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Basel, Switzerland - Home of BASELWORLD The World Watch and Jewelry Show

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:23:27 -0500

Basel is a beautiful old town. For those who have never experienced it there is so much to discover outside of exquisite jewelry and precision watches.

A LITTLE CULTURE

Basel is among the most important cultural centres of Switzerland. The city comprises a large number of theatres and many museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts, the world's oldest art collection accessible to the public. And let's not forget the children. Basel holds so many fun and exciting child friendly (and the young at heart but no longer children) things to do year round.

If you are arriving at the Hauptbahnhof (Main trainstation) as we usually do I would recommend starting with the Zoo. After a short tram ride from the trainstation you will discover 24 acres to visit with plenty to do with the family on a sunny or rainy day. Don't miss the Australis House! A real treat from down under. Click Here

Jean Tinquely was an ingenius scuptor fascinating us with his love of complication and wit. His machines and paintings decorate the city. A museum dedicated to his life and works can be visited by clicking here check it out. The Museum Tinguely is something that watch lovers really don't want to miss. Take the kids, too! They'll love it.

Carnival = Fasnacht My earliest memories of Basel include the laughs and jokes from Carnival. The Balois are know for their off beat humor and love of satire. Fasnacht is only for a couple of days. The next Baseler Fasnacht starts on Morgestraich, Febuary 27th, 2012, at 4 a.m. with drums rolling and piccolos piping, so you have time to get there. Fasnacht Website

2010 Swss Watch Export

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 09:43:13 -0500

From the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry - The year 2010 saw a very clear-cut recovery after the significant downturn recorded in 2009. The sector exported the equivalent of 16.2 billion francs, i.e. 2.9 billion more than the previous year. This growth of 22.1% clearly indicates a return to a healthy and robust situation for Swiss watchmaking, with a level slightly higher than the 2007 result, which was considered at the time to be excellent.
The recovery took effect from the month of January 2010. All months in 2010 showed an upward trend, often in excess of 20%, or even 30% in March and June. Growth accelerated each quarter, finally bringing watch exports to a rate of increase of 24.3% in the second half-year, compared to 19.6% in the first.
The decline in 2009 has not been fully erased, since the sector has still to return to its level of 2008. The latest results indicate however that the recovery is based on firm foundations and is set to continue in 2011, even though as yet not all players and regions are benefiting to the same extent.

Products
Wristwatches accounted for nearly 94% of the value of exports by Swiss watch manufacturers in 2010, recording an increase of 22.7% to 15.1 billion francs. The corresponding number of timepieces also increased sharply, rising to 26.1 million units. This is the highest level achieved since 2002, thanks to growth of 20.4%.
Steel – the material of choice for more than one in two timepieces – set the pace, both in value and volume terms. Gold watches were also close to the yearly average. Bimetallic timepieces recorded particularly strong growth (+50.7% by value). In volume terms, the category of other materials strongly influenced the overall result with an increase of 30.6%.
Growth was apparent in all price segments. Watches costing less than 200 francs (export price) were largely responsible for the rise in the total number of timepieces, with an increase of 18.5%. Representing around 10% of the total, the 200-500 francs category registered the sharpest increase, in excess of 30%. Timepieces between 500 and 3,000 francs were situated slightly below the average, while watches costing more than 3,000 francs recorded an increase of 24.2% by value and 29.8% by volume.
In addition to watches, the sector exported other watchmaking products with a value of one billion francs. This value rose by 13.7% compared to 2009. It includes in particular components undergoing operations abroad before returning to Switzerland (enhancements trade).

Markets
During the year 2010, the fifteen main markets showed the following trend (total value in million francs and % variation by comparison with 2009):

1.	Hong Kong	3,185.5	+46.9%
2.	USA	1,674.4	+13.8%
3.	France	1,167.0	+20.5%
4.	China	1,099.5	+57.0%
5.	Italy	923.3	+2.6%
6.	Singapore	899.3	+33.4%
7.	Japan	806.3	+4.9%
8.	Germany	768.4	-3.2%
9.	United Kingdom	596.5	+9.6%
10.	United Arab Emirates	578.5	+31.9%
11.	Spain	343.7	+7.8%
12.	Taiwan	308.9	+26.4%
13.	South Korea	305.2	+36.8%
14.	Saudi Arabia	256.2	+34.2%
15.	Thailand	205.6	+27.2%

