Baselworld, the largest watch and jewelery fair, loses another piece, Eberhard ♦ ︎
We deal with jewels, as the name of our headline says. But we must record a news that is related to the world of jewelery indirectly: Eberhard & Co., Swiss watchmaking company born in 1887, this year celebrating 130 years of history, announced that it will not be present in 2018 at Baselworld, the largest watch and jewelery exhibition of the world, where it has been exhibitor for 70 years.
It’s not a little news. What has been the world’s largest exhibition for watches, but also for jewelery, loses an important piece.
“Even during the last edition of the Basel Fair, despite the fact that the brand was one of the main protagonists of the event, thanks to its location in the prestigious Hall 1.0, it began to reflect on the possibility of a change, a decision not to entrust Baselworld with the introduction of brand new products, “says a statement from the Swiss company. “Eberhard & Co. then chose for 2018 to be no longer among the Salon brands, whose organization announced for the upcoming edition a further defect of exhibitors estimated between 30% and 60%, after the already remarkable reductions in recent years. It is clear that for independent brands such as Eberhard it is time to get away from the traditional contexts to seek closer proximity to markets and their needs. ”
Comment by Mario Peserico, managing director of Eberhard, is even more severe: “Baselworld has been a representative industry in the past, but this aspect is now disappearing without being replaced by a new project. I think many more will be defeats for 2018. ” Eberhard added that the presentation of its news 2018 will take place from March through dedicated activities and events.
It’s a tough hit for Baselworld. Already this year, the fair had seen the number of exhibitors drop: “It has been a difficult 12 months and forced some operators to abandon the watch or jewelery industry,” Sylvie Ritter, Baselworld’s managing director, admitted. “Our transformation process will always have to prefer quality to quantity. As a test, for this edition we have decided to reject some exhibitors. It’s a choice, our choice. ” An elegant way to justify the decrease in stands. The 2017 edition (it was the number 100) closed closed with 106,000 buyers (-4% over 2016, when they were 111,000 and less than 114,000 in 2015) from over 100 countries. And exhibitors fell 13.3%, from 1,500 to 1,300.
In the watch sector, for example, he had already announced the absence the Timex Swiss Luxury Division group, which operates luxury brands such as Salvatore Ferragamo, Versace, Versus and Nautica through licensing agreements. The watch sector, among other things, is suffering the spread of smart watches, such as Apple Watch, which has surpassed by revenues that of a giant like Rolex. And in jewelery for a long time no more middle-size brands such as Vhernier or Antonini aren’t in Baselworld, to say two Italians. Now the Basel Fair will have to try to use a lot of creativity to retrieve its actraction.
