If you're in the market for a good but not overly expensive watch and there are a lot of different brands to choose from, all with a very similar simplistic style. There's Daniel Wellington, Cluse, Larsson & Jennings and many more coming to market every month (the newest being Tinkr watches, which looks like a really interesting company). After some research I went with Larsson & Jennings because:
-Cluse, which is the most inexpensive of the bunch, has models made in Amsterdam but doesn't tell you where the watches themselves are actually made. For $99 or less, it's most likely China. Their case color is silver, which also means that you don't know the actual metal content of the case (it's not even stainless steel probably).
-Daniel Wellington (DW) was the real competitor in this case. With about the same price point but still slightly cheaper than the Larsson & Jennings watch, I had to do some real research here. I read through this forum thread and learned that Daniel Wellington is also made in China and now there's a ton of knock-offs floating around. On top of that I can find it at Walmart for $90 and every blogger and their mom has this watch. I was looking for something more unique.
So in the end I went with the Larsson & Jennings Liten Watch. I also got 25% off from Netaporter at the time so my total came out to $270 (and no tax baby!), which at the time (last year November) was comparable to the Daniel Wellington watches out there. Between the Liten and the Lader, I chose the smaller Liten style because my wrists are also fairly small and I didn't want a big clunky watch. And after having it for a couple months, I couldn't be happier with my purchase. Now I look forward to taking my watch with me to the Larsson & Jennings store in NYC and choosing a different strap (also something that couldn't be done with a DW watch).