Ming Thein on Watches, Cycling, and the Pursuit of Lightness
A conversation about bikes, watches, and the upcoming LW.01
In a follow up to my piece Athlete Ambassadors, The Tiers of Independent Watchmaking, and What Richard Mille Sees in Professional Cycling I wrote a lot about my love of cycling and what Richard Mille is getting out of their sponsorships in the pro peloton. Cycling has allowed me to connect with so many people across industries, and to have a common ground with many watch industry insiders. One of those folks is Ming Thein, Founder and Chief Creative at Ming Watches.
While Ming and I originally connected over watches, I later interviewed him for my book and during the early days of the pandemic we spent a lot of time speaking about a shared passion: cycling.
After writing about Richard Mille and their conquest to convince the world luxury can be lightweight, I wanted to connect with Ming to talk about cycling and how things were coming with the Ming LW.01 - the world’s lightest production watch. The interview follows below and I am excited to see the LW.01 start deliveries and I am hoping that I get to see one of these watches in the wild soon.
I have to admit I have been a fan of MING and their design language since launch. They are one of a few brands who I think really understand collectors, coming from a background of collecting, and go the extra mile to include travel pouches, extra straps, and other accessories that are nice to haves as a collector. There is something special about the brand and their limited production. As excited as I am for the LW.01, I have loved the recently launched Blue Fin and UNI edition of the Blue Fin, and I am looking forward to seeing what else is in the production line with MING. I’ll let MT himself take it from here.
TS: Ming- Happy new year and thanks for your willingness to talk about two things that we share a common passion for - the upcoming LW.01 and Cycling. I wrote an article last summer about why watches are playing in professional cycling and we struck up a conversation about watches, about cycling, and where the two worlds collide. In our discussion, you mentioned that you had initially thought about launching the LW.01 for cyclists and marketing it directly to cyclists.
MT: Thanks for giving me the soapbox! Always happy to talk watches and bicyles. Both are honestly unnecessary and masochistic activities that we do purely for the fun of it…
I know you have been into cars and karting for some time - how did you get your interest in cars?
I think every young boy has some degree of interest in cars – how far that goes depends I suppose on curiosity and access. I didn’t have much of the latter, but a lot of the former. I’d devour whatever car magazines and books I could get my hands on, much to the chagrin and amusement of my parents. I collected whatever models my allowance would stretch to, and later on move on to RC and eventually karting when I had the chance. All of this was far more rudimentary back then than now (boy do I feel old). And growing up in Australia in the early 90s was probably much like California of the same era – you were either team Ford or team Holden, big displacement pushrod V8s were the way to go and anything less was for pussies.
I don’t think anything more really cemented itself until my dad bought a used BMW E28 M535i when we moved to New Zealand; I don’t recall anything I’d encountered up to that point being quite as sonorous or sprightly. It got me thinking that not everything could be quantified, and despite having 2.2 litres, two cylinders and 50bhp less than the Aussie V8s – was still somehow indescribably better. That was probably also the very start of my search for what I think of as tactility, for want of a better term.
When did you develop an interest in cycling? When did it become more than just riding to get from point A to Point B?
I commuted on a bicyle through university, and occasionally did rides further afield on what would be called gravel now, I suppose. But I had one heavy, rigid mountain bike that did everything and basically lived with that for several years. After moving to London and subsequently Kuala Lumpur, I didn’t touch a bicycle again for 18 years. During the pandemic we had very strict lockdowns and I was basically going stir crazy, being used to travelling several times a month previously; eventually the government relented and allowed us to go out to exercise – socially distanced, of course – specifically ONLY cycling and running. Not having done any serious sporting activity up til that point, I jumped into both after a year of complete idling both for physical and mental health. It seems to have stuck, though I hardly run these days because of persistent shin splints after a half marathon a year and a half back.
Turns out the mental health part was probably more important than the physical part. I can’t think of many other things which you can do with relative ease,where you must switch off completely and be present (drivers in Malaysia are…dangerous) and at the same time have all the fun of speed and elaborately overengineered mechanical objects.
I remember talking about building your first bike…what are you riding now?
I just finished the final evolution of my first Firefly Allroad – it has turned into a true mismatched mongrel of a bike, best described as 90s rigid MTB in titanium with quasi-TT bars (also in titanium). It started with wanting a more relaxed road bike with greater tire clearances, but then I bought the wrong wheels (turns out the one piece all-carbon Syncros Silvertons were boost axle only) so more changes were made to the frame and fork to accommodate it. I have a 1x SRAM eTap drivetrain but with a large range 10-52 rear cassette and 52 chainring for speed and climbing ability.
