Introducing
Katlen Schmidt
The fact that something is getting better doesn’t mean we should stop working to improve it. Especially when the starting point was low. Five years ago (2019, the pre-COVID period) women in horology were akin to Snow Leopards, rare. With a few exceptions of celebrity female collectors, women who enjoyed watches didn’t have anyone to look up or to turn to. Whether it be on YouTube, in writing form on one of the myriad of online publications already in existence back then, or in physical form in retail shops. To many (men), women were shyly riding shotgun alongside their husband/boyfriend and were not seen or even considered as actual collectors and enthusiasts in their own right. And even though in 2025 we can celebrate the fact that we see and hear of more women doing good things in horology, we still have a very long way to go. We’re actually barely getting started.
What is positive is the fact that each woman we turn the spotlight on in our series Women in Horology shows an extra step female watch collectors, content creators, and professionals have made in the past few years. But thus far each new protagonist is a pioneer in her own domain, whether it be photography, writing, collecting, and running successful careers in horology. In other words, we only know of one Sanna, one Meg, and one Xi. And today’s hero is the first woman in our series who co-hosted a popular watch podcast, worked in retail for Swiss luxury brands, and now heads the US marketing department of a respected independent watch brand. A powerful and motivated woman who has worn multiple hats in our niche industry and who doesn’t seem anywhere close to being done carving her own path in our niche world.
So I am honored and pleased to tell you the story and career of Katlen Schmidt.
Katlen Schmidt
A Self-Made Women Getting in Horology
The typical origin story of a male watch collector is as follows: a father or grandfather gifted a heirloom watch to his son. (Something like a Rolex or gold-plated Swiss luxury model.) And the typical origin story of a female watch collector is as follows: a father or grandfather or uncle or male friend or male coworker either gifted a watch (generally a quartz) to her or bored her to death with stories about timekeeping devices so much that she felt compelled to look into this obsession as well. (And started her collecting journey buying quartz models.) So, men are almost always the reason why women get into horology which makes sense since the latter is one of the many male worlds, however things were quite different for Katlen. She said right away that she didn’t have a “cool story” to share of being handed down a luxury watch from a close or distant relative as she got herself her very first timekeeping device.
Katlen is a self-made woman who grew up in a humble part of Nashville (Tennessee) and who worked whilst studying. More specifically, she studied journalism in college and worked in a jewelry store at the same time. At age 19 she was promoted to store manager, and wanting to celebrate the occasion, spent $475 on a Bulova quartz chronograph with a diamond-set bezel. A flashy watch the likes of which she only bought once in her life. $475 was a lot of money for a 19-year-old and although she did buy herself a watch—the stereotypical type of celebratory item men usually buy—she wasn’t a “watch person.” She worked in a jewelry store and was a certified gemologist—she never embarks on a new enterprise or adventure half-ass, something we will get back to multiple times in this article—and one of the managers she trained went on to work for an Omega boutique. He suggested to Katlen to join him.
Wearing her Bulova, Katlen began a new chapter in her life, one of many.
Barely one week on the new job—and she started around Black Friday!—she had her first of many unpleasant encounters with a dude who was into watches. Although she was new to watches and to Omega, and therefore wasn’t yet an expert, she found herself under fire, a deluge of questions and subsequent unpleasant remarks because she was a woman who didn’t know “anything.” Her first week at the Omega boutique was an intense one which was concluded by the aforementioned, utterly unpleasant experience. Katlen told me she’s a proud woman and that she swore to herself that she would make it so nobody would ever dare speak to her in this way again, whether about watches or anything else for that matter. So she quickly learned everything she could about watches and Omega and slowly became interested in horology to a point of future no-return.
