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.
Isn’t this what the watch industry has been saying during the last few months of its fall? “Up to now, everything’s ok…” A pure denial of reality. (And we humbly point out that we personally have been aware of this for some time, as was illustrated by the title of our editorial in the April-May 2008 issue: The end of the bling era?)
The problem with denying reality is that it doesn’t help us to stop the fall or find a solution. People pretend they don’t see what is happening. They don’t see the stocks accumulating, the suppliers who can’t keep up, the lengthening deadlines, the collections that follow on the heels of each other, the retailers’ overflowing shelves, the expanding gray market, the prices gone wild… It’s like a tourbillon flying out of control.
People don’t want to see that we are in a sort of great Ponzi scheme, and that the “always more” will stop one day. When? No one wants to know.
The problem is not just in the watch industry—a drop in the ocean of the global economy—although this industry likes to play the game of “always more”: 12 billion, 14 billion, 16 billion, and soon 18 billion. The problem is that the whole world thinks and acts like this. The whole world has become transformed little by little into a huge trader. Everyone has made his own “Madoff”. There are millions of small Madoff’s, perfectly legal, unlike their infamous model, but who are completely reckless.
The divide is deepening between the “Über-watches” and the other watches. But it is the divide between the “Über-rich” and the “Über-poor” that is occurring at the most dramatic and alarming rate, with consequences that we are just beginning to perceive. Up to now, everything’s ok. But up to when?
The watch industry is only a reflection of what happens elsewhere, a reflection of our times. It does not guide the world market; rather, it follows its ups and downs, accompanies its chaotic moves. But hardly have we begun to fall that we are already hearing voices predicting that, after the decline, things will pick up, things will start again. These voices still don’t understand that things cannot be “as before”, that we cannot continue to exhaust our planet’s resources, to drain everything right down to the last drop. They still don’t understand that things must change—and radically. They need to become aware that we must reinvent the future to survive. Because “up to the future, everything’s not ok.” Not ok at all.
Photo: The opportunistic Crisis Tourbillon by Romain JérÔme. When the crisis becomes a niche marketing tool, it’s business as usual.
Source: Europa Star February-March 2009 Magazine Issue
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