kept for life. You invested in durability, quality and uniqueness. The mindset is to step back to that period in the 1960s. To those pure and colourful aesthetics we still remember; back to the magical dreams of the space race, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Woodstock; a return to the struggles, the changes, the rebellious spirit that so marked that decade. What if we had never really left that decade? What if we went back to it, body and soul, to become once again those enthusiastic and revolutionary people who made society move so much? The same values demonstrated at that time are still strong today. Boldness and elegance are timeless, whether they date from 1960s or the 2020s.