Hong Kong Clock and Watch Fair: A Party with Benefits, plus a Typhoon!
Every trade fair is like a maelstrom for the casual visitor, the exhibitors, and above all for the journalists, who, within a few days, must cover acres of territory filled with potential subject matter demanding to be seen and explored for deeper information.
You can prepare ahead of time, but the reality on the ground is always surprising.
The HKCWF is in Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong (photo courtesy Diego Delso/Wikipedia)
Unlike the niche-like fairs in Geneva, the Hong Kong Clock and Watch Fair (HKCWF) located in the world’s second largest watch exporter after Switzerland, drives the energy to the next level. It focuses not only on watches of all types, from mechanicals to smart, but also on components, fashion, trade and commerce, and any other actor in a spider-web-like supply chain.
Salon de Time at the Hong Kong Watch & Clock Fair
It’s also a place where quiet meditation on the creativity of watchmakers and brands can, at times, become subservient to the realities of trade and commerce. And now, as I write, to top off day three, super-typhoon Yagi has decided to visit Hong Kong with winds topping 200 km/h and lots of rain.
Is this a curse of sorts? The 2023 edition of the fair had to close down for a day as a “black rain” swept Hong Kong.
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The great marketplace
Given the excitement, it is difficult to sum up the experience in a few pithy lines. In addition, such events often result in serendipitous encounters and conversations with individuals and journey through some of the scanning the booths and the wares in the display cases until something called for attention.
To get a feel for the commerce side, Hall 1, the most logical place to begin. It is named “Pageant of Eternity” and is home to myriad booths, probably making up three quarters of the 700 or so exhibitors present. Many of those are companies manufacturing finished watches and clocks and those whose main business is OEM/ODM, which means essentially that they make watches on order.
Peacock Black Hole Central Tourbillon
It is where one of China’s more famous horological groups, Peacock, was exhibiting its prized products, notably the Black Hole, a central tourbillon which managed to capture a Muse Award in 2023. And it costs just $3,000-$3,750!
They have many more watches on tap, notably some very beautiful enamel dials featuring Chinese motifs, perhaps a concession to the trend towards more national themes. More recently, riding a vintage wave, they also came up with a clean bicompax chronograph in several hues including a chic, retro salmon.
As for the OEM/ODM companies, they come in droves. Browsing the alleys of Hall 1, scanning the crowded displays, resisting the many invitations from smiling reps standing outside said booths, I finally stopped at the large, brightly lit stand of the Yonghong Watch Co., Guangdong, where the company has modern facilities.
Lynn Chen, General Manager and daughter of the founder, gave me a very cogent run-down of the company. It was launched as early as 1996 as a purely OEM/ODM manufactory and now has clients ranging from Disneyworld to Brazil, Columbia, and, yes, even Switzerland (will someone admit it?). It’s a business model that demands very competent designing skills, and as, Ms Chen said, their head designer has been with the company almost since the start, which is a good thing as it suggests continuity.
“We have about 5,000 models the customer can choose from, some are more for Europe, some for America, some for the Middle East, or Southeast Asia,” she explained. “Customers from Europe are ready to pay a bit more, but we have many customers from Asia, too.” Lately, to understand their customers’ needs better, the company has resorted to AI. In 2000, they began to branch out with what is now four full-fledged brands.
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Hall 1 at the HKCWF reveals the full web of the supply chain. Strolling along its alleyways, you find anything from spring bar specialists to electric motors for wall clocks, from straps, to display systems, alarm clocks and wall clocks, some quite kitschy, and watch hands.
Springbar tools at the HKCWF tool and machine section
The competition for the attention of consumers and trade players drives creativity. Amidst the classic bands and bracelets at Ahuja Watchbands, for instance, one finds striking colors, including a croc-stamped strap in eye-catching yellow.
HKCWF A-PacZone featuring packaging
Packaging is part of the deal, and while sustainability seems all the fashion (and needs to be discussed at length elsewhere), one company, PacZone, has interpreted the dignified écrin, the high-end box for watches or other objects of value, in gaudy plastic. It’s not for everyone, but it does have a certain style.
Sapphire crystals at the HKCWF
On a more serious note, there are also several companies like Sun Yin Crystal Industry from Shenzhen that are specialists in ceramic dials and, more importantly, sapphire crystal. “We manufacture everything, the crystal and the components,” I was told by Minnie Pan, sales representative for the company.
As an aside, I remember last year in Hong Kong a few Western watch people musing about reducing their prices quite drastically if the famous Swiss-made 60% law did not apply to this one component that is so expensive. However, when I asked Minnie which countries were the biggest customers, she replied simply “Switzerland, Germany.” Something to think about.