Between Fascination and Obsession
Although Katlen paved the first few feet of her own path into horology, and that she became a watch nerd (a compliment) by way of necessity and pride, a particular childhood memory took a firm hold on her mind, one which started resonating stronger as she became one of us. That memory is of her grandfather and his clocks he brought back from Germany when he was stationed there doing his military service. As a child, Katlen would visit her grandparents and witness the care and dedication with which her grandpa would wind all of his clocks and watches on the weekends. A personal and intimate ceremony which introduced Katlen to the notion that things which are well built and cared for can last a lifetime and some. And, as she quickly realized growing up, there are but a few things which can last for hundreds of years besides watches and the walls of a sturdy house. Later in life she would also partake in a similar ceremony of winding her mechanical watches.
Similarly to her grandfather’s and her own passion, what drew Katlen deeper into the hobby are the good and authentic people who make up part of the watch community. And, more specifically, the experiences she has had collecting and talking about watches which left a permanently good impression on her. As you may think so yourself, we don’t need watches to live our lives, and Katlen certainly does not necessarily check her watch to check the time (that is what a smartphone is for.) But she often finds herself looking at the watch strapped to her wrist to admire its beauty and to remind herself of the good things that have happened to her in the past five years (since before COVID) when she first got into watches. One such memorable experience is linked to one of her favorite independent watch brands, Fears, and his CEO, Nicholas Bowman-Scargil, when Katlen and her horological soulmate, Kat Shoulders, ran their popular podcast Tenn & Two (the story of which we will get back to later.)
Nicholas, by way of Fears, was one of the earliest and most meaningful supporters of the podcast as he loaned the pair models to review and contributed an interview. To celebrate the one-year anniversary of Tenn & Two, Katlen and Kat each bought a Fears watch (Katlen bought a quartz GMT which is no longer in production) which was in itself no small feat. Upon receiving the watches and opening the boxes, the two friends were met with the most unexpected of surprises as Nicholas, in secret, engraved the case-backs of their watches with the name and logo of the podcast. To this day, neither have had a better unboxing experience as no one ever could extend a more generous and elegant gesture as Nicholas did. What this meant for them was that their experience was personalized and made special in ways that are rare if not impossible when buying watches online. (Buying watches in a boutique generally feels more special.)
Meeting Kat Shoulders and the Podcast
Just like meeting the love of our life can be random (if like me you believe in those kinds of things,) so is meeting your best friend and finding the right watch for you. It’s about the click we experience, the natural feeling of oneness. Because when we meet the right person, see the right watch, and embark on the right adventure, we immediately know so. That is what happened to Katlen when one day in 2019 she met Kat Shoulders. As Katlen put it, watch collecting is lonely on a daily basis as in the real world there aren’t that many of us we can meet in the flesh even though, as we know, the online watch community spreads far and wide throughout all seven continents. And the hobby is even more lonely for women and it was much more so five years ago. Working at Omega, Katlen always went by “Kat” as it was easier for her colleagues and customers to remember her name this way.
One thing that the two future friends did was to engage in conversations about watches on the forums of a few watch blogs. Kat (Shoulders) was being asked many specific questions about Omega as readers and enthusiasts saw that her handle had the words “Kat from Nashville” in it. Folks and even Omega customers thought Kat was Katlen which is why they started asking her these questions which left Kat bewildered. Kat didn’t know what was going on and wouldn’t figure it out until later when the two women connected online. For a while neither knew that they came from the same city and, actually, the same neighborhood. They messaged each other back and forth until one day Katlen made a post about an upcoming watch meet-up and suggested to Kat to come along. They met, had a drink, then met again for coffee and came up with the idea of doing a podcast together. It was friendship-love at first sight for Katlen and Kat and they have been inseparable since.
The two best friends share a passion for watches and the same drive to make their story known. Both felt there weren’t many women in the hobby, let alone women with a voice, and both wanted to tell their story in a different way. That is how, to summarize a more certainly longer story, they decided to create Tenn & Two. They were also aware of the fact that as women they would have to work extra hard to be taken as seriously as men did, or at least to be noticed. Back in 2019, there were but a few female writers who worked occasionally for magazines and only one woman who had a podcast. So they understood the reality of their situation and of what they would be facing: that many men would assume women couldn’t be knowledgeable about watches and produce quality content. (Remember the “dude” she had to deal with on her first week at Omega?)
