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Mike Margolis

Messages: 12254
Registered: November 2003

A REAL inside Basel look....

Wed, 01 May 2013 10:34

Finally the Fair is over, and I have a little time in my hotel room to reflect. Since so many timezoners never get to Basel at all, those who go are always posting their "inside Basel" photos and comments.

I thought as someone who is inside the industry, I would give you a look at the Fair from my side... (If you don't know, I work for GP and JR USA)

So this was an interesting Fair for Girard-Perregaux and JEANRICHARD, as it's our first time back in Basel since 1982 when the SIHH started. Since '82, we've been at Geneva, and now our CEO made the decision to come back to Basel.

Because of that, everything was brand new, and most of our employees had no Basel experience. So, hotels and restaurants were a new experience for many, as I guess that's all taken care of at SIHH.

New fair means a new booth (or as they refer to it, a "stand".) I paced ours off, and it measured 50 feet by 70 feet, and is three stories tall. So, it is really a huge building which is constructed for the fair inside the exhibit hall, then torn down and put into storage for the next year. This alone is a huge expense.

View of the front from the hallway:

And from the other direction:

Girard-Perregaux and JEANRICHARD have separate entrances and separate reception desks, and also separate corporate identities, so both have a window out front with a small selection of their models shown.

For most brands, the windows facing the hallway are all you get to see unless you have an appointment. For GP and JR, most of the ground floor is open to the public.

Here you see two views of GP's display on the ground floor, one by the waiting room/reception desk, and the other near our two Young Watchmaker's benches, highlighting our links to the past as a 222 year-old Manufacture with pieces from our museum interspersed with pieces that are brands new this year (or "novelties" as the French call them.)

The first thing about Basel is that it is HUGE. Words can just not express how many companies are there, and how big the spaces and how many people are there.

Next, here is a photo of our second floor, which for us houses a big lounge where people can sit, have a coffee, conduct an interview, etc... It also houses our High Horology room, which I'll explain later.

Up one more floor and here you'll find more offices, and here pieces on display, plus examples of our new corporate identity as far as counter, window and table displays:

Next, my home away from home for the last days; this is the USA office and showroom:

We share a collection with the room next door. There are cabinets built into the wall, with locking doors on both sides, and hopefully when you want to show a piece, your neighbor doesn't have it out of the shared cabinet:

So here is the schedule:

I flew Monday night from New York, arriving in Zurich Tuesday morning. You take a two hour train ride to Basel, get to your hotel before noon, and beg for them to let you into your room before the normal 3pm check in time. This year I got lucky, and it happened. Other years....

Tuesday afternoon, you connect with your team and have a casual dinner. You are exhausted from not sleeping too well on the overnight flight, but you push yourself to stay up until 9 or 10pm Swiss time, because tomorrow is a full day of work.

Wednesday morning we have meetings with the whole worldwide team, and the Basel novelties and strategy are explained to us. Wednesday afternoon the Fair opens but it is Press Day. Only those with press credentials are allowed in, the retailers have to wait until Thursday. I had many press appointments and even a television interview with StarTV, a Chinese channel.

Thursday, the fair opens at 9am, so we are there every day at 8. Each morning we have to inventory our collection to make sure nothing was moved to another room by mistake, and have a quick team meeting to talk about the day before. Customers start coming at 9am. We see them every hour for a one hour appointment. Each day, we are literally back to back, 9am, 10am, 11am, noon, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, 4pm, 5pm and 6pm. You run to the bathroom and choke down a little snack if you can between appointments. Thursday we had special guests, David Jr and Susan Rockefeller were in the stand for a news conference and screening of her latest film. Then there's always a dinner, and you fall into bed exhausted at 11 or midnight, and get up at 6 to do it all over again.

Friday we started the day with another press conference with Capt. Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who landed the airplane in the Hudson River; he is a JEANRICHARD spokesperson. Unfortunately, I missed half of it because I had a 10am meeting, and I couldn't go to dinner with him either, because I had another one that night.

We have three sales regions in our market, West, East and Caribbean. Since we only have one room, we use file sharing and block out appointments so we don't have two at the same time. Occasionally, someone is late or needs to switch, and we try to work that out. This fair, we did have to do two dealers at once one time, but they were both OK with it.

We have a separate Press and PR team who conduct most of the meetings with magazines, blogs, websites, etc... Basically anyone who is not a jewelry store owner or distributor. Since I love the web and watch geeks, I try to sit in on as many of these as I can, but I can only be one place at once. So, sorry if I missed you!

Basically, within the one hour appointment, you have a meet and greet with each dealer, usually discuss a little bit about the new philosophy of the brand, talking about advertising and corporate direction, then move to their plan for advertising our products (catalogue, print, billboard, etc...) and then you present each new watch model one or two at a time, and they place their orders for both the new pieces and also if they need any fill-ins on regular product.

Because Girard-Perregaux has such a huge history of High Horology pieces, but such a low supply, we have an HH room on the second floor (OK, the Swiss call that the first floor, but that is another story...). So we bring the customers to the HH room and here we show them our full collection of Minute Repeaters, Perpetual Calendars, Tourbillons and High Jewelry pieces. This year, we have a new Bi-Axial tourbillon in tantalum with black sapphire bridges, snow set ladies tourbs, full baguette set diamond pieces, etc... and these are all locked away in the HH room for viewing upon request.

We even had a piece unique Three Bridge pocket watch this year:

We do this usually through a 6pm appointment until 7pm, run to an 8pm dinner, and then do it all over again.

So, full days on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. My last appointment was this morning, and then I took a couple of hours to walk the fair. There are 1000's of other companies who display at the fair, anything from $1M jewelry to $10 watches, tools, boxes, CNC machines, carry cases, customs brokers, everything related to the watch or jewelry industry is at BaselWorld.

My plan is for a light casual dinner and early to bed tonight, as I have a 5am train to get me to the airport tomorrow!

For us who work at Basel on the manufacturer side, Basel is a little bit like Times Square in NYC. It's both exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. The raw energy is ever-present, as is the lack of sleep and a decent meal outside of dinner. This is my 8th fair, so I am really just a rookie, but there's nothing like it. If you've never been, you really need to figure out how to come one year.