The “Watches and Wonders” trade fair in Geneva presents the latest luxury watches on exhibition stands that look like palaces. It is also difficult times for the watch industry.
The Paris luxury brand van Cleef & Arpels has built a small luxury village in the Geneva exhibition hall – the walls are reminiscent of Parisian house facades, stylized trees glitter colored glass leaves that seem to look like wafer -thinly ground gemstones. In a showcase, a noble piece turns around itself. “Naissance de l'amour” is the name of the music box, in which a love god shaped and disappeared with diamonds and disappears again.
Van Cleef & Arpels' booth is reminiscent of the town of origin of the luxury brand – of Paris.
Measurement stands such as palaces
Bigger, more expensive, luxurious – that seems to be the motto again at Mass “Watches and Wonders” in Geneva. 60 watch brands present their innovations in palace -like trade fair buildings. “The stands are huge, very luxurious,” says Oliver Müller. He knows the luxury clock industry like no other in Switzerland. Together with the Morgan Stanley investment bank, his company “Luxeconsult” issues a report on the Swiss watch industry every year.
“There are brands that cost every participation -Ig million”. so the industry expert. “I would say that with a large -established brand you can easily speak of five to ten million for the seven to eight days with the structure and staff and so on.”
Weakening exports, but “positive energy”
However, the industry is not quite as magnificent as the brands present on “Watches and Wonders”: “It is not as well as it has been in the past few years,” admits Müller. The reason is especially China: last year the watch exports went down again by 25 percent. Overall, exports have dropped by three percent worldwide. But: “It's a fair, you have to put on the smile and do as if everything were normal.”
Message chief Mathieu Humair speaks of “plenty of positive energy” at the luxury watch fair in Geneva, which – as it was repeatedly said at the official opening – “world capital” of the watches. Almost 50,000 visitors had “Watches and Wonders” last year – the organizers hope that this year should be even more.
The basis of the business
Wilhelm Schmid, head of the Saxon luxury brand A. Lange and sons from Glashütte, is also optimistic. “I think it is fair to say that there have never been more people who were interested in beautiful watches than right now, and I think that's the basis of business,” says Schmid.
As long as enthusiasm for mechanical watches is there, he is not worried. “When you see this laugh in your eyes when you show it to the collectors and the journalists, you know that you have spent the years – and often it takes years until such a clock is ready. There is only a moment, and it is really here and now at the fair.”
Luxury watches from Saxony: The traditional watch manufacturer A. Lange and sons from Glashütte presents its innovations in Geneva.
Limited luxury for the wrist
As a novelty, Lange and Sons presents a “minute repeater perpetual” limited to 50 copies – a “super -complicated watch” that Schmid explains: “The minute repetition with an eternal calendar, with a large date, which is our trademark.” Then there is a new model, which is only 34 millimeters tall and very flat, “that too is pretty new for us,” said Schmid. “And then an Odysseus in Honeygold, we have never done that before.”
The specialist audience first discovered these and the innovations of the 59 other large watch brands. In the meantime, the Geneva luxury watch fair is open to everyone – admission price 70 Swiss francs, around 73 euros.
