19 December 2011 - The most highly prized metaphor among watchmakers today is that of the tree. As you read through our pages, you will find it mentioned in several places, told to us by watchmakers themselves.
MORE »
|
18 December 2011 - These are really tough times aren’t they? The economic situation in Greece, Spain and Italy, not to mention Ireland, is as close to catastrophic as can be and the so-called leading industrial nations in the EU such as France, Germany and the UK are beginning to show signs that “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” to quote our old pal Will Shakespeare.
MORE »
|
24 October 2011 - You don’t invent people like Michael Balfour. He was an original, the incarnate of how the non-English see a slightly eccentric Englishman – although his veins were teeming with Scottish blood, not to mention a wee dram or two of the hard stuff.
MORE »
|
17 October 2011 - I’ve obviously read about people being attacked and robbed and I suppose, like most of us, I wondered what I would have done in the same circumstances, never believing that it would actually happen.
MORE »
|
17 October 2011 - Who, besides perhaps the directors of the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, really wants to enforce the rules regarding the Swiss Made label? Well, frankly, no one!
MORE »
|
23 August 2011 - In China, a goal has been officially declared, and it is ‘re-innovation’. To attain this goal, the tools are furnished by ‘retro-engineering’. This ‘re-innovation’ passes by a series of phases that detail the very official PRC medium to long-term plan, 2006 – 2020 of China’s Minister of Science*: “importation, absorption, assimilation, and re-innovation of foreign savoir-faire.”
MORE »
|
23 August 2011 - A few days ago I was on the beach lounging comfortably on a chaise longue ogling a bevy of nubile nymphets as they played in the waves, when my reverie was interrupted by a rather rotund gentleman wearing what appeared to be a thong but on closer inspection were swimming trunks that disappeared into the various folds of his nether region. “Do you have the time?”
MORE »
|
20 June 2011 - Two very particular watches attracted a lot of attention at the grand watch fair of BaselWorld: the Mikrotimer Flying 1000, a mechanical chronograph measuring 1000th of a second presented by TAG Heuer; and Le Temps Suspendu, a watch from Hermès, which allows its wearer to temporarily forget the time. Everything was different between these two timekeepers. And yet?
MORE »
|
19 June 2011 - The summer silly season started earlier than usual this year. Since I had nothing better to do in early May, I was cruising around the Norwegian fjords, north of the Arctic circle and close to the Russian border, when I read an article in an on-board news bulletin about an 89 year old so-called ‘true believer’ by the name of Harold Camping predicting that a giant earthquake on Saturday May 21, 2011 would mark the start of the world’s destruction and by 21 October all non-believers will be dead.
MORE »
|
23 March 2011 - I was just looking at my email inbox and I noticed that there were still 656 non-opened messages, without even counting the 324 that I designated with a small red flag to signify their importance at the same time that I postponed answering them.
MORE »
|
7 March 2011 - Since time is in the form of a spiral, meaning that it always returns upon its x-axis but not on its y-axis (or the opposite, if you like), we always return to the same trends even if they are a bit different every time.
MORE »
|
6 March 2011 - This year was the first time since its inauguration in 1991 that I have not attended the SIHH. It was the brainchild of Alain-Dominique Perrin, the then CEO of Cartier, and it was not met with the wave of enthusiasm that he had anticipated.
MORE »
|
5 January 2011 - These few concise words say it all. They describe how the family owners of Hermès responded to Bernard Arnault (LVMH) at the announcement, legally necessary, that he had acquired—as secretly as it was ‘amicably’—17.7 percent of the shares of their company.
MORE »
|
4 January 2011 - I was strolling around the vast refurbished watch section in Selfridges, London, when a large hand grabbed my shoulder and spun me round. “Hey man, you ‘member me?”
MORE »
|
2 November 2010 - Who said that biodiversity was in danger? This is undoubtedly true when it comes to nature (which people generally say “surrounds” us as if we did not belong to it, while in fact we are part of it and are undeniably the ultimate predators of the natural world) but it is definitely not the case when it comes to the flora and fauna of the watch world.