Asia absorbed more than half the total value of exports in 2010 and recorded growth well above that of other regions. With a rate of increase of 34.6%, it easily outstripped America (+14.5%) and Europe (+10.4%).
Hong Kong, secure in its role as a re-export centre, consolidated its position as the leading direct market for Swiss watch exports by achieving one of the highest increases in the analysis. The United States continued their recovery, but in a more modest way and starting from a lower level. Standing out from other European markets, France registered strong growth, thanks in particular to numerous purchases by tourists. Other destinations on the Old Continent showed more modest increases and even a decline in the case of Germany. In fourth position, China proved particularly dynamic and moved up three places in the ranking compared to 2009. After around three years on a downward spiral, Japan recovered remarkably well and ended the year on a positive note. The other main Asian markets all recorded growth above the world average.

From the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry 2/2011
http://www.fhs.ch/en/news/news.php?id=839

Secretive Rolex remains Geneva’s largest employer

Fri, 10 Dec 2010 09:14:30 -0600

By Giles Broom - An employment study names Rolex as Geneva’s largest private sector employer but the luxury watchmaker remains hush-hush about the secrets of its success. After the watch sector experiences a revival in the first part of 2010, economic uncertainty once again spreads concern in an industry forced to make heavy job cuts during the recession. Meanwhile, Geneva’s finance industry, the report reveals, cut almost 700 jobs in 2009. Geneva’s largest private-sector employer is keeping quiet about the secrets of its apparent success. The watchmaker Rolex employs more people than any other company in the canton, according to a recently published survey by PME Magazine, a Swiss business publication. But the Rolex Group refuses to divulge whether its high employment rate has any bearing on the state of its business, following an economic downturn which saw the watch making industry slash around 4,000 jobs. “Rolex does not communicate details of its commercial data,” said Rolex spokesperson, Virginie Chevailler, responding to questions from Swisster. The company has a high-profile advertising campaign, featuring Swiss tennis champion Roger Federer as one of its ambassadors. But the company is loath to say anything about the impact of its marketing or other details about its commercial activities. “We inform you that Rolex is a privately owned company and therefore we do not communicate on the data on the company's performance, nor on our benefits or our sponsorship strategies,” Chevailler said in a statement. “Therefore we regret not being able to meet your request.” Another spokeswoman said “we indeed have read the article in PME magazine and the study which was made…We have no particular comment to make on this subject.” With a staff of 4,025, Rolex is a larger employer than other Geneva giants, such as Proctor & Gamble, Migros and UBS. It is one of the iconic brands of Switzerland’s famous watch making industry, which added more than 19,000 jobs in the decade through 2008, according to an industry association. But the secrecy of Rolex, and other private companies, makes it hard to assess the current state of the industry amid economic jitters caused by tumbling stock markets and a weakened euro. Business in the watch-making sector dropped off during the recession, with exports down 22 percent in 2009. One enterprise, Franck Muller cut half of its 550 Geneva staff in 2009. But the industry rebounded during the first three months of 2010. Public company Swatch celebrated a 26 percent increase in the value of its shares during the first quarter of the year, against a 3.7 percent rise in the Swiss Market Index (SMI), which tracks a range of 20 largely defensive stocks across the Zurich exchange. Analysts spoke at the Baselworld watch fair in March of double-digit export growth in the sector. It is not certain whether Rolex, which started out as the vision of Bienne-based Hans Wildorf in the early twentieth century, is selling watches like hot cakes, or using price management techniques such as buying back inventories from retailers to maintain the exclusivity of its brand. Marketers in its jazzy headquarters in Geneva sell the famous Submariner (serial number 16613) appliance for around 8,100 francs. Despite its size and celebrity status, the company manages to avoid leaking information to the outside world, apart from an exceptional incident last week when a staffer at the Plan-les-Ouates factory in Geneva admitted to La Chaine Info television station that he had stolen five kilos of gold from the company. "There is an ongoing investigation," Rolex spokeswoman Chevailler later told the Bloomberg news agency. "I have no further comments to make." Economic austerity measures introduced by European governments and talk of a double-dip recession is displacing the optimistic spirit in export industries generated by first quarter profits. Rolex may be surviving due to its extensive branding work, notably in sports. In addition to the sponsorship deal with Federer, the watch maker is the official timekeeper of major tennis tournaments such as the Australian Open and Wimbledon. It also sponsors equestrian events and a sports car motor racing series in the US, among other things. Tie-ins with sports can often be lucrative. A competitor of Rolex, Omega, a brand of Swatch that sponsored the Vancouver Olympics, achieved a sales increase of 10 percent in 2009. Other signs suggest that luxury goods are weathering an awkward economic situation. Rolex advertises heavily in such publications as the Financial Times’ How to Spend It magazine and website,

