A year of the rabbit for watch brands?
China, which weighed on watch exports at end 2022, will be the key to activity in 2023, a year that opens with mixed prospects. Will China’s impact on luxury sales be as great as in 2021?
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What next for the pre-owned market?
Once dismissed as a hang-out for unscrupulous traders touting fakes, in little more than a decade the pre-owned watch market has grown to remarkable proportions and is expected to surpass sales of new watches. Consultancy firm LuxeConsult predicts this reversal in roles for 2033.
Paradoxes for the New Year
The 5th Forum de la Haute Horlogerie, held in November at the IMD in Lausanne, prompted us to focus our thoughts on paradox. Speakers enlightened us as to the abundance of apparently illogical yet very real situations in the world today. Situations which can help us better understand changes in the markets and social contexts. In the hope that I have taken this lesson onboard, it's now my turn to suggest paradoxes which may warrant further reflection in 2014.
The skinny on ultra-thin watches
Even though there is no accepted definition of an extra-thin timepiece, watchmakers nonetheless strive to skim valuable millimetres from movements, as evidenced by this autumn's models. Something to slip under the Christmas tree, perhaps.
Not one but two records in 2013
The record for the world's thinnest manual-winding mechanical watch was toppled not once but twice this year.
Taking it personally
More and more companies propose to modify iconic watches on request. Sometimes, owning a legend isn't enough.
Co-Axial, Omega's primal scream
With total production of 750,000 units, Omega manufactures 500,000 mechanical watches a year, all fitted with the famous Co-Axial escapement (the one exception being the Moonwatch, for NASA flight-qualification reasons). The next step will be to make all these movements completely antimagnetic using 15,000 gauss technology, unveiled by Omega this year.
