—  About

Who is Alex Rose? (aka @horology_nut)

It started with a brief. Design a fashion watch. Simple enough, so I bought a stack of magazines for research and instead fell straight down a rabbit hole called MB&F, URWERK, and De Bethune. I was hooked. Call it my first midlife crisis, a little ahead of schedule, except this one never really wore off.

So I did the sensible thing and left my product design job to sell watches in a London mall. Everyone thought I had lost the plot. I saw a front door into the watch world, and I walked through it.

Rewind a little, and none of this was the plan. Dyslexia made school a place I quietly resented, but give me a pencil or a paintbrush, and I was happy for hours. I was never going to be the next Picasso or Banksy, so photography became the language I actually spoke. A BA Honours in Photography led me to Photoshop, then into a creative retouching and design job, and eventually to that fateful watch brief in London.

From the mall, I started at The Watch Gallery, now Bucherer, selling Rolex, Breitling and the rest, but my love was for independent watchmaking, so I quickly moved to MARCUS Watches on Bond Street, which had the best collection of watches anywhere in the world at the time. Somewhere along the way, I swapped the suit and tie for Converse and chinos and became their digital and social manager, redesigning the website and leading online sales.

After five years, and a little intervention from a certain Max Busser, I traded London for Abu Dhabi and joined Seddiqi & Sons Al Manara International Jewellery, building their digital presence and getting to know their collectors. Eventually, I wanted more freedom, the kind that lets you work only with brands you genuinely believe in. So I built my own company.

Alex Rose Media is the result. Fifteen years across photography, web design, social media, sales and marketing, distilled into a boutique studio in Dubai that runs on passion rather than protocol. No suits, no desks, no time cards. Just the freedom to collaborate with brands that push boundaries, the same way I always have.