Roldorf is a watchmaking workshop and independent watch retailer in Vancouver, Canada.

But the workshop came first.

Our relationship with watches began at the bench: taking movements apart, understanding why they work, discovering why they sometimes don't, and learning the patience required to put them right again.

That perspective still shapes everything we do.

We sell watches. We service watches. We restore them, regulate them, test them, talk about them and, occasionally, argue about them.

Most importantly, we live with them.

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WATCHMAKING SINCE 1985

Jason Gallop began watchmaking in 1985, training in England before continuing his education and experience in Switzerland and Canada.

The following decades brought work with some of the world's most recognized watch companies, experience with everything from everyday mechanical watches to complicated movements, and a career that extended beyond the traditional watchmaker's bench into photography, technology, business and teaching.

Eventually, everything came back to watches.

Roldorf grew from the belief that there was still a place for the independent watchmaker: someone who could speak directly with the person wearing the watch, understand the object in front of them, and remain accountable for what happened to it.

That remains the foundation of the company today.

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A FAMILY BUSINESS

Jason and Mary Gallop built Roldorf together, combining the workshop with a different kind of retail experience: informed but informal, knowledgeable without intimidation, and built around long-term relationships rather than individual transactions.

Over the years, customers became regulars. Regulars became friends. Watches returned to the workshop carrying another decade of scratches, stories and memories.

That continuity matters to us.

A mechanical watch can remain with someone for decades. The people looking after it should be prepared to do the same.

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THE WORKSHOP

Walk into Roldorf and you haven't walked into a conventional jewellery store.

Behind the watches is a working watchmaking workshop.

Movements are being dismantled and assembled. Watches are being timed and regulated. Cases are being tested for water resistance. Parts are being inspected under magnification. Somewhere, almost inevitably, a watchmaker is looking for something very small.

The workshop isn't an accessory to the store. It is the reason the store exists.

Our watchmakers work on modern and vintage mechanical watches and provide service and technical support for a range of manufacturers.

That experience also influences the watches we choose to sell.

We look at watches differently because eventually we may be the people opening them.

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WATCHES, CHOSEN BY WATCHMAKERS

We have never wanted hundreds of brands.

Instead, Roldorf represents a deliberately curated group of watchmakers and manufacturers whose products we find interesting, well made and worth owning.

What connects them is not price or prestige. It is that we see something worthwhile in the watch.

When we recommend a watch, we can talk about more than its specifications. We can talk about how it is constructed, how it wears, how it is likely to age, and what ownership may look like five, ten or twenty years from now.

Because selling the watch is only the beginning.

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THE FIRE

On April 11, 2022, a devastating fire at Vancouver's Winters Hotel changed Roldorf overnight. Our Abbott Street premises were lost.

There were watches to account for, equipment to recover, customers to contact and a business whose future suddenly looked very different from the one we had imagined the day before.

But Roldorf survived.

Later that year we reopened nearby on West Cordova Street.

The new Roldorf was not simply a recreation of what had been lost. It became an opportunity to think again about what an independent watchmaking business should be.

The workshop grew. The team grew. And the relationship between watchmaking, service, retail and community became even more central to what we were building.

The fire is part of our history, but it doesn't define us. What came afterwards probably says more about Roldorf than what was lost.

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THE NEXT GENERATION

Watchmaking knowledge only survives when it is passed on.

Training has therefore become an important part of the Roldorf workshop. Alongside experienced watchmakers, developing watchmakers learn the realities of the profession at the bench: diagnosis, servicing, finishing, testing and, perhaps most importantly, judgment.

There is a difference between knowing how a watch works and knowing what should be done to a particular watch.

That knowledge takes time.

We believe independent workshops have a responsibility to preserve it.

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BUY FROM A WATCHMAKER

There is a simple idea behind Roldorf.

The relationship shouldn't end when the watch leaves the store.

A mechanical watch will eventually need someone.

It may need a strap fitted next month, a timing adjustment next year, a water-resistance test before a holiday, or a complete mechanical service many years from now.

When that day arrives, we want you to know where to bring it.

That is why the workshop and the store remain under the same roof. It is why we continue to invest in watchmaking. And it is why we think there is still something valuable about buying a watch from the people who understand how to look after it.