“My first foray into watches was when I was about 3 years old,” says Saori Omura, director of the New York department of watches for Geneva-based Antiquorum, an auction house for timepieces. “I always wanted to know what the time was exactly at that moment. Of course, in pre-K and kindergarten no one needs to wear a watch. But I remember begging my grandfather for a Hello Kitty watch.”

Omura grew up in Japan. “There are a lot of highly detailed watch magazines there,” she points out. Some covered vintage timepieces. “They had auction results and I was fascinated.” She kept up her magazine reading habits throughout her middle and high school years.

For college, Omura moved to the States. “In my last year of NYU, I still loved watches,” she says, sporting a vintage Omega on a Hermès strap at a recent interview. “I applied for finance jobs and thought, Why not also send my resume to Antiquorum?” At first the managers lacked a suitable position. “But two months later they called me out of the blue and I interviewed with Lisa Jones,” who is now a Patek Philippe vice president.

That was in 2002. “I started out as an inventory manager, which was a great training [since] every watch that came in for auction came through my desk” for registration, Omura recalls. “I learned a lot about watch models, reference numbers and prices” and gained exposure to timepiece experts well before being appointed a director in May 2013. “I am the first female who has held this position here,” she says. “It’s a male-dominated industry, so you don’t see a lot of females in a position of an expert or specialist.”

“Sometimes they think I am the assistant,” she says of the customers who call about watches. “Once I start talking about specific movement details and watch models, though, they realize that I know what I am talking about.”

Adds Omura: “Any woman who works in a male-dominated industry has to work harder, to be more assertive, to carve her own space.”

Inside Antiquorum’s New York conference room, Omura nods at the wealth of watch books (some fairly old) along a wall of bookcases. “I like to refer to them but I also like to just look at them,” she says.

“The auction industry has changed a lot since I started in 2002,” especially the high-profile bidding events, she says. “We had hardbound catalogs. There were many more people in the room. It was very local. It was more analog. Digital was not a big factor because the Internet was not fast enough for bidding.”

In 2005 and 2006, many people “started to have access to higher Internet speeds,” she says. “At the same time, we started to have more competitors.”

She views her company’s casual spirit as welcoming to collectors. “Antiquorum is a space where you won’t feel judged or intimidated,” Omura says. “There is a social gathering aspect to our auctions and previews. People come in and talk about watches for hours and hours.”

Noting, “of course, it’s a business,” she says the prevailing mood is “enthusiasm and passion about watches above everything else.”

—Hyla Bauer