| New Watches Unveiled |
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Page 1 of 2 For many of the world’s top watch manufacturers, Geneva—not Basel—is the place to showcase the season’s most elegant new designs ON A SATURDAY AFTERNOON LAST SPRING, Swiss couples pushed strollers, some with dogs in tow, through the main hall of the BaselWorld trade fair in Basel, Switzerland. For about $40, anyone could press a nose against the display windows of the Patek Philippe stand and marvel at Rolex’s reflecting pools. Breitling’s booth was crowned by an enormous aquarium filled with 7,000 sea bass, while Corum displayed artwork from the collection of its late chairman Severin Wunderman. In Switzerland, a watch show is family entertainment. But when you’re marketing six-figure timepieces, the public spectacle can feel, well, far from exclusive. Almost two decades ago, executives at one premier watch brand reportedly became so fed up with the aroma of sausages wafting through their stand that they decided to start their own exhibition. Whether or not the story is true, Cartier, along with Piaget and Baume & Mercier (all of which were subsequently acquired by Compagnie Financière Richemont) left Basel in 1991 to establish the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) in Geneva. They envisioned an elegant venue where invitees could sip champagne while nibbling foie gras and sushi between line reviews; beer and brats would not be on the menu. “It was a big risk,” says Piaget’s veteran CEO, Philippe Léopold-Metzger, who worked for Cartier at the time. “Cartier was not as powerful then as it is today, so it was very gutsy to leave Basel for Geneva without Patek Philippe and Rolex, the two crowns in the Geneva kingdom.” But the move to Switzerland’s most global of cities was a homecoming of sorts. Switzerland has been the capital of watchmaking since the middle of the 16th century, when religious persecution drove Protestant French watchmakers to seek refuge in the Calvinist haven of Geneva. In 1685, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, which protected the rights of Protestants in Catholic France, and triggered a second wave of French Huguenot watchmakers flowing into Switzerland. By the turn of the 18th century, watchmaking was the engine that drove a thriving Swiss economy. Of course, Cartier’s move to Geneva vexed BaselWorld’s management, and an ongoing tug-of-war over show dates continues to this day. But, politics aside, the gamble has paid off, as sales of mechanical Swiss watches exploded in the 1990s—and despite current U.S. economic woes, luxury watch sales show no sign of slowing thanks in part to swelling ranks of newly minted Chinese and Russian millionaires. For the 2007–2008 financial year, Richemont’s watch sector recorded a 37 percent increase in operating profits. “There has been a tremendous explosion of wealth in the world that hit the watch business like it hit yachts, real estate, jets, and art,” says Jaeger-LeCoultre executive adviser Ronald Wolfgang, a wry Geneva native and 30-year watch-industry veteran. “You have people with more money than they know what to do with, and they want what’s cool. Watches are cool.” |
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