An amazing ‘show’
But, we had to leave our celestial dreams and return back to earth. We now have an appointment with Thierry Nataf, CEO of Zenith. Not content to have simply awakened the ‘sleeping beauty’ from Le Locle, Nataf has, this time, launched it into high orbit. You had to have been there and seen, firsthand, the very personal presentation held on the first floor of the Zenith stand to believe it.
Thierry Nataf, completely ‘inhabited’ by his brand, is an exceptional showman, and a salesman par excellence, who would have no problem in covering the North Pole with refrigerators. We left the conference rather shaken, with a small star-shaped gris-gris having been slipped on the wrist as if by magic, eyes full of images, the ears still listening to music, and the fingers heavy from handling so many timepieces.
Flanked by a mute but efficient assistant, Thierry Nataf makes his entire line magically appear before you during the two-hour presentation. It is the fifth collection created under his reign and is “available immediately,” he states, while masterly slipping the watches on your wrist, or, for the ladies’ models, calling upon a lovely assistant to show them off. Four distinct groups were laid out before our eyes, with hardly enough time to keep up with the rhythm of the presentation: Paris and haute horlogerie, as we say ‘haute couture’; Rome and the ChronoMaster Open series; Hong Kong and the very ‘zen’ line called Class (the launch will be in the second half of the year); and New York for the modernity of the Port-Royal. From the classic yet voluntarily ‘smiling’ equilibrium of the ChronoMaster, with its black guilloché pattern, its mix of yellow and rose gold, or the very lovely anniversary version of chestnut on chestnut, we pass to the very ‘neo-Matrix’ styling with the veritable ‘steel bridge’ on an integrated rubber bracelet of the new Port-Royal. Everything here is centred around urban life and the ‘skyscraper’ motif with its guilloché designs that capture the light, intensified even more in the titanium Port Royal Open Concept, whose dial in TR 90, a material developed by NASA, is partially covered with a strange spider’s web that also serves as a power reserve, and that is equipped with a hybrid “monobloc motor” (the 421 movement) on a bracelet of carbon and Kevlar.
Far, far from being forgotten, ladies’ watches include a number of varieties: romantic with the Baby Doll dressed in pastels and diamonds, hip with the Glam Rock while the Queen of Love turns the tables on convention as Thierry Nataf declares, “it’s true, without a grain of folly, man is smaller.” Finally, there is the Star Tourbillon (see Europa Star 2.05), the queen of the season with its star of diamonds on a “sea of diamond-set mother-of-pearl where the numbers are engaged in a carefree dance.” Nataf continues,”I began in 2001, and I gave myself until 2011 to revive Zenith... We are in 2005, and the renaissance has already taken place.” We wanted to believe him, and with our eyes still full of stars, we left to grab a bite of Basel's best sushi, because Seiko was offering a buffet dinner that evening.

Marketing ace
The next day, we stopped first at the Hublot stand, where we were promised a ‘big bang’. To discover it, we needed to have a sort of ‘open sesame’ in the form of a magnetic ‘V.I.P.’ card, which, when placed against the small opaque display cases, would suddenly illuminate them, revealing the contents. This was certainly one way to attract interest, typical of the marketing savoir-faire of Jean-Claude Biver. We have to admit that the Biver ‘hurricane’ (see Europa Star 6.04) has really given impetus to the beautiful but sleepy image of the brand, which was created and is still owned by Carlo Crocco. In a short time, Biver has succeeded in infusing a whole new vigour into the intangible Hublot product. The lines have been sharpened and the formats enlarged, while the dials have found a new sparkle. A wind of modernity has blown across the brand as exemplified in the powerful 45.5 mm Big Bang Red Gold. Apparently, the ‘fusion’ worked because at the end of the show, Biver sent out a triumphant ‘text message’ – the brand’s sales doubled during BaselWorld in relation to last year’s show. To be continued.
From there, we proceeded to an entirely different and more muffled universe, that of the excellent brand Chronoswiss. Until now rather inflexible in his personal interpretation of watchmaking classicism, Gerd Rüdiger Lang has placed not water but colour into his timepieces – a first for a brand claiming to be the ‘guardian of the temple’. The Timemaster conserves its large characteristic crown, but has become more ‘fashionable’ in pink, yellow, green, red or blue, without losing anything of its overall effectiveness. In the ‘professional’ version, the 44 mm Timemaster Day and Night is an uncontested stylistic success with the 24-hour time display clearly divided into two parts. The day section, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., is in mat black, while the night section, from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. in ‘Super LumiNova’ coating assures optimal reading in darkened hours. Chronoswiss continues to produce grand classics, which take the form of a new Régulateur, or others including a new automatic flyback chronograph. Another and more original piece also retained our attention: the Digiteur MSA. Perfectly executed, this curved tonneau-shaped watch is equipped with a rare rectangular form movement, coming originally from the now defunct Fabrique d'Ebauches de Fleurier (FEF), that closed its doors at the end of the 1960s. Lang was able to obtain the last remaining stocks of this manually-winding mechanical calibre, and has used it to make a digital timepiece inspired from the 1920s. A perfect success, it is available in a limited series of 990 pieces!

