One To WatchSohaib Maghnam, A 30-Year-Old Automotive Designer And CEO Of Two Watch Brands With Three 2025 GPHG Entries

At Watches and Wonders in April, I revelled in the barrage of wristwear novelties at the vast halls of the Palexpo, desperately trying to keep up with my three-and-a-half-day, thirty-nine-meeting schedule. But brands were also exhibiting at the lakeside Beau Rivage hotel, a glamorous hub that offers respite. Small independents brought their big guns to the hotel suites, but with an intimate and friendly atmosphere. A meeting with Sohaib Maghnam and Hader Al-Suwaidi from the Qatar-based brand Beda'a was a notable one, and the Eclipse II left a genuine impression.

Fast forward to this summer, and the watch is now entered for a Petite Aiguille prize at the GPHG. It's looks will baffle you at first. The 37mm, 9.5mm thick jump hour regulator-style design looks like it has borrowed the lugs off a much bigger watch, and I have never been a fan of crowns at 6 or 12 o'clock. But with its figure-shaped, snug-fitting leather strap, it wears like a dream, with the muscular lugs offering an unexpectedly cohesive contrast to the slim case. The dial features a jumping hour aperture at 12, set against a sparkling aventurine background with a blunt sword-shaped minute hand. A contrasting brushed steel small seconds subdial is positioned at 6, while a third dial finish is introduced by twin champagne-colored guilloche semi-circles framing the figure of eight. At less than $5,000, this Swiss-made watch offers real value, a big dose of quirky charm, and is in limited production with a Sellita movement.

Unusually for any brand, its still-available predecessor, the Eclipse (I), is also entered for a GPHG award, this time in the Challenge category. Like its evolved Eclipse II, the first Eclipse is a 904L-steel cased watch, powered by the Sellita SW300 with a 37mm diameter and a sleeker 8.1mm height. This first design has the same bold lugs and a concave bezel framing a circular aperture for the minutes. The jumping hours are displayed in a guichet-style window at 12, cut out from a circular, matte steel central disc with a defined, bevelled edge. The fact that designer and brand CEO Sohaib Maghnam is from a non-watch background is surely one of the big reasons for the unusual designs of Beda'a watches, with their compact cases and a dressy charm.

Free from Swiss restraint, with an engineering degree from London and Milan, Maghnam runs the 2016-started Qatari brand. Entrepreneur Hader Al Suwaidi founded Beda'a to put the Middle East on the map for luxury watches, not only as a strong market but as a base for creativity. Sohaib Maghnam also runs his eponymous Maghnam brand and has been the CEO and Chief Designer at Beda'a for two years. Seeing the Eclipse I, Eclipse II, and one of Maghnam's eponymous watches entered into the GPHG must have come as a delightful surprise to Maghnam, and seemed like the perfect opportunity for a chat about his start in the business.

Sohaib is Palestinian/Jordanian and was in 2023 asked by Hader Al Suwaidi to head up the Beda'a brand in Doha, Qatar, and tells me more about his dual role. 

"The two brands are only linked in the sense that I run both. Structurally, financially, and conceptually, they are entirely separate brands and companies supported by different teams." Sohaib tells us that his office hours are split between the two daily. He adds, "Beda'a's founder, Hader Al-Suwaidi, is a visionary who helped me an immeasurable amount in creating a balance that works for me and the brands, and I owe that man a lot."

On growing up with an interest in watches, he tells me, "I've had an unusually slow start in watchmaking because I come from a place not usually associated with watches for many social and economic reasons, Maghnam adds. "In Jordan, where I grew up, the most refined 1%-er dream is a Rolex, and for the 1% of the 1%, it is perhaps a Patek. Not for the love of the craft in most cases, but for the social status. I made my first watch in 2018 and did not turn a profit before 2023."

The inventive nature of the eponymous Maghnam brand is tangible. Sohaib Maghnam's third GPHG-entered watch, Form 5: Noor, has a wild sense of spacecraft design about it, competing in the Petite Aiguille category like the Eclipse I, with no visible display. One of the inspirations behind the Noor is supercar pop-up lights of icons like the Countach, and the display flips up at the push of a button at 6 o'clock on the scalloped, smooth wedge. Opened at nearly 90 degrees to the wrist, it displays a jumping hour display with a rotating Maghnam logo for the minutes. The titanium and steel watch only weighs 42 grams. Closed, it only occupies a svelte space of 49x33x10mm, and at less than $10,000, offers MB&F-baiting uniqueness. "I have learned it is not wise to try to have sharp time separations between working on either brand," Sohaib tells me."It is not possible - for me at least - to dedicate a predetermined time of day for one or the other. A designer's job involves a lot of daydreaming, so if I think of something worth pursuing, I stop what I'm doing and focus on it. Many ideas don't progress beyond that initial rush, but it is the ideas that do that count."

On his elaborate and imaginative designs, Sohaib Maghnam is not too keen on the term futuristic, one of his pet peeves. "My watches, as you correctly put it, are inspired by what I refer to as other-worldly, stories and concepts that stem from a world just as natural and organic as ours, but perhaps a bit more exotic. Reality can be unjust and boring, and art serves as a vessel to bring more creativity, freedom, and joy to people, freeing them from the constraints of mundane realities." Sohaib draws parallels to the world of the elusive concept cars, creations that get the audience hyped up yet often fail to deliver on their pared-down, sharp initial promise: "This is because concept cars are led by creatives unbothered by the reality of shareholders, safety ratings, ease of production, and the taste of the masses. I want to create concept watches, and I try to ignore reality as much as I possibly can while doing so."

To me, it is clear that one of the reasons behind the two brands' non-homage and modern free-form designs is the fact that Sohaib Maghnam is not a watchmaker or from a watchmaking family. He holds a master's degree in mechanical and automotive engineering, which he says was crucial to his journey. "I was blessed with ignorance in my early days in the field because I simply did not have a notion of what NOT to do. Instead, all I knew was I could utilise my training in engineering to build mechanisms (modules) and miniature constructions (cases) that just happened to tell the time. I did not know that the case had to be three parts, or that a case wall had to be a specific thickness." This is a refreshing outlook that surely has sparked a few pre-production debates, but the designs of Beda'a and the Maghnam brand are all the better for it.

Having then bagged as many as three GPHG entries is a big deal for any young brand, and close to a record in the annals of the GPHG. "For myself and my brands to have three watches in the long list for GPHG is proof that we have made progress from being people who love watches into active players in the field we love,” he says. For Sohaib Maghnam heading the Beda'a brand with pure online sales, there have been challenges. Still, his thoughts on its future are already sounding very promising. "It's a challenge to sell watches purely online, watches are a sentimental object, one that you could only truly assess and connect with when it is on your wrist. Without shows like Watches and Wonders, Geneva Watch Days, Dubai Watch Week, etc., the challenge would be even bigger!"

Talking about the future, Sohaib tells me: "My focus in the coming years would be to find the correct retail partners in the correct places to help bring visibility to my work and allow more people to experience it first-hand. I am happy to reveal that Beda'a will soon be opening its first standalone boutique in our home of Doha, Qatar. We also have concrete plans to be present in one of the major cities of the world, but I am not at liberty to share the details yet." It seems to me that the pure joy of his creative endeavours is a driving force behind Sohaib's work, and I can only wish him the best of luck come November, competing against the best of the Swiss for GPHG accolades.

The watches from Beda'a are limited to a production of 100 pieces per model per year, to learn more go to the websites of Beda'a and Maghnam.