Column: So long Basel, hello Geneva!
Column: So long Basel, hello Geneva!
Only a few days to go before the Palexpo trade fair complex in Geneva opens its halls on 1 April for the Watches & Wonders 2025. And the watch community is already scurrying about: No wonder - or Wonder (sorry, that had to be ;-)): The former Richemont-only event (SIHH) offers a constantly growing range of high-quality watch brands and programme items.
There are now 60 of them, compared to 54 exhibitors last year. And with MeisterSinger, the (still) small number of German exhibitors is also growing. But I bet that a few Made-in-Germany brands will pay a visit to the watch event in Geneva next week. The sacred temple of luxury Palexpo will perhaps be visited more out of curiosity, but there is more to come.
In addition to hotel and boutique exhibitions, the Time to Watches watch brands from all over the world in the lower and medium price segments.
This side event, which is taking place alongside Watches & Wonders for the fifth time, has sought and found proximity to its big sister. And that is in the Villa Sarasin in the immediate and pedestrian neighbourhood on the Palexpo site.
Over 70 brands will be exhibiting there. Brands that define luxury in a different way than most exhibitors at Watches & Wonders and which are also affordable for more people.
Marvellous! And by that I mean precisely this mix of the most diverse watch and industry segments, but also the peaceful coexistence - at least outwardly - of the more formal Watches & Wonders, the casual Time to Watches in the best sense and the individually operating hotel and boutique exhibitors.
It almost makes me feel a little nostalgic for Basel. Because even though there has always been a lot of passionate criticism of the World Watch and Jewellery Show, which closed its doors in 2019: too expensive, too arrogant, too few hotel rooms, too high prices for beer and bratwurst, insanely high investments in questionable architecture ... somehow it is still very much missed by a large part of the industry. Still!
I confess, I still talk about them too. Of course, I also talk about the fantastic parties, the evening beer on the exhibition square or the illustrious evenings after the trade fair closes.
It felt like you met everyone you knew from the industry at some point and somewhere in or around Basel - and got to know many new future contacts.
The Baselworld Blues
Guido Grohmann, Managing Director of the German Jewellery, Watches, Silverware and Allied Industries Association (BVSU), summed up this feeling three years ago, when the development of the Geneva Watch Week was not yet foreseeable but the end of Baselworld had long been sealed, wonderfully as the "Baselworld Blues":
"And in the midst of this great farce of justified anger, arrogance, vanity and defiance, the majority of the global industry is being dragged under the wheels and can only watch as the leaders of the industry and the trade fair company destroy their specially built epicentre of marketing and pass the blame on to each other."
"In my eyes, it doesn't matter who threw the scoop first and who didn't give their scoop back to whom.
Guido Grohmann (Managing Director BVSU) in 2022
But, Grohmann continued at the time: "The fact is that the industry has lost its biggest opportunity for comprehensive networking in the year. There are many trade fairs a year for jewellery and gemstones, and this part of the industry will be able to come to terms quickly after corona. It will be difficult for the watch industry, because there is no replacement on the horizon for the entire, colourful, global diversity of the industry. (...) This will hurt all industry players, big and small. Nevertheless, very few people want Baselworld back at the moment. The pain is too deep, the scepticism is too great."
"So long my dear friend Baselworld, I used to hate you, and I still love you."
Guido Grohmann (Managing Director BVSU) in 2022
"Enough melancholy and looking back! The Geneva Watch Week is coming up! And I'm looking forward to it! And I'm sure Guido Grohmann is too!"
Antje Heepmann (watch journalist) in the year 2025
Incidentally, there is someone else who sorely misses Baselworld - and still has no alternative in sight. The Basel-based exhibition organiser MCH Group. From 2017 to 2014, the company, whose main shareholders are the Canton of Basel-Stadt and the American billionaire James Murdoch, only made losses. CHF 420 million, to be precise. Last year, the company did generate a small profit of CHF 3 million, but this was only due to insurance compensation totalling CHF 3.6 million.
Since the end of Baselworld, which at the time accounted for 85 per cent of the Group's earnings, the MCG Group has not succeeded in organising a suitable successor event. The halls are empty for most of the year.
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