WATCHPRO was launched in 2011 with a simple mission: “To help businesses profit from the sale and servicing of watches”.
As a pure business to business title in its early days, the digital-first magazine and website quickly gained a loyal following among the trade, both in the UK and in Switzerland, where our investigative reporting backed by hard facts and figures were something new.
We launched specific editions for the American and German-speaking markets five years’ ago, and expanded our editorial remit to create content that every watch enthusiast could learn from and enjoy — written by a growing team of the world’s best watch journalists.
WATCHPRO Live
We have new and established events on both sides of the Atlantic.
WATCHPRO Salon is the UK’s biggest luxury watch show, with 50 premier brands exhibiting to packed halls of collectors and aficionados. The WATCHPRO Awards are now in their seventh year in London. WATCHPRO Market introduces emerging microbrands to the public.
The WATCHPRO Hot 100 took place in Las Vegas for the first time in 2022, and will be back for a second outing this year.
WATCHPRO Club, which has over 1,000 members, attended exclusive gatherings in London and Monaco last year and is working on a larger programme of intimate events in 2023 and beyond.
WATCHPRO AWARDS in New York
We are also launching the WATCHPRO Awards in the United States this year, with a spectacular gala dinner planned in New York this September.
And we keep innovating. For example, with the launch of The World’s Greatest Showrooms, a print and digital publication that shines a light on the very best watch and jewellery stores from Tokyo and Bangkok to Hong Kong and Houston.
None of this would have been possible were it not for the massive growth in our global audience.
Having started in B2B, with a tightly targeted circulation of our magazine and popular email daily news alert to around 5,000 people in the UK, WATCHPRO.com now welcomes around half a million readers every month; a figure that is rising faster now than at any time in our history.
Our mission has evolved. We retain our original goal of helping businesses profit from the sale and servicing of watches. But we now recognize that entertaining and informing end consumers about the art, history and engineering behind today’s timekeepers is a vital part of our mission.
With a foundation built on half a million monthly unique users, we are investing in a new leap forward this year with the launch of an Arabic language version of WATCHPRO run by superstars in Riyadh, Beirut and Dubai; and a French language site run from Switzerland.
Next year we will be looking at additional languages including Hindi, Mandarin and Spanish.
Multi-language sites are technically tricky, but our backroom engineers have mastered it so that people can switch seamlessly between versions.
Importantly, from a commercial standpoint, all advertising on the site is geo-targeted to our audience in each country.
This advertising and sponsorship proposition across events, print and digital is proving attractive to many of the biggest brands in the world: Patek Philippe, TAG Heuer, Breitling, Hublot, Bulgari, Blancpain, Citizen, Grand Seiko and many, many more.
Right now we are working on the biggest edition of the magazine this year, which will be distributed at Watches and Wonders in Geneva in addition to its usual circulation.
We have chose this moment to redesign the magazine, so that its look and feel more accurately aligns with the audience and positioning of our digital portfolio.
This is part of a wider piece of work we are undertaking to ensure WATCHPRO’s branding and positioning are consistent across every platform, product and event we produce.
I would like to thank every individual and business that has helped us along this journey, particularly the scores of regular advertisers who entrust us with their marketing spend.
We aim to always over-deliver on our promises when it comes to these vital commercial partnerships, and look forward to welcoming new brands to the fold as we continue our global expansion.