On Friday came the news that the hourly division of LVMH — Bvlgari, TAG Heuer, Zenith and Hublot, following other major brands are leaving the Basel fair. Baselworld loses the last support, the following communiqué is likely to be the message of its abolition — a year or forever. 103-year-old fair is on the verge of death, says editor in chief “Style. Watch” Alexey Tarhanov.After Rolex, Tudor, Patek Philippe, Chanel and Chopard, who three days ago announced the decision to leave the Baselworld watch brands of LVMH are going c 2021 to exhibit in Geneva in the days of Watches & Wonders (the former SIHH).”It is not easy to leave this more than century-old fair, which was our true home. However, it is clear that in this situation, we must react quickly. We have before us an opportunity to rethink the format and content one of the key events of the time of the year, which represented a serious business problem and leverage our brands. We will make every effort to be present together with other important houses in Geneva in April 2021,” says stéphane Bianchi, head of TAG Heuer and head of LVMH watch division.For the Basel fair is the completion of a process begun in 2018 c solutions time largest group of the Swiss Swatch Group to leave Basel. Since then, the list of deserters was growing up, and among the newcomers are few to whom it was possible to seriously count on. But no sooner had they come to the fair this year cancelled because of the epidemic as it moved almost all of its major inhabitants.In 2018, the main alley of Halle 1, the first hall, not postavskogo under any turn of events, opened the LVMH brands continued Rolex and Tudor on the left, Patek Philippe in front, then in the same order as Chanel and Chopard. Then began the whole town brands of the Swatch Group, and behind them opened Breitling, Corum, Seiko. None of them left. Empty grandiose Palace of expositions designed prittskerovskoy laureates Jacques Herzog and Pierre De Meuron and built the MCH Group in 2011-2013. It cost mad 430 million francs, which further inflated the rent — for that owners of the fair cursed at parting the head of Swatch Group Nick Hayek.Along with Baselworld will suffer, and the city of Basel, which in the days of the fair, danced for joy, the owners of the hotel (the rooms are bathed in a year and cost five to ten times more expensive than usual), restaurants, taxi drivers, organizers of the party. And escort girls are ready day and night to entertain descended from the mountains of watchmakers, and pickpockets come up across the hill in Basel on their working week.The number of watch brands that will be here to exhibit, have already doubled — and this is only the beginning. Not very clear, however, how the city will be able to quickly respond to this growth. On the one hand, in an urban exhibition complex Palexpo, where over 20 years SIHH is held, the newly freed space, because Geneva pokinoli watchmakers from Audemars Piguet, Van Cleef & Arpels and Richard Mille. On the other SIHH salon was originally the reserve brands of the Richemont group (A. Lange & Sohne, Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Panerai, Piaget, Vacheron Constantin, etc.). In recent years, they were joined by the brand group Kering (Girard-Perregaux and Ulysse Nardin), but not the fact that they are with the same cordiality will meet such powerful competitors like Rolex, Tudor, Patek Philippe, Chanel, Cartier and LVMH. Probably helps that many brands (Rolex, Tudor, Patek Philippe) have headquarters and manufacturing in Geneva, that is, have their own exhibition areas, but the city clearly expects the logistics puzzle. Many fear that here will adopt the bad habits of Basel.”The unification of the whole Swiss watch industry in one place, the Geneva historical capital of watchmaking, and common to all event date is the perfect opportunity to finally revive the sector in which there was too much disagreement and divergence of interests,— says Jean-Christophe Babin, CEO of Bvlgari.— We look forward to the trip to Geneva in April 2021, although we have yet to define the terms of our participation, which we will update in the coming weeks.”They only managed to spend in January its own hour lounge Watch Days in Dubai. As he himself says, “the lack of traditional watchmaking fairs made us in 2020 to take tactical initiatives needed in the short-term planning, but undesirable in the longer term”. He seemed to recognize that the Dubai experiment was a success, but a gamble. It is implied that LVMH will now do their own exhibition program for the long term. From brands gathering in Geneva, ahead of the year in order to organize a new salon or a series of new stores. Left to expect except the fact that he’s Baselworld will move to the shores of lake Geneva — as the ruined poor relation.