So, even before recording their first episode, Katlen and Kat made sure the topics they would cover would be relevant to the watch community and that their commentary would be on point, professional, and articulate. (Something I can attest to as I got a lot of my horological information from the Tenn & Two podcast when I first seriously got into the hobby.) Just as it was important for them to have the right equipment and to record the podcasts in the right conditions. Luckily for Katlen, Kat was knowledgeable in the tech side of things, and as such, their audio quality was equal to or superior to that of other popular male-run podcasts at the time. Again, they had to be better than men because they knew they would be judged more harshily. Regardless of all of the work they had put in from the get go, they never imagined that the podcast would encounter the great success that it did.
Left: Katlen Schmidt; Right: Kat Shoulders
Omega to Norqain & Her Role as a Woman
All the while Katlen was running a popular podcast with her horological soulmate and sister-in-arms, she was also managing a busy career at the Omega boutique in Nashville. She worked there for close to nine years (CHECK) and was an Assistant Manager when she left the boutique to go on to the next chapter in her life—Norqain. Similarly to the times when she worked in jewelry and trained managers, she did the same for Omega—something she thoroughly enjoyed doing and which she still does today—which came with the benefit of being able to travel throughout the United States to train store employees. For the podcast Katen and Kat reviewed many watches and interviewed many professionals, and one of the watches they enjoyed reviewing (perhaps the most) was the Norqain Adventure Sport Lady (I highly recommend you give it a listen.) Thanks to this review they were able to create a good relationship with the brand.
Reviewing this watch was further meaningful to Katlen and Kat because for once a brand didn’t feel the need to make a Lady’s watch with either a microscopic case or a pink dial or a diamond-set bezel. The Norqain Adventure Sport Lady is a proper tool watch for female watch enthusiasts and collectors. So whenever the Norqain team would visit Nashville to meet with retailers, Katlen and Kat made sure to go out for drinks or dinner with them. On one faithful occasion, Katlen mentioned how far the brand had come and grown and that it must have been a big task to accomplish for the only two Norqain employees in the U.S. In the heat of the moment and carried by the conviviality of the conversation, Katlen basically created her own job description and soon left Omega to begin working for Norqain. She helped wherever and whenever help was needed and two years ago she took over marketing for the United States. (A belated congrats!)
Getting a job at Norqain and working for this particular brand is something meaningful to Katlen. First because her team in the U.S. is small and that there is lots to learn and to test out. Everything she does, good or bad, has a direct impact on the brand and her work and that is something she didn’t experience when working for such a massive brand as Omega. So she feels more pressure but it is good pressure. Second because Norqain has a different way to market their watches which is modern and more in tune with the reality of what men and women are like these days and what they are into. For example, the brand markets what is typically seen as “men” watches as being “unisex” and they make an effort to photograph all watches on the wrist of men and women. Moreover, Norqain is one of the rare Swiss brands to make compelling and attractive sports watches for women which is why 20% of its annual sales are of lady’s watches (compared to 5% globally.)
Katlen understood that, historically, women who go to watch boutiques do so to accompany their male significant other to buy a watch for themselves. They don’t usually see women selling watches or watches that could be of interest to them, those which fit their actual personality and personal tastes—whether these would be watches typically marketed to men, in other words, larger sports models, or those typically marketed as being “lady’s watches.” When Katlen first started working for Norqain, she had to fight the archaic notion that women are not into watches which meant that retailers shouldn’t carry many lady’s watches. So the situation was such that women couldn’t be watch enthusiasts or that boutiques didn’t carry watches that they would buy. Whilst Norqain has always been different (read: better) than other brands in that regard, Katlen contributed to changing the general perspective about female watch enthusiasts even further.