As part of the comfort focus, I suspended the seatpost and stem with Kinekt and Cane Creek components, but found titanium compliant enough eventually these went. Normal road bars went for a set of titanium bars I designed myself, with a comfort optimized semi-drop position and forearm rests and extensions for a more aerodynamic cruise. There are also fillets I 3D printed for ergonomic support. The whole thing went through four versions and eventually was fabricated by a company in China. Other than that, finding the right tires for the whole thing to sing proved to be a bit more challenging than expected – fortunately Goodyear now makes the Eagle F1R road tire in a whopping 34 size, that stretches to nearly 40mm on these rims. It’s fast, comfortable, and climbs responsively. I have to admit I haven’t really ridden my other bikes much with one exception…
What’s currently in the stable? Any new builds on the horizon?
1. The aforementioned exception – another Firefly, but this time a travel minivelo. It’s built with Z couplers around 405mm wheels so it will break down into a Rimowa for travel. There are dry breaks for the hydraulics so I can still have proper (4 piston Hope RX4) brakes, and a SRAM Red 1x electronic groupset. Everything else is also titanium – seatpost, cranks, custom bars by Blacksheep. The wheels are a one off 3 spoke aero design, in one piece carbon with ceramic bearings by SMC in Taiwan. It’s a really weird looking bike – think tall BMX – but if you don’t look down, it rides almost identically to my full size Firefly, which was the brief. I’ve done long rides on this and felt fresh as a daisy after.
2. A Trek Madone Gen7 SLR9, with Princeton Carbonworks trispoke and disc wheels - this is my speed machine. Not exactly comfortable but extremely fast. Think TT bike aerodynamics, but with road geometry
3. A Diamondback Andean, also on Princeton Carbonworks deep dish wheels, which was the predecessor to the Madone and built around a similar idea – but instead of making an road aero bike more TT, this was making a TT bike more road-friendly.
4. An Allied Alfa with a wide range GRX train and Corima MCC DX47s, which my wife now rides.
5. My wife and I also share a Brompton T 12-speed for travel.
During the pandemic, did cycling offer a new lens with which to view the world of watches?
Not really, at least not at an immediately obvious level. It was most just a break from sitting in front of the computer all day. However it’s certainly possible some of the machining forms or details entered my mind subconsciously…
When did the LW.01 idea begin to enter your mind?
I think every brand wants to do something that leaves a high water mark in the industry – design is subjective, so this tends to be secondary to say most complicated, new complication, deepest, thinnest etc. – i.e. something quantifiable. We were admittedly no different and thought about all of those options for some time – probably since day one, to be honest - before realizing we simply didn’t have the resources to develop any of them. But weight was something we could probably do – heaviest would be silly, but lightest…had some legs. I think that idea started to kick around circa 2019 or thereabouts.
What’s the draw to lightweight watches for collectors?
Probably much the same as the anything-est watch? The feeling of having the best of the best and the ultimate. Being able to appreciate the engineering, thought and processes required to realize it. And back to the whole tactility idea – that feeling of cognitive dissonance when you strap it on is quite unlike anything else. We were very careful to make sure the strap didn’t exert so much force on your wrist to break the impression of lightness – stiff straps with a lot of pressure tend to make watches feel heavier than they are, and overly floppy ones can make heavier ones feel out of control. The alcantara and rubber straps for LW.01 match the watch perfectly, and the whole thing feels truly weightless. You are aware of a feather touch and that’s about it.
Can luxury be lightweight?
Luxury is choice, not cost, though more production budget of course affords a wider range of choices. Lighter materials that maintain the same mechanical properties of more conventional ones cost more to develop and produce by virtue of economies of scale and special processes required. Furthermore, lightness as a choice requires a lot more design and engineering effort, which itself has a cost. So if we’re not talking about just removing the rear seats (ahem, Porsche) to save weight but actually going out and engineering something just as strong but much lighter – then yes, there’s a definite luxury to that. It isn’t giving you less - this is laziness - but completely rethinking something so that you don’t actually need more to fulfil the same function.
Obviously there are overtones of car culture in the LW.01, and lots of crossover similarities in cycling and driving performance cars - balance, handling, cornering, braking - all these things are considered - What do you see as the crossover between cars and cycling?
Both can be taken at whatever level of seriousness you choose. In both you can spend silly money to get better hardware and make equally nonsensical justifications over improving skill. (Actually, this is equally true of photography and a whole host of other disciplines.) At the pinnacle there’s exotic engineering for strength, performance and weight; and all of that is uselsess without a skilled pilot. But I think the transition point at which the operator makes a difference is much lower for cycling, which curiously results in a very different set of people who tend to gravitate to each discipline. Come to think of it, actually can’t think of many people I know who take driving and cycling with equal seriousness.
What’s the crossover between cars and the LW.01?
For starters, the AZ31 magnesium alloy is used in motorsport applications, as are the weight reduction and finite element simulation techniques used to design the case with adequate rigidity and minimum material. Instead of a conventional case structure with bezel-dial-case-back, we have bezel-dial/movement holder-back; this reduces one entire component but requires that the remaining ones do double duty for rigidity. This arrangement necessitated a thicker caseback, but with most material removed for lightness, resulting in a buttressed isostrut arrangement. I realized afterwards the structure is actually a lot like the upright wheel carrier element of a suspension – it has to be torsionally rigid and flex around two parallel axes (in our case, the strap). So it turns out there’s not just a conceptual link, but also a direct functional one. Lastly, the final surface coating is similar to what’s used for heat treatment of some turbocharger and exhaust components – Cerakote over plasmaelectrolytic oxidation.
