BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
In light of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic the organisers behind Watches & Wonders Geneva, the show that replaced SIHH, have announced that 2021’s show will be an online event once more. While the folks at the MCH Group shot themselves in the foot with their Baselworld fiasco, the Richemont Group stayed quiet and ploughed ahead with their online presentation for the Geneva arm of Watches & Wonders.
To avoid mass potential infections and headlines along the lines of Watches & Blunders from us, the show which was due to be held in late April at the Palexpo in Geneva will be called off. This means that, once again, brand presentations and watch premieres will be held online. All of the Richemont brands will promote their products in addition to most of the big players that called time on Baselworld earlier in the year.
You may remember that there was a corporate disagreement (to put it lightly) over how the MCH Group handled Baselworld fees. Their position was that the brands could either move most of the payments they’d made for this year’s show across to the following year or move less over and receive a small refund. The MCH Group would still charge for administration fees regardless of the outcome. This went down with the big brands about as well as that homophobic rant by Michelle Shocked went down with everyone back in 2013, and the big names decided enough was enough.
We didn’t hear much about it from then on, but we can now confirm that the final big players have left the show with most of them exhibiting at Watches & Wonders. Here’s the full list of brands that will be exhibiting at Watches & Wonders Geneva online in 2021, we’ve underlined the big key players that have joined:
- A. Lange & Sohne
- Armin Strom
- Arnold & Son
- Baume & Mercier
- Bovet
- Cartier
- Chanel
- Chopard
- Faberge
- Ferdinand Berthoud
- Girard Perregaux
- Gronefeld
- H.Moser & Cie
- Hermes
- HYT
- IWC Schaffhausen
- Jaeger-LeCoultre
- Laurent Ferrier
- MB&F
- Montblanc
- Panerai
- Parmigiani Fleurier
- Patek Philippe
- Piaget
- Purnell
- Rebellion
- Ressence
- Rolex
- Roger Dubuis
- Rudis Sylva
- Speake-Marin
- Tudor
- Ulysse Nardin
- Vacheron Constantin
It looks like next year’s show, online though it may be, will still have something special for everyone! We hope that you’ll be checking in on WristReview regularly when the time comes, not that you don’t do that anyway, of course.
The date for the new show was scheduled to be the 7th of April to the 13th, 2021, and we don’t expect these to change.
