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James Dowling Reports From Seiko's World Spring Drive Launch in Paris! >>>
Mon, 19 September 2005 12:02
Hello All,
I am pleased to post this report by James Dowling who attended the world launch of the Seiko Spring Drive at the new Seiko boutique in Paris. Enjoy!...
Hi Folks;
Last month I was in Tokyo and had a long meeting with the nice folks at Seiko where we talked in great detail about the new Spring Drive watch and who were then kind enough to invite me to the world launch of the watch in Paris. So it was that I found myself standing outside the Musée d'Orsay at 6:30pm last Wednesday with a crowd of around 150 people, almost an equal mix of Seiko personnel, retailers and journalists. The Museum was not quite ready for us, so along with some nice folks from Seiko's UK & Irish operations I retired to a bar over the road and quaffed a beer or two whilst we waited for them to open the doors.
About 10 minutes late, the doors were opened and we trooped in, passed through airport style metal detectors, signed in at the front desk, then walked downstairs for a few glasses of champagne. We milled around for about 30 minutes and then were ushered into a lecture theatre. Seated on the stage at one side were Shu from Seiko Japan and Rob from Seiko UK with a large screen behind them. Over the next 20 minutes we were treated to a bilingual (English/French) presentation on the video screen, accompanied by a team of modern dancers.
Towards the end of the event, Mr. Shinji Hattori, President and CEO of Seiko, came on the stage and made a short speech about how important the watch was to the company's future.
Then we all trooped out into the empty museum, where guides awaited us for a private tour of the museum in small groups of 6 to 8. As we walked through the ground floor, a chamber music trio played for us.
The Musée d'Orsay is owned by the French state and is the repository of all art from the end of the Franco-Prussian war to the start of the First World War, this means that it has without doubt the finest collection of impressionist and symbolist art in the world and we wondered freely amongst some of the most iconic pictures in the world.
We finished up in a room on the top floor which was immediately behind the giant clock on the front of the building, where we had a few more glasses of champagne and some nibbles.
Then it was on to another part of the building where we congregated in a room whose baroque splendour almost defied description
In the centre of the room was a tubular white tent, suspended from the ceiling. Then the lights were dimmed and other lights came on inside the tent, music rose in volume and suddenly the dancers from the earlier event came out from the tent & began to dance.
Then the sides of the tent were pulled back and young ladies in black cocktail dresses walked forward bearing trays laden with the new watches. The crowd moved forwards to examine the watches in detail and to look at the other displays in the room.
After about 20 minutes we were invited to move down to the ground floor again, where a dinner awaited us in a room whose rococo styling exceeded even the previous one.
We sat at small tables for 8 people and had a delicious meal, halfway through the meal the two owners of Seiko's Irish importer; Noel & Peter rose to accept Spring Drive Number 0000. They had been the winning bidders at an auction held at Seiko's Basel stand earlier this year. Their winning bid was donated to a local Basel children's charity and now that the watch was fully in production, their watch was ready & was presented to them by Shinji Hattori, the President & CEO of Seiko.
When we had entered the dining room, I noticed a large black canvas against the far wall and two people painting feverishly on it.
As dinner progressed, so did the painting each time I turned around, more paint had been added but I was still unable to get any coherent idea as to what it was meant to be.
By the time the dinner was finished, so were the artists and I went up to the picture to see if I could get an idea as to what it was meant to represent.
Now I could see that there was some Japanese text, the words Seiko and Time and lots of other (to me) indecipherable calligraphy; I could also see that the large painting was in fact made up of a large number of tiles, each measuring around 20 x 15cm (9" x 6"). Whilst I was standing looking at the painting, our host was making a speech in French and suddenly I was overwhelmed by a horde of other guests (who could obviously understand French); they fell upon the painting & began pulling each of the little tiles away from the backing.
In a matter of minutes, the huge painting was decimated and I joined the fray as the English translation gave us permission to so do. The small tiles were in fact individual 22 x 16 cm canvases held on to the backing board by Velcro.
Each individual picture was signed by the two artists and stamped with the name and location of the event.
Also included was a small certificate of authenticity.
Here is the image for which I braved the scrum.
Shortly afterwards we all trooped out and headed back to our hotels, but although the night was over; the event was not, by any means. 10 hours later we were on our way to Seiko's store in the Rue Bonaparte in St. Germain des Pres on the left bank; by the way this is the only Seiko store in the world and is the prototype for others to be rolled out in major cities worldwide over the next few years.
The store is small but very light and airy with a couple of display cases in the centre of the space and the rest spread around the walls. At the very back of the store was a small cabinet against a side wall containing one of each of the six variants of the Spring Drive, bearing price tags; showing that they actually were on sale. The European price is €3,200 for the strap versions and €3,400 for the bracelet versions. Although I had seen the watches both at Basel and in Tokyo, I enthusiastically took the chance to examine them in detail once more. In discussion with Shu Yoshino I discovered a couple of interesting facts about the new watches; they are the first Seiko watches to be made in 316L stainless steel; which is the material used in almost all Swiss stainless steel watches. 316L is much harder than the more basic steel used in other Seiko watches and so is more expensive to machine, but on the other hand it keeps its edges much better & is less prone to scratching. I also discovered that the watches being launched in Paris are export only and not for sale in Japan; this explains their oversized styling (40mm diameter) and massive construction. I tried the black dial bracelet model on my wrist and although I had done this before both at Basel and Tokyo; but in both those cases the watches were either prototypes or dummies and definitely not for sale. This one was and temptation called to me, the watchmaker was summoned from the back of the store and the bracelet was resized for me and I felt how well it fitted my wrist. I admired the contrast between the matt and polished surfaces, the heft of the piece and before long my credit card had left my wallet and was being slid into Seiko's processing machine. I was then told that even though the watches had been available for sale for over 2 hours at this point, I was the first actual purchaser of a Spring Drive. In honour of this event, Mr. Hattori performed the actual handover of the watch.
It transpired that the watch I had chosen was the only black dial bracelet one that the store had, which meant that there was an unsightly gap at the top of their display cabinet.
And by what can only be described as pure chance, the case number of the watch is 001
I put the watch on my wrist and when I got back to London about 6 hours later I reset the time to my Radio Controlled clock and almost 72 hours later it has not yet left my wrist and the watch is still accurate to the second.
Over the next few months I plan to wear the watch pretty much all the time and I will report on how it holds up and performs.
- Mike Disher