Why didn’t you launch the LW.01 marketed directly at cyclists?
Practically, all the cyclists I know wear smartwatches for either fitness tracking or navigation. An additional watch just to tell the time makes no sense – I know it’s not something I would use instead of my heart rate monitor while riding, so it would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise. That said, I did test one of the early prototypes for about half a year while riding.
What have you seen as the intersection of cycling and watches?
This is a tough one. Outside marketing excercises by the big brands, I don’t think there is one directly – there are definitely shared philosophies around lightness, materials etc., but as a device specifically to provide utility when riding, not so much. Omata did an interesting job with their analog cycle computer, but again it’s not that useful – I was tempted to buy one, but I’d still have to resort to my Apple Watch or iPhone to get a complete dataset. Perhaps something like this might work for more casual cyclists, but incomplete data is annoying if you’re training as you’ve got no benchmarks.
Do you wear a watch while riding? Given that cycling has become such a digital sport - computers, power meters, electronic shifting systems - wearing a mechanical watch seems a little out of place?
There’s actually a good parallel with the car world again here – analog, manual, hydraulic vs EV (at the extreme end). I suppose that’s like a rim brake singlespeed vs the latest Tour de France superbike. I do believe both approaches have merits to offer, and it depends on what your objective is. If I’m training I want the electronics; if I’m exploring a new place overseas for pleasure on the travel bike, it doesn’t matter so much. I might need GPS for navigation, and that bike has electronic shifting for one less cable to separate when packing, but there’s no power meter and I don’t care if I don’t have cardio data. Here I don’t mind wearing a mechanical watch, but admittedly never do because of the safety blanket of crash alerts in an emergency.
A lot of what we do is anachronistic, but tactile (here it comes again!). I enjoy my EV for the acceleration, silence and the way it corners because of torque vectoring, not to mention convenience of charging it at home – but I also enjoy my naturally aspirated manual gearbox car because it feels like there’s a direct connection between me and the car. Get it wrong and you wince in mechanical sympathy, get it right and feel like a hero. Mechanical watches are the same thing. I marvel at the amount of computing power and information my smartwatch can provide, but I also marvel at the microengineering required to make something that runs by itself, non-stop, oscillating four or more times per second. The best part is we don’t have to choose – I’ll often even wear both at the same time (usually when travelling for events, so I don’t miss appointments).
Do you think it’s a good thing that watch brands (RM, Tudor) are sponsoring Pro Tour teams?
I don’t really have an opinion on sponsorship. If the brands want to do it and it works for them – great. If it means more money for the teams to be more competitive, also great. If it means more visibility for the sport as a whole, why not? But of course uneven sponsorships can also result in an unfair playing field – F1 was a great example of this. Not to mention a whole load of…questionable product that is philosophically unrelated to the sport. It’s a mixed bag, I guess.
Will we see MING in the pro peloton anytime soon?
Haha, I’m too old, and no way would I be competitive even if I gave up watchmaking and trained full time.
But as far as brand or individual sponsorships go, we wouldn’t do anything unless there was a genuine mutual admiration and preferably a solid product crossover, too. I would want my sponsored partners to like and want to wear the watches regardless of whether they were sponsored or not – but I think this is going to be nigh on impossible to find.
What’s the future for the LW.01 series? Is there a future? Perhaps an entire series of LW complications? Personally I’d love to see a LW Tourbillon….
I don’t know yet – the moment you get into complications, that’s new movement development especially if it’s for something ultralight, and that’s huge money and a very long gestation period. Time only was easier because there are a lot of movements to choose from – but there are no really small tourbillon movements, for example. I would like to do a chronograph, though. Something about speed, timing, and lightweight just feels like it fits; but we are back to having to find a suitable movement. How about: never say never but not anytime soon…?
Thanks for your time, Ming! For more information on the LW.01 you can check out the MING LW.01 product page and the MING LW.01 Press Kit.
As ever, thank you for reading and thank you for sharing this post with anyone who might be interested or who is at least a little watch curious, or the cyclist in your life curious about the intersection of cycling and watches.
My approach is to tell stories of watchmaking, particularly independent watchmaking, and share insights, interviews, and thoughts on how the market and the industry are eveolving. If you are new here, I’d love it if you would subscribe, and if you are already a subscriber it would mean the world to me if you would pledge your support - every subscriber and comment fuels me to keep writing, and I look forward to sharing content with you all every week.
Fun read! Thanks. I'm a mountain goat on a bike and weight weenie generally, so Ming's superlight but sturdy built watch lit up the pleasure center in my brain. Hope to meet him one of these days!