For the first time, Baselworld is coming out of Basel. The three-day Baselworld pop-up show in Geneva during the Geneva Watch Days ended on 2 September. It was an event that aimed to present the format of the new Basel fair live and demonstrate Baselworld's desire to make a comeback in a fair world that has been decisively transformed since 2019.
Ten independent manufacturers supported MCH Group in this first live adventure after the débâcle of the show's cancellation, declared dead and now ready to rise from its ashes. Claude Meylan, IceWatch, the AHCI represented by Ludovic Ballouard and David Candaux, BA111OD Watch Concept, Bomberg, Furlan Marri, Ikepod, Riskers and Sinn Spezialuhren exhibited their watches under the Baselworld logo and kick-started the birth of an event that focuses on small/medium-sized Swiss watchmakers.
Bravo to Michel Loris-Melikoff for engaging two prominent personalities in the industry such as Jean Christophe Babin, CEO of Bulgari, and Aurel Bacs, Senior Consultant for Phillips in Association with Bacs&Russo, in such interesting talks on the watch industry and - above all - on the expectations of manufacturers and collectors. The talks, as well as the other panels held from 31 August to 2 September, can be caught up on YouTube, on the official Baselworld channel. This content will become part of a broader offering soon to be available on the fair's digital platform, which will be active from the autumn.
Meanwhile, the sign that Baselworld has understood the epochal change we are going through is Loris-Melikoff's announcement, during the talk with Babin, that two shows will be held as early as 2022: the traditional one in Basel and an entirely new one located in Asia, and then Baselworld will also land in the United States in 2023. A decision that follows step by step the path marked out in recent years by Watches and Wonders, even before the pandemic put the world on stand-by.