Mandatory move up-market
The following appointment was with Marcello Binda, President of the Binda group (Breil, D&G, Tribe and the Italian distribution of Seiko, Nike Timing, Lorus, for more than three million watches sold each year), who re-launched the brand Wyler Vetta in 2004. This remarkable re-introduction, with its very high quality and stylistic collections, evoking the 1960s, perfectly illustrates the difficulties experienced by brands in the mid-range. Positioned between 2,000 and 3,000 ¤, these watches are aimed primarily at a cultivated European market and met with immediate interest by industry watchers.
But the brand encountered all the problems involved in penetrating these same markets. (The case of Switzerland is particularly illuminating because of the often conservative nature of a large number of Swiss retailers.) With the price/quality ratio of these watches, it makes us wonder if a great many other brands are not overcharging for their products. Faced with these obstacles, Binda decided to change its strategy and to move up-market (sometimes, between us, we have to say that the final consumer does not see what should be obvious to everyone.) The Binda Group’s repositioning means that it will establish a new Wyler Vetta headquarters in Switzerland (associated with the Hublot brand, with which it has family ties). Starting next year, we should attentively be on the lookout for the first results.




Zenith, Hublot, Chronoswiss



Sven Andersen, Kari Voutilainen


Change of scene: let's go and pay a visit to the fiercely independent watchmakers of the Academy of Independent Horological Creators (ACHI), a living laboratory of mechanical research and development. In spite of some beautiful creations (for instance, Haldimann’s double tourbillon, a sublime example of lightness, grace, and poetry, or the immense mother-of-pearl moon by Svend Andersen), or interesting ‘inventions’ (like the minute repeater that chimes the tenths and not the quarter hours by Kari Voutilainen), or even very ambitious propositions (like those of Vincent Bérard, which Europa Star will cover in a future edition), we felt a certain ‘slowing down’ in the propositions. But, don’t be fooled, if these people are temporarily ‘slowing down’, it is because the ‘leading brands’ are now reaching into this reservoir of talented people, ideas and energy. All or nearly all of the large brands, lacking their own ‘talking pieces’, have turned their attention to the ‘idea kings’ – the talented members of the ACHI.

Vincent Calabrese understood this very well when he created the brand Nouvelle Horlo-gerie Calabrese (NHC), destined precisely to show the public at large his new and original ideas, at prices that start around 4,000 ¤. His new collection, ORA, is emblematic of this new endeavour. The hour – not “jumping” but “living” as Calabrese likes to say – is no longer indicated by hands but by a perforated disk that makes each hour appear in a new motif: a different rose for each hour in Fl'ora; a different style of indication for each hour in the Avent'ora collection, using Roman or Arabic numerals, Chinese characters, etc.; or a different precious gemstone for each hour in the Preci'ora line.These playful and poetic ways to tell the time seemed to have been a great success during the show.

TO BE CONTINUED...
In the forthcoming days, the rest of this lenghty survey will be added to our europastar website.

BASELWORLD & SIHH: Part 1
BASELWORLD & SIHH: Part 2
BASELWORLD & SIHH: Part 3
BASELWORLD & SIHH: Part 4
BASELWORLD & SIHH: Part 5
BASELWORLD & SIHH: Part 6

Source: April -May 2005 Issue

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