MORE »
|
1 November 2010 - This year’s Pulitzer Prize for fiction was awarded to Paul Harding for his book entitled Tinkers. It is not, as I thought, a story about a philosophical Irishman, it’s about a father and son, Howard and George Crosby.
MORE »
|
15 August 2010 - Our publishing house, which was originally called Hugo Buchser SA after the name of its founder, used to publish (until 1986) the famous Le Guide des Acheteurs (The Buyer’s Guide). This was before the Internet—it was certainly another world then. For people interested in watches, this guide contained all the addresses in Switzerland’s vast industrial watch sector.
MORE »
|
15 August 2010 - In his book published in 1942 called Les Cabinotiers Genevois, Eugène Jaquet, who was then Dean of the Geneva Watchmaking School, reminisced about his experiences as a young watchmaker during the latter part of the 19th century.
MORE »
|
15 August 2010 - I was just about to go to the beach in Menton when I had a telephone call advising me of the sad news. My immediate reaction was to conjure up a vision of the bearded patriarch in a crowded room with the sleeves of his jacket pulled up to reveal two armfuls of watches whilst holding the inevitable Havana delicately between his fingers.
MORE »
|
29 June 2010 - After 68 years of independence, followed by nearly 15 years of publishing adventures as part of several large media groups (United News & Media, Miller Freeman, Bill Communications, VNU, Europa Star has returned to its origins. Now once again in the hands of its founding family, it has regained its former independence.
MORE »
|
28 June 2010 - BaselWorld has become a ritual event. It is the big powwow that attracts watch tribes from all around the world who come to reaffirm their devotion to this vast clan that makes up the international industry of time.
MORE »
|
28 June 2010 - I don’t like snakes. In fact I like them even less than Indiana Jones. I know snakes are not actually moist and slippery, but they give me the impression of being repulsively slimy, slithering evilly towards their virginal Eve and taking credit for the human race’s hankering for sex.
MORE »
|
17 March 2010 - It is said that the biodiversity of our planet is endangered. And this is most certainly true. The ‘Red List’ of the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) estimates that, as of the end of 2009, some 21 per cent of all known mammals, 30 per cent of all amphibians, 28 per cent of all reptiles, 37 per cent of freshwater fish, 70 per cent of all plants (yes, 70 per cent!), and 35 per cent of known invertebrates were threatened with extinction.
MORE »
|
15 March 2010 - With the Salon International de Haut Horlogerie (SIHH) over for this year and ten months for the organizers to forget what I’m about to write, I thought I would regale you with a couple of the more memorable moments from within those hallowed halls.Day one and early for the first press conference, I decided to have a coffee at one of the numerous excellent refreshment zones around the halls.
MORE »
|
27 February 2010 - We have a strange feeling that watchmaking is at a turning point in its long history.
MORE »
|
25 February 2010 - Is there anyone out there in the real world that actually enjoys January?
MORE »
|
3 January 2010 - With the economic decline, we cannot help but observe a distressing fact: the financial community has not learned any lessons from this devastating crisis. Of course, it has been forced to accept a few weak regu-lations imposed with polite smiles by various governments, but it has also quickly learned how to easily get around these new requirements.
MORE »
|
2 January 2010 - Have you ever actually thought about the origins of the word time? No? Well let’s just take a couple of minutes and do so now.
MORE »
|
29 October 2009 - On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the manufacture’s founding in 1989, Christophe Claret decided to celebrate the event by exceptionally launching a watch signed with his own name.
MORE »
|
27 October 2009 - There’s an old moralistic story about a social worker who asked one of his colleagues the time. The colleague answered, "I’m sorry I don't know. I don’t have a watch.”
MORE »
|
20 August 2009 - The news is more than alarming—it is a carnage. Statistics released by the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry on watch exports for the first half-year 2009 read like a depressing litany.
MORE »
|
18 August 2009 - Are you sitting comfortably? Good, then I’ll begin.
MORE »
|
1 July 2009 - I was intrigued by the photos published earlier this year of the ring-watch that was excavated from a four hundred year old Chinese tomb and, needless to say, archaeologists are mystified as to how it got there.
