Manufacture Schwarz-Etienne MING 7001.M1

The 7001.M1 debuted in May 2020 with the MING 27.01, the first watch in the brand's second-generation design language. It is the product of an ongoing partnership between Horologer MING — the Kuala Lumpur–based micro-brand founded by photographer and horologist Ming Thein — and Manufacture Schwarz-Etienne in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the same manufacturer that supplies MING's proprietary MSE-family movements for its 19-series watches.

The foundation is the ETA Peseux 7001, a hand-wound ébauche introduced in 1971 that at 2.5 mm ranks among the slimmest mechanical blanks in production. MING and Schwarz-Etienne retained only the gear train and escapement from the donor movement; every bridge and the mainplate were designed from scratch, given narrow, open-worked profiles, and finished in matte black-chrome plating. The result exposes nearly the entire going train through the display caseback. The native small-seconds subdial of the Peseux 7001 is deliberately not used — the 7001.M1 shows hours and minutes only. The movement is adjusted in five positions.

The underlying Peseux 7001 ébauche has enjoyed a quiet revival, used by Nomos (whose own heavily reworked DUW derivatives share the same thin-movement philosophy) and by various dress-watch makers who prize its slimness. The 7001.M1 sits at the more labour-intensive end of that landscape: custom bridge and plate fabrication for MINGs small, closed-batch production volumes is a major part of the caliber story.

The caliber has appeared across several MING references — the 27.01 (2020), the 27.02 Ultra Thin, a 27.02 Gradient Guilloche, and a one-off 27.02 Concept — all sold out in limited allocations. Because deliveries of ETA 7001 blanks to third parties became increasingly constrained after ETA's supply restrictions, MING has noted that availability of the base ébauche was a limiting factor in planning subsequent 27-series runs.