The Question of "Lady's Watches"
Speaking of which, Katlen shared her opinion about the terms “lady’s watches” and what brands typically define as being such. Whilst many female watch enthusiasts and collectors claim that there should only be “watches” and that any watch is suitable for both men and women, Katlen has a different way to look at this. Although she constantly goes back-and-forth on this question, working in the watch industry and being a woman leads her to believe that from a dimension-perspective, it is indeed useful to make that differentiation especially for women who are not enthusiasts like she is. She used the example of buying cowboy boots online (she’s from Nashville, after all) and the fact that she has to shop in the women's section in order to find boots of the right size, which she wouldn’t be able to do if there were only “boots” to sell. Although Katlen knows to find a 42mm diver in the men’s section of a website, other women wouldn’t necessarily.
Katlen also talked about the difference of shopping for watches online and in brick-and-mortar boutiques, which is related to the aforementioned point. She finds the latter to be frustrating as oftentimes the sales person she deals with isn’t interested in hearing her (female) opinion. Even though Katlen is the type of woman to walk into a boutique strapping a 42mm Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean on her wrist, rarely does anyone notice her watch and almost robotically directs her to the lady’s section of the boutique—where one finds small, colorful, and diamond-set watches. So a novice in the hobby would be directed to the same section of the boutique and not look at the men’s section where her dream watch could be. Online, however, these things don’t happen which is why it’s necessary, at least according to Katlen, to offer some kind of guidance to the non-enlightened folks (read: the future watch nerds.)
The Reality of the Watch Community
Just like it is true of everyday life where we find the best and worst of people, the watch community is made up of the best and worst of people. And things need to change more than they have changed in the past few years (to go back to the comments I made in the introduction of this article.) Katlen used to contribute to Facebook groups which she stopped doing because of a terrible experience she had. And although it might seem crude to relate her experience at the end of this long write-up, it is nevertheless the reality of the watch community and of the behavior of many men. Someone had created a conversation relating to a female celebrity's watch collection which received a whole swath of obscene and misogynistic comments. A couple of dudes decided to take the conversation into another Facebook group to continue and intensify the unleashing of their filthy rhetoric.
Katlen decided to retort and set things straight, and she was one of the rare women present in the group who had the courage to do so. The men were so absolutely shocked and angry at her behavior that they threatened to sexually attack her and the other women who had made comments. Katlen was horrified at their words and reaction, and even more so at the fact that no moderator decided it would be a good idea to take down the post. Men were allowed to say whatever they wanted to say regardless of the severity of their comments which was frustrating for Katlen as it means that many accept the nature of the hobby as it is. Despite this horrifying experience, Katlen never judged the watch community at large but it further motivated her to want to improve the conversation we have about women in horology.
Hence the work she has been doing since the very first day she joined Omega, through the podcast with Kat, and now at Norqain.
Conclusion: Looking Ahead
Despite the dark tones of the last two paragraphs, Katlen’s story is a beautiful and positive one which nevertheless has to be framed within the realistic parameters of her experience being a female watch enthusiast, content creator, and professional. Because as we know, what she experienced online is similar to what she experienced during her first week working at the Omega boutique in Nashville and what many women still experience today on a daily basis. It is my hope that what came through this article, by relating Katlen’s path into horology and the successful career she’s lead in the past many years, is that women have to work harder, much harder then man in order to not only be treated with courtesy and kindness but also to be taken seriously—as individuals who enjoy watches and know things about them—and to be respected—as professionals in the business.
Throughout the podcast and her work at Omega and Norqain, Katlen wants to change the conversation about women in horology, help brands reflect that needed change, and inspire other women to speak up and to claim their rightful place within the community, however flawed it might be sometimes. Throughout our conversation, Katlen mentioned multiple times that she strives to work with authentic and good people who create good and authentic products and who are keen on having good and authentic conversations about watches and the community. I for one enjoyed speaking to Katlen and felt honored to have been able to tell you her amazing story. At the end of the day, whether she wears cowboy boots or a 42m Planet Ocean, Katlen is a person who wants to make our niche world a better place and she’s done an amazing job so far.
So please give Katlen a follow and spread her love for authenticity and good stories.
Thanks for reading.