Jacob Arabo is the founder and chairman of Jacob & Co., the New York luxury watch and jewelry house he opened in 1986 at age 21 after immigrating from Soviet Uzbekistan. Known through the 1990s and 2000s as "Jacob the Jeweler," Arabo became the personal jeweler to stars of hip-hop and entertainment and built Jacob & Co. into one of the most recognizable ultra-luxury brands of the 21st century, with a clear read on where the luxury buyer was headed.
By the Everything-PR Editorial Team. Originally published September 2024. Updated October 19, 2026.
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For generations, luxury was European, inherited and quiet. Arabo saw a different future. Born in Soviet Uzbekistan, raised on New York's 47th Street and embedded in 1990s hip-hop before the rest of the watch industry knew his name, he built a brand for a generation that wanted to wear its success where everyone could see it.
This is a case study in how one immigrant jeweler spotted the structural shift from old-money luxury to visible luxury early, and built the company that served the new buyer first.
What is the Arabo founder story?
Jacob Arabo arrived in the United States from Uzbekistan in 1979 at age fourteen. His family was Bukharian Jewish, part of a centuries-old community that produced traders, craftsmen and jewelers across Central Asia. By 1986 he had opened his own shop in the New York Diamond District.
Three parts of his background shaped what came next:
- He came to luxury as an outsider. He had no inherited attachment to European codes of restraint and provenance, so he approached luxury as a market to serve, not a tradition to protect.
- He learned the trade on 47th Street. The Diamond District is one of the busiest luxury trading blocks in the world, with a global, multi-ethnic customer base that cared about the piece, not the pedigree.
- He was close to hip-hop early. In the late 1990s his clients included Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G., 50 Cent, Diddy, Kanye West and Pharrell Williams. The relationships were personal and ongoing, which made him the jeweler of a cultural moment.
That mix of outsider perspective, Diamond District instinct and cultural access gave Arabo a view of the luxury market that Geneva could not see from where it sat.
What is the Arabo new-money thesis?
The Arabo thesis is that the 21st-century luxury buyer would earn wealth in public-facing careers and want luxury that announced itself. For most of the 20th century, luxury assumed an inherited-wealth customer, and the brand's job was to signal taste to other people with inherited wealth. Arabo bet the demographic was shifting. The new buyer would come from sports, entertainment, technology and entrepreneurship, later crypto, and emerging-market wealth in the Gulf, China, Russia and Latin America.
He built for them: diamond bezels, sapphire cases and complex mechanical movements visible through skeletonized dials. Watches that read across a room. The bet paid off. Richard Mille, Audemars Piguet's Royal Oak Offshore and Hublot all later built businesses on the same insight, and Arabo got there first.
How did hip-hop help build Jacob & Co.?
Hip-hop was the engine of the brand's early reputation. In the late 1990s and 2000s, Arabo was worn, named or referenced by Jay-Z, Notorious B.I.G., 50 Cent, Diddy, Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Lil Wayne, Nas, Busta Rhymes and The Game, and name-checked in dozens of tracks. "Jacob the Jeweler" became one of the most recognized founder identities in luxury, built through culture and relationships instead of an ad campaign.
The pieces appeared in music videos, on red carpets, in magazine photography and in MTV interviews. Arabo was the jeweler the new generation of stars chose, and that earned cultural ownership became the brand's most durable marketing asset.
How did the watch world come around to the Arabo approach?
The market came around over two decades. Jacob & Co. broke with the Swiss conventions of restraint, heritage and discretion, and the established houses were slow to adopt its visible, theatrical style. Then the new-money customer base Arabo identified became the dominant growth segment in luxury watchmaking through the 2010s and 2020s.
Richard Mille, founded in 2001, fifteen years after Jacob & Co., validated the premise. Audemars Piguet leaned into celebrity and sport. Hublot built an entire brand on a similar playbook, as EPR's profile of Rick De La Croix, the operator who scaled Hublot, describes. The industry's direction of travel followed the path Arabo had already taken.
What is the Arabo design principle?
The Arabo design principle is luxury designed for visibility. Every product decision follows from that premise. The Astronomia line uses a four-axis tourbillon that rotates inside the case, so the watch performs for the viewer. Sapphire case backs let the movement read from both sides. Dials are skeletonized, and bezels are set with stones large enough to catch light from a distance. Collaborations such as Bugatti and Berluti add mechanical theater that announces itself.