which in June launched a new 3.4-million-franc advertising campaign, following a successful launch in October. Geneva’s key financial concerns fared less well than Rolex last year, according to the PME employment survey, with nearly 700 positions wiped out in 2009.

http://www.swisster.ch/search/node/secretive-rolex-remains-geneva

Rolex Arts Initiative Mentors' Choice

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 09:30:00 -0500

Trisha Brown, Brian Eno, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Anish Kapoor, Peter Sellars et Zhang Yimou select young artists for a year of mentoring.

Six exceptional young talents from Australia, Jordan, Lebanon, South Africa and the United States have been chosen by Trisha Brown (dance), Brian Eno (music), Hans Magnus Enzensberger (literature), Anish Kapoor (visuals arts), Peter Sellars (theatre) and Zhang Yimou (film) to work with them for a year of individual mentoring in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative 2010-2011. The six protégés are:

Lee Serle (dance): Australian dancer/choreographer Lee Serle, 28, received a bachelor of dance degree from Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts in 2003. He has contributed to the work of several mainly Melbourne-based companies, including Lucy Guerin Inc and Chunky Move, with which he has performed both nationally and internationally. His choreographic credits include A Little Murky, a small-scale piece that experiments with subtle characterization and showcases his powerful and theatrical style, and I’m in Love, for the Next Wave Festival in Melbourne.

Ben Frost (music): Thirty-year-old Australian composer, producer and musician Ben Frost received an arts degree in Melbourne in 2005, before relocating across the world to Reykjavik where he co-founded the record label Bedroom Community. Frost’s work, influenced by minimalism, punk rock and metal, includes three albums: Steel Wound (2003), Theory of Machines (2007) and By the Throat (2009). His multidisciplinary collaborations include work with choreographers Gideon Obarzanek and Wayne McGregor and with well-known artists such as Björk. He is currently composing music for an online game, World of Darkness.

Tracy K. Smith (literature): Tracy K. Smith, 38, received degrees from Harvard and Columbia universities before becoming a fellow at Stanford and taking on various teaching positions. Since 2005, she has been assistant professor of creative writing at Princeton. Her two critically acclaimed poetry collections, The Body’s Question (2003), winner of the Cave Canem Prize for the best first book by an African-American poet, and Duende (2007), recipient of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, will be followed in 2011 by her recently completed, Life on Mars.

Nicholas Hlobo (visual arts): Nicholas Hlobo, 34, was born in Cape Town in 1975 and lives in Johannesburg. He graduated with a degree in Fine Art from the then Technikon Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, in 2002. He has exhibited in group and solo shows from Cape Town to Rome and Boston. The distinctive use of evocative materials is a hallmark of Hlobo’s sculptural installations and performances, which are rooted in his native Xhosa culture and language. In 2008, he exhibited four works, entitled Uhambo, in the Level 2 Gallery, Tate Modern, for emerging, international artists. Among his recent successes was the 2009 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Arts.

Maya Zbib (theatre): For over a decade, Lebanese actor, writer and aspiring director Maya Zbib, 29, has been impressing critics with her subtle portrayals in widely diverse roles. Having acquired a Master’s in Performance Making in 2007 from Goldsmiths, University of London, Zbib has created and performed in solo work, including The Music Box, a performance installation staged in people’s houses and showcased at international festivals. She currently co-manages Beirut’s Zoukak Theatre Company and Cultural Association, which she co-founded in 2006, and also teaches at Lebanese University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

Annemarie Jacir (film): Annemarie Jacir, 36, is a Palestinian film director and poet living in Jordan. She was named one of Filmmaker magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema in 2004, a year after graduating with a Master’s in Fine Arts from New York’s Columbia University. Co-founder of the Dreams of a Nation project, dedicated to promoting Palestinian cinema, Jacir includes among her films Like Twenty Impossibles (2003), an Official Selection of the Cannes Cinéfondation. Her debut feature, Salt of this Sea (2008), the first feature film by a female Palestinian director, was an Academy Award submission for Best Foreign Language Film. It was awarded the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize. Jacir is currently working on a new feature.

