V Factory, The Workshop That Replaced Clean

Short version, if you landed here from a search box.

V Factory is the workshop that opened after Clean went dark, in a quiet building on the edge of a different city. Most of the people who actually built the late-2023 Clean watches ended up there. The supplier list looks like the old Clean list. The machines are the ones they already knew. If you liked late Clean, V is what you want in 2026. And yes, we ship it.

Why V exists

When Clean went quiet, the trade lost a building, not its people. The people who mattered — the few who understood the Dandong 4130 arrangement, the regulator whose timing work the line leaned on, the senior assemblers who could judge a Submariner bracelet by feel before the gauge read anything — most of them did not get caught.

Some rested a few months. Some took meetings. The next thing the trade saw was a small workshop on machines they already knew, buying from a supplier list that looked very familiar. That workshop is V Factory. The name is deliberately dull. No logo on the door. A single letter for a name. That is not an accident.

If you want the longer version of how Clean ended, or where the other alumni went, that is covered on the Clean Factory shutdown page and on the V Factory deep-dive on the blog.

What V Factory actually makes well

Not the whole Rolex catalog. V is selective about what runs on the main line. The decision seems to be — if the movement does not need a specialist, or the case shape is one every small shop can grind, V passes and lets smaller shops fill that demand. What V keeps for itself is the watches where the hands at the bench actually matter.

The Daytona.First thing V stood up on the production line, and the watch the old Clean hands knew best: the chronograph that made Clean famous when Noob slowed down and the Dandong orders rotated across. What V builds now is the current steel 126500LN, the Daytona reference Rolex introduced in 2023. Rolex kept that steel model's back solid; as Monochrome Watches noted in its hands-on review, at launch the see-through sapphire back was kept for the platinum edition. Rolex has since put one on other Daytonas, among them the white gold Le Mans 126529LN, as SJX reported, and the Rolesium 126502 of 2026, which Gear Patrol covered.

The 40mm Submariner. The case shape and lug finish that forums used to call out on Clean — cleaner polish, better lug line, a bezel that did not fade to grey after a year of wrist time — that finishing moved with the assembly team. Same people, same grinding wheels, same bezel supplier. The late-Clean 40mm Submariner and the V 40mm Submariner are closer to each other than either is to anything else shipping.

The GMT-Master II. V builds it with a proper jumping local hour. Snap the crown, local hour moves in one-hour jumps, GMT hand stays home, seconds keep running. Not the soft Miyota GMT that tries to pretend. The real complication, as close as this market gets to it.

Sky-Dweller and Land-Dweller. Included in the V range but produced in smaller numbers. The Sky-Dweller comes with a working annual calendar. Land-Dweller ships with the honeycomb dial, integrated bracelet, and a standard Swiss 4Hz movement — the new 5Hz Caliber 7135 and Dynapulse escapement are not yet cloned by anybody. Including V. Exterior is there, the 5Hz beat is not. Worth knowing before you buy.

What V does not make (and why it matters)

Datejusts, Day-Dates, Oyster Perpetuals, Explorers — V is not the primary source for any of these. The reason is simple. Those are time-only watches where the movement is invisible under the dial and the case shape is a fifty-year-old standard any workshop in the trade can grind without thinking. V could run them. V chooses not to. The margin on a Datejust at scale is not worth the line time when the same line could be building a chronograph.

So when you see a shop claiming a V Datejust or V Oyster Perpetual, ask the question. V is a halo workshop in 2026. If it is not a Daytona, a GMT, a Sky-Dweller, a Land-Dweller, or the 40mm Submariner, the word V on the listing is almost certainly marketing. The watch is probably fine. Just not V.

V pricing, in plain numbers

V pieces ship on our Swiss tier, though not every Swiss-tier watch is a V piece. $999 for GMT-Master, Sky-Dweller, Land-Dweller and the 40mm Submariner. From $1,359 for Daytona — because a working chronograph movement has roughly double the parts of a time-only automatic and the supplier charges us about twice per piece. That is the factory-realistic bracket for current production.

If somebody is offering V Daytonas at $400 to $500, the math does not work. Either it is old Clean stock with a V sticker on the box, a different workshop's watch that got relabelled after arriving in the warehouse, or a hollow shell with no movement worth talking about. We have seen all three. Sometimes on the same listing.

How we know a watch came from V

Not a secret handshake. A supply chain. We order through a small number of trade suppliers who take stock directly from the workshops, and we keep using the ones whose pieces arrive at the same build quality order after order. That is how trust works in this trade. Not certificates. Not holograms. Relationships with the people one step removed from the bench.

Nobody can print a certificate of authenticity for a super clone. Anyone who does is inventing paperwork. What you can verify is consistency — does the watch on the wrist match the watch in the photos, does the movement match the reference, does the bracelet feel right. Before your watch ships, we send photos of your exact piece for you to approve, and we add a filmed inspection video to the gallery for the references we have already filmed. If something on the piece is not right, it goes back.

What to buy from V right now

If you are looking at V for the first time, the Daytona 126500LN is the piece to start with. It is the reference V stood up the line for.

If you want the 40mm Submariner that put Clean on the map, that is on the V line too, built by the same assembly people. Case polish, lug line, bezel behaviour — all the things forums used to point at specifically on Clean — they moved with the team. On our site it is the Swiss-caliber choice on that Submariner, from $999; the same watch on a Miyota starts at $359.

For everything else in the catalog — Datejust, Day-Date, Oyster Perpetual, Submariner in a reference V does not run, the whole time-only range — V is not the source, and the movement is your call. Each of those watches comes on a Japanese Miyota from $359 or on a Swiss clone caliber from $999, with the same case and dial either way. Swiss buys the longer reserve (about 70 hours against about 40 hours); Miyota buys the lower price.

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