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Brands play safe at Baselworld 2018
Baselworld

Brands play safe at Baselworld 2018

Sunday, 01 April 2018
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Christophe Roulet
Editor-in-chief, HH Journal

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4 min read

Shorter, more concentrated and with minimal risk-taking, this year’s fair was about keeping a cool head. Baselworld management were intent on showing the event hasn’t gone into decline, while exhibitors were out to prove themselves capable of adapting to more circumspect markets.

Having heard so many times during the build-up that Baselworld plays in the big league; that it is a haven for the watchmaking elite, it became hard not to imagine some form of subliminal message from the organisers. In fact management’s insistence that exhibitors were only too thrilled to join the party started to seem just a tiny bit suspicious. If the slew of press releases had been intended to divert attention from the fact that half of them had dropped out, for a variety of good reasons, then frankly they missed their target. Leaving aside this attempt at collective amnesia, Baselworld remains an important date in the calendar nonetheless and the edifice still stands, whatever cracks might be showing. Hundreds of brands, including industry powerhouses, continue to make their annual pilgrimage to the city on the Rhine. And in all likelihood will do so throughout the near future, such that Baselworld has every right to call itself “the world watch and jewellery show”.

Brands need to gather their strength after a two-year rocky ride.
Happy face

Why add fuel to the fire? The watch brands at Baselworld put on a happy face – many wanting to gather their strength after what amounts to a two-year rocky ride. This showed in the watches unveiled this year. Designed to weather a storm, they can expect to benefit from the upturn that kicked in around mid-2017 and which export figures show intensified in January and February this year. Numerous brands thus chose to focus their efforts on collections that have already proven their worth, putting the accent on value propositions and useful complications with one or two high-flying pieces to spice things up a little. A reminder that Fine Watchmaking is a pyramid and the easiest way in is from the bottom up.

This was clearly the thinking at Swatch Group. Breguet put its Marine collection front and centre, building up from a time-only model to a chronograph and culminating in a musical alarm. Blancpain took its Villeret range upscale, starting with a large date retrograde day, followed by a GMT complete calendar and ending with a highly original flying tourbillon jumping hours retrograde minutes. As for Omega, it only had eyes for the Seamaster 300, now the proud bearer of Master Chronometer certification. Joining it were a modern reissue, the Seamaster 1948 Limited Edition, and a Seamaster Aqua Terra Fine Jewellery. The showstopper, however, was the magnificent Speedmaster “Dark Side of the Moon”, a tribute to the Apollo 8 mission.

Villeret Flying Tourbillon Jumping Hours Retrograde Minutes © Blancpain
Villeret Flying Tourbillon Jumping Hours Retrograde Minutes © Blancpain
Taking no risks

Brands have little to gain from setting the bar at some unattainable height; extending the product mix appears to be the chosen solution, or so it seems for those under the stewardship of Jean-Claude Biver, the man in charge of LVMH’s watch division. TAG Heuer stood out for its multiple new releases: the Carrera featured prominently, understandably in the collection’s 55th anniversary year. Hublot continues to build on its most high-profile ranges with shots of the innovation for which the brand is known, from the vivid ceramic of the Big Bang Unico Red Magic to the 3D carbon case of the Big Bang MP-11, which delivers 14 days of power reserve. Zenith, meanwhile, took the wraps off its Defy collection with an entry-level Classic model but still fuels aspirations with the Defy Zero G. It picks up on the much talked-about gyroscopic Gravity Control Module, which the brand has scaled down to fit. Bulgari, which is helmed by Jean-Christophe Babin, chose the Octo Finissimo line, a two-times winner at the 2017 Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, as the focus of attention. This year’s star turn is the thinnest automatic watch in the world, an exploit made all the more impressive by the addition of a tourbillon.

Women were well-served at Baselworld, after slim pickings earlier in the year.

The message is clear: watchmakers are nursing markets back to health with failsafe products. This is exactly the thinking at Breitling which embarks on its under-new-management era with more conventional styles. Rolex continues its “softly softly” approach while Chopard celebrates the 25th anniversary of its best-selling Happy Sport, which gets an in-house movement inside a 30mm case. In fact women were well-served at Basel, having lost out at SIHH in Geneva. Joining Chopard were Chanel, which put the in-house Calibre 3 inside its Boy.Friend, Bulgari, which went all-out Lucea, and Patek Philippe with a follow-up to its famous Ladies First Chronograph. Other noteworthy ladies’ watches included Tudor’s 1926 line, Nomos’s Tetra Petit Four, smaller diameter Big Bangs from Hublot and a redesigned Formula 1 Lady from TAG Heuer.

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