There is an odd rumbling in my diary at the moment; a disturbance that subconsciously catches my attention, but when checked is little more than a blank page.
I’ve not quite managed to quell these feelings of unrest as yet, but I have identified them. It is, quite simply, the lack of BaselWorld.
While of course the show will be with us in April, or rather we will be with it, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve forgotten something. Having a March diary that is not packed, for at least one week of it, with back-to-back hourly, or perhaps even half-hourly at peak times, appointments seems wrong.
Not that we’ve been missing out on new watches while we await the later 2013 show date. SIHH ran its course for the 23rd time in Geneva and the Richemont brands provided us with a rich stream of new timepieces to get our heads around, some of which you will see in this issue and all of which you can view at your leisure online at watchpro.com at our dedicated SIHH portal.
But this year Richemont was not the only group to be releasing new products in Switzerland in January, or at the very least shouting about old ones. Geneva in the first month of 2013 was even more of a horology hot spot than usual.
Outside the clandestine walls of the invite-only SIHH a wealth of watch houses popped up to catch time with the floods of journalists and retailers in town for the more established show. From pop-up one-day exhibitions to near full-week sit-ins at nearby hotels – not to mention the Geneva Time Exhibition, now in its fourth year – the watch brands descended on Geneva this year. Whether this has been a fluke because of the long time period between SIHH and BaselWorld we can’t say, but what we can point out is that quite a few of these brands had new products ready to show in January.
To be fair, with SIHH in January it was never going to be a quiet month for the watch world, but the extracurricular Geneva activities popping up seem to have cranked the ante up ever so slightly.
