Behind-the-Scenes at Watches and Wonders Geneva

The luxury watch industry may be battling falling exports and sales, but the organisers of Watches and Wonders Geneva, the world’s only major luxury watch fair that began in the Swiss city Tuesday, have said they’re expecting more exhibitors and more visitors than in previous years when the industry was booming.

“Whatever the context, Watches and Wonders Geneva plays a unifying role for the industry,” said Matthieu Humair, the chief executive of the foundation which has managed the show since its inception in 2021. “Having the major players and the smaller brands under one roof to promote watchmaking is a key moment for this industry.”

The show’s 60 exhibitors are a record, up from 54 last year and 48 in 2023. Some are major global luxury brands such as Rolex, Patek Philippe and the maisons from the Richemont and LVMH group stables, while others are small-scale independents making only a few hundred watches a year.

One of the new exhibitors at this year’s show is Roman jeweller Bulgari, which had sat out previous editions in favour of setting up shop at a hotel on the margins of the event, as well as staging a travelling watch expo with its LVMH stablemates including TAG Heuer and Hublot.

Watches and Wonders Geneva Foundation attracted Bulgari — which will help draw a feminine audience to the fair, Humair said — by revising its governance, admitting LVMH, Chanel and Hermès to its board last year alongside its founding members Richemont, Rolex and Patek Philippe. The fair also offered a better location for the brand, by the entrance to the fair. “We were sidelined, which was not satisfactory,” Bulgari’s CEO Jean-Christophe Babin said of earlier proposals.

Being present inside the fair is “expensive, but it’s worth it because you have far more meetings and more traffic,” he added. “More importantly, for a brand that until 10 years ago was not truly considered as a watchmaker, being here confirms we are now really part of the first league.”

Costs have long been a thorny issue for the Geneva watch fair and its defunct counterpart in Basel, Baselworld, which was last held in 2019.

Humair said the organising foundation had held exhibiting costs steady over the past 4 years, and that they remained significantly lower than rates applied at the show’s predecessor, SIHH (the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie, which held its last edition in 2019). 2019 rates at SIHH had been as much as 2,650 Swiss francs per square metre of exhibition space for a smaller independent brand, compared to 1,800 Swiss francs per square metre today. Larger brands pay up to 2,000 francs per square metre.

According to Humair, the brands with a multi-billion-dollar turnover help subsidise the presence of smaller independents. “There’s a commitment by the major players to support the smaller independents and to allow them to be present with a reasonable cost and to meet the biggest players in the industry,” he said. “It’s a commitment to the future of watchmaking.”

Exhibition spaces vary in size from 400 square metres to “several thousand” for the largest exhibitors Rolex and Cartier, he added.

Humair forecast attendance would top last year’s edition, which attracted 49,000 visitors across seven days, including 19,000 members of the public who bought tickets to attend over the weekend. The event’s reach on social media is far bigger. “It shows the importance of this platform,” he said, adding that he was expecting those numbers to increase this year. “The momentum is unique.”

Rolex, the world’s largest luxury watch company with estimated annual revenues in excess of 10 billion Swiss francs, helped open the event with a bang as it introduced a new family of watches called Land-Dweller. The design had been leaked on social media before the show, in breach of Rolex’s usual pre-show blackout.

Some critics saw the watch’s 1970s-inspired look as aggressive, nudging in on rival Audemars Piguet’s aesthetic. “Rolex is dipping its toes into Audemars Piguet Royal Oak waters,” said Kristian Haagen, a watch collector and author of a number of books on watchmaking.

But Rolex cited its own archive as an inspiration, and highlighted its innovation with a movement that beats at a higher frequency, offering greater precision. “It also looks like Rolex’s 1970s Oysterquartz, an homage to an era of advanced precision,” Haagen said.

Even as LVMH’s Bulgari entered the fold some of the industry’s biggest names remain on the sidelines. Audemars Piguet, Richard Mille, Breitling and Swatch Group brands such as Omega, Longines and Breguet have not yet exhibited at Watches and Wonders Geneva and will not be at this year’s event. Last week, Breitling chief executive Georges Kern told The Business of Fashion, “I won’t sell one more watch at Watches and Wonders Geneva than if I wasn’t there. It’s only ego value.”

Benjamin Clymer, chief executive of Richemont’s Piaget, said he welcomed the arrival of Bulgari. “I am happy there are new brands here,” he said. He also noted the global nature of the show. “I’m pleased to see retailers from the Middle East and India here. We are very happy about our results in those countries.”

Humair said this year’s event would seek to build on momentum with younger audiences. Last year, according to organisers, 25 percent of the public day tickets were sold to people under the age of 25. “They come to see the novelties, but also to be informed and educated. It’s a generation that in a connected world needs tangible objects such as timepieces,” Humair said.

The organisation hopes to attract the next generation of watchmaking talent, in addition to young buyers, via activations inside the fair and in the Geneva city centre.

“This year, we will be highlighting the watchmaking professions,” he said. “We have a lab with 13 projects, 11 of them from start-up students, that explore the future of watchmaking; a networking area where young people can talk to young people [in the industry]; a skills competition; and the presence of schools such as the Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne. It’s a unique opportunity for the young generation to discover the different know-hows in the watchmaking industry.”

The growth of Watches and Wonders Geneva has attracted copycats. This year, “Time to Watches” takes place the same week at Villa Sarasin, only a stone’s throw from the Palexpo exhibition centre where Watches and Wonders Geneva is held. The event will showcase more than 70 watch brands, mostly smaller independents, including Beauregard, which is the only Watches and Wonders Geneva 2024 exhibitor not to return this year.

 Humair said there were no plans to merge the two events. “It’s great to see other events with a lot of success because it shows the importance of having the industry united together physically,” he said. “But these are two different organisations with two different kinds of event, and [a merger] is not on the agenda at the moment.”