In a little over a year, Kollokium has sold out two limited-edition versions of its first watch and had online orders for a third iteration, opened in early October, sell out in 73 seconds. It also is a finalist for a prestigious industry award. Yet the company has no headquarters, has not spent anything on advertising and its founders say it is not really a brand at all.

So what is the story with the watch world’s latest breakout hit?

“We’re just friends having fun, doing something that we would like for ourselves,” said Manuel Emch, one of Kollokium’s three co-founders. And as for the idea of it not being a brand, he explained that the effort actually “is a kind of gathering of specialists around the project, which comes from the Latin word colloquium.”

Kollokium was the brainchild of Mr. Emch, an industry veteran best known as the chief executive of the Swiss brand Louis Erard; Amr Sindi, an influencer and blogger; and the watch and jewelry designer Barth Nussbaumer. They came together during the pandemic, bonding over a desire to create something free from preconceptions.

“We first spent about six months talking about what we liked outside of watches,” Mr. Emch said. Among the topics: Brutalist architecture, the 1970s German electronic band Kraftwerk and the science fiction novels of Philip K. Dick.

The three partners’ first creation was Projekt 01, later labeled Variant A. “We all wore the watch to Geneva Watch Days in 2023,” Mr. Emch said, “and we sold our first 99 pieces off the wrist.”