Within weeks of each other, WATCHPRO Salon in London, WatchTime in New York and Dubai Watch Week in the UAE, proved that major shows do not need to take place in Switzerland.
In fact, as we universally shrugged at news of Baselworld’s return being delayed again to 2023, we showed we prefer not to head to Switzerland to stay in awful hotels costing $700 per night and then being charged $15 for a sandwich inside the exhibition.
MB&F founder Max Busser told WATCHPRO that Dubai Watch Week “is the best watch lover event in the world. Period”.
“DWW has also become the gravitational center for a whole generation of watch collectors. They came from everywhere and they all left giddy and happy,” he added.
Great shows have been springing up all over the world, but there is still one gaping hole in the calendar next year. With Baselworld not taking place and Watches and Wonders Geneva hosting only 39 exhibitors, there are hundreds of brands without a physical show at which to launch their 2022 collections next spring and leaving retailers with no opportunity to see what challenger brands might fit into their portfolios in the future.
Nothing will be launched between now and April that will come close to the scale of Watches and Wonders, let alone Baselworld in its pomp.
But WATCHPRO is planning an international show in April, and we will be hosting the world’s press and retailers in London.
Details are being worked on as we speak for an event called Festival of Time, which will overlap with the end of Watches and Wonders so that retailers, press, influencers and watch collectors from around the world can hop over from Geneva to enjoy a few days in London and assess the 2022 novelties from around 50 to 100 prestigious brands.
For Americans, this is almost certain to be the first trip to London since 2019 and I can tell you the city is buzzing and excited to welcome visitors.
The onus of the event will be very much on the word Festival, with guests to the show treated to entertainment both in and around the event’s venue and across London.
WATCHPRO will be working with concierge services to help visitors with trips to the theater, soccer matches, galleries and fine dining restaurants.
The days of turgid trade shows are over. Press and retailers are tired of being treated like cattle.
Much of the watch business today looks and behaves more like the 5-star hospitality sector where customers are treated to incredible service in beautiful spaces.
This is where events need to go as well, and that is what we intend to deliver with Festival of Time in London next April.
Our aim is for Festival of Time to develop into the greatest watch show on earth. We will not get there in our first year, but everything we do in 2022 will demonstrate the concept that watch events need to inform, excite and entertain everybody attending and presenting.
Rob, this is a topic we are both very much interested in because at the same time we want watch shows, but we don’t want watch trade shows. The goal is to open a future of in-person events allowing people to see new products and connect, but also not to create events which tax more than they benefit.
And that’s really the problem with the shows of old like Baselworld – they acted more like a tax than a benefit. You and I each have conducted intensive interview research about this topic with watch industry professionals and the consensus is simply that shows like Baselworld were a money-losing – versus money making – proposition. The result was that attending them felt more like a tax than an opportunity or benefit of doing business. That’s where all the problems seem to come from.
Why can’t a trade show be less expensive than what history provided us in Switzerland? I think part of the problem (no offense at all to our esteemed colleagues in Switzerland), is that Switzerland simply isn’t a particularly welcoming host for trade shows. Between high labor costs and unfriendly municipalities – it does not appear that Switzerland is a particularly suitable place for today’s form of industry shows which are less about being commercial sales events, and more about networking and marketing events. Switzerland might be a wonderful central location in Europe, and it is certainly where much of the world’s best watchmaking occurs, but your point proves that what the industry needs from a marketing and communication standpoint is probably best done in a more welcoming environment. The good news is that (as you pointed out) plenty of such places exist.
Watches & Wonders Geneva will be a very interesting test to see how the industry can cooperate and modernize while also serving their core needs. I also think we appreciate that it will take at least three to five years of repeat events for the new Watches & Wonders Geneva concept to be more fully refined. Once again we are on the steps of innovation and modernization – with all the incumbent discomfort and disorganization.