A Year Without Watch Fairs

What does the absence of global fairs in 2020 mean for the watch industry? Even more importantly, how will the effects of global shutdowns due to the novel coronavirus affect the watch industry going forward? Opinions differ.

- Elizabeth Doerr

Basel, Switzerland, has hosted the most important watch fair in the world, known today as Baselworld. A watch manufacturer’s presence at the fair, founded in 1917, could determine the outcome of its future (at least up until recently, in this new and highly digitised world).

In 1991, 74 years after Baselworld began, several brands (owned by what was to become Richemont) exited the fair to start SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie), a competing event in Geneva. Rebranded as Watches & Wonders Geneva from 2020, the fair started its 30-year lifespan with five exhibitors: Cartier, Piaget, Baume & Mercier, Daniel Roth and Gerald Genta. Now hosting 30 luxury brands, Watches & Wonders 2020 was slated to run from 25 to 29 April, and Baselworld (which saw 81,200 visitors and 520 exhibitors in 2019) from 30 April to 5 May. As expected, both fairs have now been postponed to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Watches & Wonders, an invite-only event with 23,000 visitors in 2019, announced it will keep its April 2021 slot. Then came a shocking revelation: Baselworld pillars Rolex, Tudor, Patek Philippe, Chopard and Chanel announced their exit from the world’s largest watch fair and will start a new event that’s said to coincide with Watches & Wonders in 2021. They cited the unwillingness of Baselworld to offer a full refund of the 2020 exhibition’s pre-paid fees and an undesirable January date as the last straw. MCH Group, Baselworld’s parent company, expressed surprise at this decision in a statement released on 14 April, 2020.