The long
way here.

A dream, found early

Martial arts found Julli before watchmaking did. For a kid headed the wrong way, the gym gave what nothing else had: role models, discipline, and the habit of treating everyone as an equal. In his teenage years it became a dream worth chasing — and a truth he never let go of: nobody wins for you.

The detour

Adulthood pulled him elsewhere — years of ordinary work that never quite fit. What set the course right was Madleena, and the plain decision to become someone worth her trust. He went back to the mat; the window for going professional had closed. The dream didn’t die. It needed a new shape.

The bench

It found one — almost by accident — at the Finnish School of Watchmaking. The two crafts turned out to be strangely alike: long apprenticeships, no shortcuts, progress measured in millimetres and humility. During his studies he held a central role in an Erasmus+ collaboration with the horology school of Morteau, France — one of Europe’s most respected watchmaking schools — building a wall-clock movement from the ground up. He graduated as a micromechanic in 2024, and Reigi — founded in 2023, alongside the studies — became his full working life.

The spark

Somewhere along the way came the realisation that lit all of this. Martial arts is the truest arena of effort Julli knows: nothing is given, no one hides, and every inch of progress is paid for in person. A watch built to honour hard-won things deserves to be built to that same standard — so he set out to build a house that could hold it. Not a logo on a factory watch: a real atelier, where respect and integrity are cut into steel and silver, for anyone who has earned their way the hard way.

Two people — and an ambition

Reigi is Julli and Madleena Konttinen: he designs and builds the watches; she runs everything that lets the bench stay quiet — operations, logistics, and the conversations that begin every commission. She comes from an entrepreneurial family and built her own business before Reigi.

Today, every Reigi is built by the founder’s own hands. The ambition is larger: to grow this bench into a true Finnish house of watchmaking — without ever giving up the closeness that makes a Reigi a Reigi.

Finland has no watchmaking industry to lean on. Either the work stands on its own, or it doesn’t.

The name

Reigi (礼儀) means etiquette — the respect that opens every practice in the dojo. Rei is respect. Gi is integrity. Two of the seven virtues of bushidō, tied into a bow of silver on every strap. You will find no cage imagery on these pages — the values live in how the work is done. The discipline is in the bevels.