Thoughts on Watches and Wonders sans The Swatch Group
I’m relatively new to the watch community, having spent less than a year trying to get myself up to speed horologically speaking. But I try to educate myself as much as I can, and with Watches and Wonders now over, I started thinking aobut the absence of The Swatch Group from the event. I have read up on Basel Word and the Swatch Group’s decision to pull out if it back in 2018 (this is from Hodinkee):
"It is necessary that [trade fairs] reinvent themselves, responding appropriately to the current situation and demonstrating more dynamism and creativity. At the moment, the trade fairs are failing to do so. The MCH Group, which organizes Baselworld, is clearly more concerned with optimizing and amortizing its new building – which, incidentally, is largely financed by the watch industry during the fairs – than it is in having the courage to make real progress and to bring about true and profound changes. For all these reasons, Swatch Group has decided that from 2019 onwards, it will no longer be present at Baselworld.”
I’m also aware that Watches and Wonders is a non-profit federation (WWGF) founded 2022 by Rolex, Richemont and Patek Philippe. I’m wondering if The Swatch Group was asked to join this federation at that time, or did they actively avoid it. I know that they were directly asked to participate this year, and declined. But was that due to the fact that they didn’t have a seat at the board level of the federation? I’d love to hear from those of you here that may have insight into this. Cheers.
New watch enthusiast.
If I remember correctly, Nick Hayek simply stated in 2018 "that he had better ways to spend 50 million." (FT) Swatch is probably more consumer-oriented than many other large brands, so it makes sense from my perspective.
This. It started with Basel World, which was essentially what Watches and Wonders is now. Just look at the photos of the booths for W&W. It takes a ton of money to host these events. I would argue it is wasted, but for many brands, they use this as an opportunity to attract new dealers. As a result, if they are not successful in doing so, they just wasted a ton of capital and may or may not be able to recover from it.
Let’s be honest, Rolex, Omega, and Tudor do not need a splashy event to sell watches. Rolex could drop their entire marketing budget and still have years long waiting lists, but hey, write offs.