Inside a watch and jewelry trade show
Watches & Wonders: it's like Paris Fashion Week, but for watches and jewelry
Watch trade shows are where you go if you’re a little shrimp of a brand, trying to penetrate the yolk of success or a heavy-hitting brand yelling, “Hey, I’m still here.” The goal is to compel the watch market by presenting a show-stopping watch collection or novelty.
Such flouncing-through-the-tulips type of events occur in major cities worldwide: Hong Kong, Dubai, London, Miami, etc.
“Watches & Wonders,” is held in watch mothership Geneva, the city best known for watches. Therefore, this trade show, in particular, is a spectacle to behold.
This year, the show will be open to the public from 13th to 15th April.
Two things to know if you want to look like you know what the hell you’re talking about at an event like this:
Watches & Wonders did NOT replace Baselworld. Baselworld (the OG “It” watch fair) faded away into the good night for reasons that require an article on its own.
The retailer with an important market (as in, where spenders are spending even if the world is on fire). These Zeus-like industry figures could murder someone, and the brand reps would hide the body in the cupboard where they keep all their freshly printed, never-to-be-read marketing materials. Retailers decide which watch or jewelry collection to buy and sell to their market of spenders. Entrap them with a baby or compromised position, and you could determine which brand will make it or break it that season.
You may not think watches are hip due to their thirst to be hip (recently Tudor watches donned the slogan “Are you man enough to wear the new Black Bay Chroni Pink?)
But the peeps behind Watches & Wonders are pulling sexy, and, in fact, hip PR moves like this:
Although I have my suspicions that she is a hired actress.
In my experience, everyone eventually succumbs to the sumo-wrestler butt that is peer pressure to fall in line with the old, tried and true, traditional ways. Watches & Wonders looks like they’re starting to get it. Hopefully, they’ll stay coo’.
So, what happens at watch and jewelry shows like this one?
Novelty luxury products and collections get released, and people react to them. Social media reacts to pictures and videos. There will be a handful of pieces that steal the show. Even you will eventually run into them on social media, regardless of algorithm.
People attending the fair are watch and jewelry industry insiders, the more important professionals, VIPs, journalists, and media personalities. Members of the marketing team back home will be pulling each other’s hair and sabotaging each other to be sent with their bosses. To quote an Instagram caption, “Watches & Wonders is the Fashion Week of watches.” So lots of Emily and Andy and Miranda Priestly (i.e., retailer) shenanigans.
Some watches get bought, and some don’t. Social media is playing an increasingly important role, but more like a haunting than a benign, omnipresent Oz.
The watch-enthusiast public sphere is more than happy to give their twopence on the new watch releases. Whether or not this voice is listened to depends on the receiver.
When my employers sent me to cover the fair, back when it was still known as SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie) I was more interested in covering aspects like these than the watches. For example, Audemars Piguet’s back-then-new watch launch called Code 11:59, got torn apart on social media. Olivier Audemars had the following to say about its poor reception:
Enough said.
We got cut off, but the great-grandson of the founder of Audemars Piguet went on to mention that the Royal Oak series also received negative reactions when it was first released in 1972.
Alas, I, too, am also one of the suckers who believes in the Joan of Arc in all of us:
Overall, watch fairs are great. Full of socio-political tightrope performances. The “community feel” is just like the ones you see in close-knit families who look pristine on the outside but are privately feuding over Father’s money. Throw in the pedophilic uncle that everyone is covering for.
And the groupies. Never forget the groupies, who are there for the watches and jewelry.
Follow my Instagram (@sounds_of_a_gong) for updates on Watches and Wonders 2024.
Over and out.
Dom
Who are these groupies? 😂