Hodinkee, the watch enthusiast website based in Manhattan that has helped spread the gospel of mechanical watchmaking since its founding in 2008, has a new owner.

On Friday, the Watches of Switzerland Group, one of the world’s largest watch retailers with more than 220 multibrand and brand stores in Britain and the United States, announced that it had acquired the media company, which includes a website, a magazine, a brand partnerships division and an insurance business. Neither company would disclose the terms of the deal.

“We have fielded a few dozen inquiries about acquisition over the years ranging from other retailers to luxury groups to media companies to private equity, and this is the first one that felt really good,” Benjamin Clymer, the founder of Hodinkee, said last month in a video interview from the company’s office.

“The U.S. is now the No. 1 market in the world for watches,” he said. “It was not pre-Hodinkee, or pre-Watches of Switzerland being in the U.S. It feels like we’ve got two companies that together really help elevate the business for everybody.”

With headquarters in Leicester, England, Watches of Switzerland is marking its centennial this year: In 1924, Maurice Lane, the founder of G&M Lane & Co. in London, began selling watches by mail order. The Watches of Switzerland Group entered the American market in 2017, when it acquired Mayors, a fine jewelry retailer that at the time had 17 stores across the southeastern United States. The following year it opened a Watches of Switzerland store in New York City, its first in the United States.

David Hurley, the group’s deputy chief executive, said he and Brian Duffy, the group’s chief executive, had known Mr. Clymer for several years, but the discussion of what he called “a more substantial partnership” only began in December 2023.