The major watch fairs, an endangered species?

However, it was more than a century old… Offset due to a pandemic, Baselworld, the world watchmaking event organized in Basel (Switzerland), had been postponed from the end of April 2020 to January 2021. Collateral victim of the coronavirus, it will not take place next year. Or never again.

Read also: SIHH becomes Watches & Wonders Geneva

In reality, the concept of a watch fair was in peril even before the Covid-19 put the “Swiss made” industry to a halt. When fashion innovated with its fashion shows and high-tech linked keynotes, Baselworld had not managed to take the turn of a connected era. Abandoned by most luxury labels (Hermès, Dior, Louis Vuitton), he had mainly faced the desertion in 2018 of the Swatch Group and its 18 brands (Omega, Blancpain, Breguet ...). A movement more recently followed by major watch brands, such as the houses of Kering (Girard-Perregaux and Ulysse Nardin), which had already joined the aisles of the Geneva show, the SIHH, renamed this year to Watches & Wonders.

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