MORE »
|
24 June 2009 - With the economic crisis, certain words are returning to our vernacular -words that, only a short time ago, hardly a few months at most, were considered outmoded, old-fashioned, even quite frankly¿vulgar.
MORE »
|
24 June 2009 - If there¿s one thing that I love about the weekend, it¿s the Sunday news-papers. If I¿m in Geneva, Menton or even on that remote lump of rock lovingly referred to as Guernsey, I get The Sunday Times and a local paper to see if I¿m in the obituary column and check whether or not I¿ve won the lottery ¿ although I suppose if I¿m not in the obituaries I¿m already a winner, right?
MORE »
|
2 March 2009 - It’s like the parable of the man who falls from a tall building. As long as he falls, he keeps repeating to himself: “Up to now, everything’s ok… Up to now, everything’s ok…” Up until he crashes. Up until the final and fatal crash.
MORE »
|
28 February 2009 - If you are a part of the watch industry, love watches or simply have time on your hands, you’ll almost certainly be aware that at midnight on December 31st 2008, or more precisely at 23.59.60, the year was extended by a leap second to align us with astronomical time, thus giving us 31,622,401 precious seconds to remember in 2008 – that’s 86,400 more for 29th of February plus the additional leap second as decreed by The International Earth Rotation and Reference System Service.
MORE »
|
5 January 2009 - The watch industry is going to lose ground. This is now certain. It will decline in terms of both value and volume. It will shrink for everyone, but not in the same way. There are some, perhaps, who might even gain ground.
MORE »
|
3 January 2009 - The rover’s return is not, as you may think or even wish, a local pub with a convivial pot-bellied landlord, nor the reappearance of a long lost shaggy-haired dog, but a subtle reference to yours truly having returned to the hallowed halls of Europa Star to come on as first reserve whilst everyone’s favourite blond, Sophie Furley, is off on maternity leave.
MORE »
|
3 November 2008 - One of the things to be expected (among others) about economic crises is that the abundant commentaries they incite are discredited nearly as soon as they are uttered.
MORE »
|
1 November 2008 - “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”
MORE »
|
27 August 2008 - The watch industry in Switzerland is perhaps one of the only industries in the world to draw the curtain shut and stop production for three weeks every summer.
MORE »
|
25 August 2008 - The term ‘fusion’, especially after Jean-Claude Biver made it into a powerful marketing tool for the Hublot brand, is quite in fashion.
MORE »
|
24 June 2008 - The great empires and kingdoms that make up the largest slice of the proverbial watchmaking pie (Swatch Group, Richemont, LVMH, Rolex, Seiko, and a few major independents such as Patek Philippe and Chopard) only continue to become greater.
MORE »
|
23 June 2008 - If we returned home from the spring watch fairs with less weight in our luggage than in previous years, it is not at all because there were less brands, quite the contrary.
MORE »
|
22 June 2008 - Having spent so much time looking at timepieces for Europa Star in order that people interested in time can save time by reading our timeless articles about the latest means of telling the time, it’s somewhat of a relief to come down south where time seems to be of little consequence.
MORE »
|
3 April 2008 - The question of luxury and its corre-lation—supposed or real—with decadence is an age-old philosophical and historical debate. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, a Geneva citizen and, incidentally, the son of a watchmaker, believed that luxury was the cause of the decline of the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.
MORE »
|
1 April 2008 - The day was balmy, the sea was like a sheet of softly tinted silk and the gentle ripples upon its surface did nothing more than create a soothing lapping sound on the deserted shore.
MORE »
|
29 February 2008 - Recently, at the Grand Prix de l'Horlogerie in Geneva, one of the awards was not given out. According to the event’s organizers, the ‘prize for the electronic watch’ was not granted because of a lack of competitors!
MORE »
|
27 February 2008 - How many watches are manufactured each year in the entire world? Answer: 1.5 to 1.7 billion, or in other words, one watch for every six to seven inhabitants. How much are they worth (at export)?
MORE »
|
| 1
|
|
| |