The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative was founded in 2002. The programme is organized by a specialist team based at Rolex headquarters in Geneva. Through an Advisory Board, which suggests the mentors, and expert nominating panels, six talented, young artists around the world are sought to work alongside six major artists in the fields of dance, film, literature, music, theatre and visual arts for a year of intense collaboration.

The six selected protégés will each have their own individually tailored programme, providing time across the year for unique personal access to and creative dialogue with their mentor. The protégés will receive a grant of 25,000 dollars each and are eligible for a further 25,000 dollars towards the cost of creating a project following their mentoring year.

Source: Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry

The truth behind Replica watches

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:30:00 -0500

Buying counterfeiting :
Endangers your own health and safety
Supports and finances organized crime
Is accepting underground labour (including child exploitation)
Supports know-how's piracy
Reduces employment and stifles growth
Is illegal and might lead to criminal sanctions

Counterfeited items threaten the health and safety of citizens, their jobs, competitiveness, trade and investments in research and innovation. And leads sometimes to criminal sanctions.

Buying counterfeits endangers your own health and safety

Today, there is no trade segment free of pirated goods : medicines, planes and cars spare parts, power tools, medical supplies and equipment (such as pace makers), glasses, CDs, drinks and food products, cosmetics and perfumes, textiles and watches may all be counterfeited. When they are, this means that no quality and safety tests are performed.

Counterfeiters don't care about safety standards, product materials or your family's health and safety. Their only interest lies in making money. Most of the time, Counterfeited watches are produced by using less solid material, and even sometimes material which may be harmful (allergen, toxic, etc.). A fake watch is never a good choice as it's less reliable.

Counterfeiting is a big business : it supports and finances organized crime

Counterfeiting represents 5% to 9% of the worldwide market... a revenue estimated up to 500 billion euros. By comparison, human trafficking (prostitution / slavery) is estimated at 7 billion.

Counterfeiting is a criminal activity; buying counterfeited items contributes to the financing of organized crime and all kinds of illegal business.

You do not tolerate theft, drug trafficking or tobacco smuggling ? Counterfeits are often produced using similar infrastructures and sold through the same channels and by the same offenders. Links between counterfeiting activities and criminal networks have been established in many cases.

Buying counterfeits is accepting underground labour (including child exploitation)

These exploited people work in very hard conditions, receive a derisory salary and do not get any welfare, legal or medical protection.

Buying counterfeits supports know-how's piracy

The counterfeiter seeks to appropriate somebody else's goodwill and profit without due regarding investments done by intellectual property (IP) rights' real owners.Watchmakers have perfected a know-how requiring thousand hours of work in order to create unique timepieces with harmonious shapes and faultless quality.

IP is protected for two main reasons: acknowledgment and protection of creativity must be granted, investment and risks taken must be rewarded.

Buying counterfeits reduces employment and stifles growth

Counterfeited items have been linked to organized crime groups and purchasing them can have a negative impact on the economy.

Legitimate retailers are unable to compete

Bankruptcies increase

Loss of jobs

This form of criminality contributes to the reduction of employment which is estimated to more than 200,000 jobs worldwide per year, of which 100,000 in Europe alone. At State level, this represents revenue losses, thus public money which cannot be invested for citizen's welfare.

Last but not least : Buying counterfeits is illegal and might lead to criminal sanctions

Buying fakes is not a harmless and ordinary act. As a buyer, criminal and financial sanctions may be pronounced against you. The mere possession of counterfeits is considered an offence in some countries. Furthermore, damages could be claimed by IP rights holders.

Customs are also allowed to seize and destroy illegal items. In some countries customs may pronounce important fines.

Buying genuine products supports sustainable development, fair competition and fair trade.

As the old saying goes, "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is !"

(source: http://www.fhs.ch/en/net_replica_buyer.php )