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?
News
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.
Breitling changes hands
The biggest European private equity firm, CVC Capital Partners, has acquired a controlling stake in Breitling. The Schneider family, owner of the brand since 1979, retains a 20% share. The transaction, valued at €800 million, will close in June subject to approval by competition authorities.
Diamond dichotomy
Synthetic diamonds are the alchemist's dream. But not all that glitters is precious, nor even necessarily beyond reproach. A look at a fast-growing and poorly controlled market.
Roger Dubuis – no apologies for disruption!
The Geneva brand is showing no signs of slowing in 2017, with the opening of a boutique inside Harrods, London's temple of luxury, a partnership with Pirelli and another with Italdesign. Roger Dubuis is playing the "disruptive" card to full effect, with customer experience now part of the deal.
On time and duration
Hermès' "L’heure impatiente" complication confronts us with another, more philosophical complexity: the distinction between time as we experience it and time measured by clocks.
Audemars Piguet, at home in Le Brassus
Earlier this month, the Le Brassus watchmaker hosted an official ceremony to lay the first stone of its future museum. This futuristic building – a half-buried glass and concrete spiral with roof garden – will be joined, on the other side of the Manufacture, by the brand's second project: a luxury hotel, currently under construction.