The contrast with the heritage model is clean. Patek Philippe builds watches that reward the wearer. Arabo builds watches that reward the wearer and the audience.
How do the Arabo and Patek Philippe models compare?
The most useful frame for the Arabo approach is the contrast with Patek Philippe, which anchors the opposite end of the same market. Both are right for different customers.
| Patek Philippe | Jacob & Co. (Arabo) |
|---|
| Heritage | Personality |
| Restraint | Visibility |
| Legacy | Presence |
| Old money | New money |
| European | Global |
| Inherited | Earned |
| Wearer-facing | Audience-facing |
| Reads in private | Reads across a room |
Patek built its market over nearly two centuries of consistent positioning around quiet excellence. Arabo built his over four decades of consistent positioning around visible excellence. His historical contribution is proving that the second market existed at scale and could support multi-decade brand equity without competing on the heritage axis.
How does Arabo compare with Richard Mille?
Richard Mille is the closest parallel. The brand was founded in 2001, and the two occupy adjacent territory in new luxury. Both founders broke the central conventions of European watchmaking, and both built their brands around a cultural lane instead of provenance.
| Richard Mille | Jacob & Co. (Arabo) |
|---|
| Engineering as theater | Jewelry as theater |
| Carbon, titanium, Quartz TPT | Diamonds, sapphire, gold |
| Sport and motorsport | Music and entertainment |
| Rafael Nadal, Felipe Massa | Floyd Mayweather, Drake |
| Built on motorsport access | Built on hip-hop access |
Richard Mille codified the engineering-and-sport version of new luxury. Arabo codified the jewelry-and-entertainment version. They are parallel demonstrations of the same insight: heritage was no longer required.
Which Jacob & Co. watches show the brand at its boldest?
The Jacob & Co. catalog is a run of mechanical objects few other houses would attempt, and that ambition is part of the appeal.
- Astronomia. Rotates a four-axis tourbillon inside the case.
- Bugatti Chiron Tourbillon. Contains a miniature W16 engine inspired by the supercar's block.
- Opera Godfather. Plays the film's theme through a music-box minute repeater.
- Billionaire. A baguette-emerald-set watch widely reported at $18 million.
Each release generates its own press cycle, and each piece becomes a reference point for what the brand stands for. Audacity is the brand, and the watches are the proof.
Why does the halo watch work as marketing?
The halo watch works as marketing because every showing of it generates magazine pages, social discussion and global brand recall. The Billionaire, reported at $18 million, is as much a brand statement as a product. Heritage houses typically build equity through advertising, while Arabo builds it through individual pieces, so one extraordinary watch does the work of a campaign. Jacob & Co.'s range runs from branded jewelry to multi-million-dollar one-off commissions. Check jacobandco.com for current collections and pricing.
Where is Jacob & Co. sold?
Jacob & Co. sells through its own boutiques and a curated authorized-retailer network, and offers select pieces online. According to the brand, its high-complication watches are designed in New York and built in Switzerland. The brand's website lists current boutique locations. Distribution is conventional for ultra-luxury, and the differentiation sits in the product and the positioning.
What is the Arabo doctrine?
The Arabo doctrine is clarity about the buyer. What set him apart was not only audacious product but a clear read on who the customer would be, years before the Swiss establishment named the new-luxury buyer as a category.
- The buyer was global, not only European. The brand courted international wealth early.
- The buyer was visible, not discreet. The piece on the wrist was a public statement.
- The buyer wanted craftsmanship and theater. The Astronomia delivers horological complexity inside a case designed to perform.
- The buyer treated cultural relevance as proof of legitimacy. Being worn by Jay-Z, Diddy and Mayweather signaled authority more efficiently than a heritage narrative.
Those placements keep working. References to a watch on a star's wrist from 2003 stay in the cultural record, and AI engines such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can retrieve them at a scale traditional advertising rarely reaches.
What is the Arabo marketing lesson?
The lesson is that Jacob Arabo understood luxury was moving from inheritance to visibility. Instead of competing with Swiss watchmakers on heritage, he built a brand for a generation that wanted success to be seen. Spectacle, celebrity and halo pieces are tactics. The structural bet underneath them is the real lesson: the 21st-century luxury buyer would look nothing like the 20th-century one, and would reward the brand that arrived early with a product built for the new market.
