2024 marked the fifth iteration of Geneva Watch Days, and the first that I was not alone, but joined by Ariel Adams and Ed Rhee from team aBlogtoWatch. We could not have timed it any better, since Geneva Watch Days 2024 was by far the biggest, most complex installment to date. Let us now reflect on the event and the light it shone on the state of the watch industry.

According to the organizers, Geneva Watch Days 2024 hosted 52 brands, nearly 1,500 watchmaking professionals — including 650 media representatives and 250 retailers — as well as 13,800 visitors from the public, who could visit a free-to-enter exhibition with 100 new watches, guided tours and VIP programs. More importantly, in this large white tent, the Pavilion at the Rotonde du Mont Blanc, just opposite Beau Rivage Geneva, watch enthusiasts could always bump into leading figures of the industry — folks they might have seen on video, read interviews with, and analyzed the decisions of. Those who could summon the courage could go up to, meet, and ask questions of many with a strong influence on what watches of today and tomorrow will look and feel like.

It is worth knowing how the show has evolved over its first five years. In 2024, the six founding members — Breitling, Bulgari, De Bethune, Girard-Perregaux, H. Moser & Cie. and MB&F — were all still present, each showing their latest novelties either in their Geneva mono-brand boutiques or high-end hotels in the inexplicably dubious center of Geneva. Rather than listing the rest of the forty-something others, we will name some of the more notable brands that were also present to give you a better understanding of what Geneva Watch Days is about. Citizen-owned Alpina, Frederique Constant, Angelus, and Arnold & Son were all exhibiting once again, while the big news for 2024 was the first sign of life from Swatch Group luxury brands at a meaningful trade show event in some six years since the group pulled out of the (since then defunct) BaselWorld.

Blancpain, Breguet, and Glashütte Original represented the highest tier of watchmakers within the Swatch Group — an important development given that the Group has flat-out declined to participate in Watches & Wonders 2024 (learn what Rolex’s CEO had to say about that) and all the more notable because the Swatch Group is, of course, among the most powerful and influential forces in the industry.

Meeting these three brands in an official format after so many years felt, if you ask me, weird. It was a blast from the past, but not only the pleasant kind — more like a whiplash, than a blast, perhaps. All three brands have wonderful people doing their best, but I would absolutely love for the powers that be at the Swatch Group to recognize that a yet more empowered, bold, and noticeable presence at industry gatherings would be celebrated and welcomed by so many of us outside the Group. I’ll go out on a limb and say you could also imagine the competition sharing that sentiment — at least until it turns super-competitive again.

Having experienced it first hand, BaselWorld at its peak used to be all about cut-throat competition. Rolex next to Omega, TAG Heuer just across from Tudor, Chopard next to Blancpain and Breguet, Hublot against the world. Everywhere you looked, and almost every meeting you had, were about competing products, prices, and features, and yet it was petty and bitter only on the rarest of occasions.

By contrast, Geneva Watch Days has been a thoroughly friendly and inclusive event for five years running. While waiting for a meeting just by the “big white tent” I mentioned above, I heard Max Büsser of event founding member MB&F give a speech on stage, stating that Geneva Watch Days is thrilled to welcome all the new participating brands, specifically mentioning the several dozens of unofficial joiners who were having their hundreds of meetings in the hotel lobbies, restaurants, and ateliers nearby. You would never hear such a sentiment at a major event — let alone feel it in the air everywhere you went.

That atmosphere was everywhere except for the Beau Rivage that, for 2024, introduced a policy that no one could show a watch or watch-related product in their lobby or café for they would get kicked out respectfully asked to either stop doing that immediately or leave. The thing is (and GWD organizers seem to recognize this little detail that Beau Rivage does not) is that most all of those informal and unofficial meetings in the lobby were performed by up-and-coming brands on their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-ever watch, with a strong desire to be part of the buzz (and to catch the attention of watch collectors and media if only for a few minutes) but without the means to rent a suite for an alleged $8,000-$10,000 for the week. The beauty of it all is that there is a chance that soon they will join the official list of participants — and the 52-strong event of 2024 is all the proof you need for that to be true.

Before handing this report over to Ariel Adams and Ed Rhee for their thoughts about the event, let me close with a quick “vibe check” on Geneva Watch Days 2024 through my lens. The standout feature of this event, as far as I am concerned, is the opportunity to meet face-to-face and do so in an environment that is comfortable, flexible, and thus ideally suited for human conversation. Where Watches & Wonders is a gigantic machine in which everyone is a tiny little wheel that spins frantically, Geneva Watch Days is more organic with its own flow and flexibility rather than a conveyor belt sped up to 11. To be clear, we need to have both, but it is so nice to finally have a more flexible time and relaxed place to complement the industry’s largest exhibition.

