Watches and Wonders

Expert Insights: Q&A with Bruce,
our expert watch buyer

Now Bruce is back from Geneva, find out whether his predictions were right and what he loved most about the event this year…

• What’s the most exciting part about your role?

  It always amazes me how you can have a watch that is around about 40mm size case and yet the designs that people and brands continue to come up with never ceases to amaze me. How you can make something relatively so small, so different by altering colours and styles and different things like that. Really exciting for me to see the designs that brands come up with all the time.

• Can you tell us more about Watches and Wonders?

  Watches and Wonders is held in Geneva every year around March/ April time, and it is the pre-eminent luxury watch fair in the world. It’s fantastic, it’s where all the key brands come together, they all have individual booths and they’re all presenting their new products, their new launches and there’s so much excitement about it. The whole city of Geneva is buzzing around this time with the anticipation, the build up to it, and the unveiling of the product. It really is a special place and atmosphere to be a part of.

• How important is the Watches and Wonders event for the luxury watch industry?

  The brand’s place an awful lot of emphasis on building, producing product, developing product to launch at Geneva and there’s such a buzz around the build-up to it with all the teasers that the brands are putting out there of what they’re going to be, giving a sneak peek about what may be coming, what may not be coming and all the forums go mad with watch fanatics around the world trying to guess what’s going to be coming out so it really is all centred around this one week in Geneva every year. It’s fantastic.

• What would you love to see the brands release this year?

  I have loved over recent years – we’ve talked about colour – but more simple, sleek designs and I personally like the way that the brands are going in that respect.

  Sports watches are still hugely popular, whether it’s a chronograph or a GMT or whether it’s a diver watch but I think the popularity of I guess what you call a traditional “three hand watch” with added colour and different dimensions like that. It broadens the appeal for a lot of customers as well that you can have a sports watch, have a dress watch, you can have a leather strap watch. The more styles that are brought out the more appeal it has for more people.

• What trends are you predicting from this year’s event?

  Brands are being so much more adventurous now with shades. Traditionally it was always black and with ladies watches mother of pearl has always been the most popular, and then there was the introduction a number of years ago of blue dials which became very popular, in more recent years green dials have become popular, but now brands are doing shades of those colours and it really is a spectacle to see when the tray is in front of you with all these different coloured dials.

  It makes it more personal to you because one person may love a bronze colour, another person may love a bright yellow or a bright orange – the more options the more personal you can make your buy in. It’s proven too as our customers love colour.