Bloomberg on the Enduring Appeal of Monogramming — and Hampden’s Clever Twist
In a recent Bloomberg newsletter, The Case for Monogramming Everything, Chris Rovzar explored the timeless allure — and occasional controversy — of personalization in luxury goods. From ancient Greek currency to Louis Vuitton’s new “Mon Monogram” program, Rovzar traces how monograms have long served as emblems of ownership, authenticity, and identity.
Amid stories of celebrity style, vintage finds, and even Al Capone’s diamond-initialed pocket watch, Rovzar turned to Hampden as an example of how personalization is evolving for modern tastes.
Here’s the section on Hampden from the piece:
“An American watch brand out of Chicago has debuted a clever solution to this problem. Hampden is a family-owned company that specializes in personalized watches and jewelry. Brand director and fourth-generation family member Daniel Wein recently told me about a new patented removable casecap they created for Hampden’s Sullivan watches. You can engrave a watch as a gift, and if the wearer gets tired of the engraving or wants to admire the Swiss-made movement inside, they can just pop off the silver dollar-sized casecap and revert to the transparent sapphire underneath.
According to Wein, whose company sells thousands of personalized watches every year, the most popular watch engraving types fall into two groups: handwritten notes for gifts, and monograms for personal branding.”
For us, this recognition underscores exactly what we set out to achieve with the Casecap: keeping the emotional and storytelling power of personalization, while adding flexibility for the way people live, gift, and collect watches today.
Rovzar’s piece makes a compelling case that personalization isn’t just a style statement — it’s a way to make a product uniquely yours and worth keeping for life.
At Hampden, we couldn’t agree more.