Ariel Adams on Geneva Watch Days 2024:

2024 was my first time being physically present at the now-official Geneva Watch Days event. It originally began as a way for a small number of watchmakers and group brands to meet with local media and buyers, within the context of having few other opportunities on account of the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of major tradeshows such as Baselworld. The “other” major European watch industry event (Watches & Wonders) also happens in Geneva around April of each year. With two major gatherings of watch industry professionals each year, Geneva has solidly positioned itself as the epicenter of the European luxury watch game. Accordingly, there are very few non-European watchmakers and brands that participate in Geneva Watch Days. This might not be a direct effort, but it opens up the idea that watchmakers from other parts of the world (such as Asia or the United States) need to find their own ways of reaching the public, which they do thanks to other smaller gatherings around the world. The core point I am trying to make is that Geneva Watch Days and Watches & Wonders are not only watch fairs, but they are primarily European company watch fairs, which currently are only part of the larger global market of companies.

With many watch brands only planning out months versus years, it makes sense that attending just one annual trade show isn’t enough for them. In April some of them have new models, and other companies don’t. So having more opportunities to meet with buyers and media more often makes a lot of sense for brands that typically rely on external sources to communicate about their products. Geneva Watch Days includes many brands that also show at Watches & Wonders, but there are also a lot of companies that rely on it as their sole opportunity to meet with people and show off their new watches. What watch brands have solidly learned since the pandemic is that while the internet might be a great tool to inform people about your products, getting people to actually form the desire to purchase them often happens in person.

Geneva Watch Days might be a formal event but it isn’t organized to bring people to town. While more and more people are traveling to meet with the over 50 brands that officially display (there are probably closer to 100 that are in town that week), there is no formal process to invite or host media, retailers, or other VIPs. The people who travel to Geneva Watch Days (including aBlogtoWatch) do so on their own dime. That makes it possible to have more relaxed, enjoyable meetings, but the event does not have many standard watch retailers or consumer media present to cover the news. With that said, the show is a boom for high-end independent brands, because wealthy collectors travel to Geneva for the event and often purchase products directly from the brands. This ability to get business from the end client makes Geneva Watch Days a more attractive proposition than a trade show floor environment like Watches & Wonders. In essence, the two shows might have many of the same brands and might be in the same city, but they serve different purposes and will probably both continue in full force.

Ed Rhee on Geneva Watch Days 2024:

Of the handful of times I’ve been to Geneva, they’ve all been in the dead of winter or when the calendar has turned to spring, but in name only. So, imagine my utter bewilderment to experience the city in summer. Not being confined to the bowels of Palexpo for eight hours of the day? Actually seeing the sun? In the sky? Sign me right up.

I would say that’s enough about the weather, except that it actually does play a huge part in the overall feel of the show. This was my very first Geneva Watch Days experience, and it really is an entirely different atmosphere than either Baselworld (RIP) or Watches & Wonders (née SIHH). As David and Ariel both mentioned, the ambiance is much more conducive to relaxed conversations, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous views of Lac Léman from any of the number of lakeside hotels where appointments are held. It’s truly a wonder how much a gentle summer breeze can counteract the usual stuffiness of the Swiss watch industry.

For us members of the watch media, traditional shows like Watches & Wonders are a content-gathering grind. It’s a firehose of the year’s newest releases coming within hours, if not minutes, of each other, all of which we scramble to cover as quickly and efficiently as possible. But an unfortunate side effect of that dynamic is that the priority of our perpetual string of meetings ends up being content first, conversations second. That order is reversed for Geneva Watch Days. Photos of watches are taken, of course, but that’s secondary to simply catching up with our industry colleagues. Asking about someone’s summer vacation happens in the same breath as talking about new releases, and it’s a refreshing change of pace. If Watches & Wonders feels a bit like going into the office, Geneva Watch Days is definitely the Casual Friday of the trade show calendar. And for the dog days of summer, that feels just right.

 

In closing, all I can say is that it was great to be joined by Ariel and Ed, and I hope that next year, even more of the team can tag along with me at Geneva Watch Days. Importantly, I wish for the event to continue its growth while maintaining its flexible, relaxed, and inclusive ambiance. Last, a special thanks to Alpine for the beautiful, fast, and shockingly nice-to-travel-in A110S that I drove from Budapest to Geneva and back.