Baselworld changes date again: from 2021 it will be held the first week of April, anticipates Michel Loris-Melikoff ♦ ︎
The watch hands in 2021 will be moved back three weeks. However, this is not an original interpretation of summer time. Instead, it’s a turnaround at Baselworld, the big watch and jewelery fair held in the spring in Basel. Baselworld is a point of reference for the great companies of timepieces, but also of jewels. The fair, however, has been experiencing a crisis for years that has reduced the number of participants. To try to reverse the trend, last year the managing director, Michel Loris-Melikoff, announced that by 2020 the date of the exhibition would be postponed to 30 April (closing on 5 May), more than a month after the usual period in which the event takes place, that is in mid-March.
The change of date was decided to create a synergy with Sihh, the watchmaking fair that until 2019 took place in late January. In 2020, in fact, the Sihh will be held from 27 to 29 April, with the stated objective of concentrating the trip for buyers in a single trip to Switzerland. However, the slippage has created discontent and problems especially at many Italian jewelery houses, as noted by gioiellis.com.
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Many jewelers believe that the date set for Baselworld creates several problems: it is too close to the summer holidays and creates delays between the receipt of orders and the production of the collections. And even among the watch manufacturers there was no shortage of protests: Breitling, one of those members of the Baselworld committee, left Basel, while the LVMH group, which was present in Geneva alongside the Sihh, moved its event to Dubai .
That is why, therefore, Michel Loris-Melikoff confided to the specialized magazine WatchPro that from 2021 the Baselworld fair will be moved again, this time three weeks before. So presumably in 2021 it will be held in the first week of April. A convincing date for jewelery companies? “It’s all very complicated,” the manager confessed. And if it is for the fair, let alone the participating companies.
Find the original interview by clicking here.