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Culture clash
The Salon de Time is where I first encountered the wonderful world of Chinese watch brands, too often ignored by many in the west, somewhat unfairly. To sum it up: Imagine a band of teenagers with a credit card with no limit doing exactly as they please. Their sheer productivity and energy is the gift of a vigorous industrial machine that is seemingly capable of everything.
This is both a blessing and a curse, however, and for the same reason: the ability to churn out large and diverse volumes of product gives off the aura of manufacturing ease that seems to irritate more Protestant sensibilities that gravitate more towards work that, at least overtly, demands beads of sweat on ones brow.
Among the well-known issues people often have with these watches is the finishing, and it is legitimate, but less and less so. Those traditional gestures, the chamfering, the polishing, the brushing, care with the crown, are often absent. I asked one brand why didn’t go the extra mile, and the answer was simply: “It’s too expensive.”
Agelocer Volcano
The other issue is perhaps more subtle. A good example is Agelocer, which not only makes its own tourbillon movement, but has also won a Muse Prize for its Volcano. Beatrice, the sales manager I spoke to, was disappointed because it didn’t sell well, especially in Europe.
It’s not a bad watch at all. It comes in a large, black PVD-coated squarish case with cut-off corners. The dial is a striking orange (lava-ish) with crazy hands that suggest an eruption. She wondered if it was perhaps too difficult to read.
Having written about “watches that do not tell time properly,” like Van Cleef’s Heures Florales, or Moser & Cie.’s Swiss Alps models without hands, I could assure her that that was not the problem. It was more like she was presenting the watch along with about thirty other models that were all different in quality, and I could not see much of a cantus firmus, to use a musical term.
Less is indeed more sometimes. I thought of Yvan Arpa telling me just a few weeks ago how he had to create a tight taxonomy for his brand, ArtyA, because it was the forest was obscuring the trees.
The other problem was the price, USD 500. Had Agerlocer put it at USD 3,450, it might draw more attention, as I explained to her that “cheap” has two meanings. She took this slightly facetious suggestion in good stride and we parted friends.
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Engineers gone wild
With the thought of “brand discipline”, I dropped into several other booths. The name Lucky Harvey sounds a bit strange, but it refers to the son of founder Lin Xiaolin.
Some of his models had been a little too close to Constantin Chaykin, though the motif on the dial, a dancing lion that appeared at a festival in Beijing, drifted into the usual ribald kitsch that one finds quite often in Chinese fashions.
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Lucky Harvey Green Dragon Automatic
But the watches with the little bee whose wings flap, and in particular the 3D dragon who spits out a pearl, an ancient Chinese symbol, I found very well done. Maybe one should mention here that Lucky Harvey has had a watch candidate at the GPHG.
At any rate, this year, Mr Xiaolin was presenting a series of watches with gambling animations, like roulette and something called three-card poker (all under USD 1,000!). And, proudly, he showed me an hour repeater with a guilloché dial that comes in four different colors.
Lucky Harvey Player Series Gold European Roulette Automatic Watch
A gentleman from India, looking at the display and noting that Christophe Claret had done one such watch laughed and said: “They made an entire casino!”
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Another brand that is worth watching is called Angles, and I will confess at this point to owning one. These are complex, puzzle-like constructions, like the Cylindrex, which is quite difficult to read.
Angles Cylindrex Automatic
The Bastion is a little simpler. I own one, a brushed steel device with four “towers” indicating the hours. Between them is a revolving disc with a 0-60 scale in a quadrant that “picks up” the hours, say 1 o’clock. When the 60 minute index passes, the 0 is already at the next tower. At the same time, the past hour (1) will switch to the next set, i.e. 5, and wait for the minute disc to deliver its scale.
The cherry on top of this watch is the tiny black dot in the middle that turns to indicate the seconds, hence that the watch is still wound up (it’s self-winding). The less real Angles are in fact directly inspired from the Urwerk satellite hands. Roy Chan, the watchmaker himself, explained that he was essentially doing this as a kind of training exercise.
We would say “copying,” but, again, the conundrum of Chinese philosophy does have an explanation that would need to be elucidated at some other date.
Many criticize these brands for their apparent desire to put quantity over quality and their tendency to borrow aesthetic ideas from other – western – brands that have spent decades and even centuries honing their skills.
Yet one cannot fault these young entrepreneurs for their creative, happy-go-luck spirit. Getting products done, being bold and even eccentric, trying things out, being in that horrid PR word, “disruptive” is all part of the game.
Carefree wandering is an ancient Daoist concept going all the way back to about 350 BC, to the Zhuangzi, a text on philosophy by the eponymous thinker and whether they know it or not, they are living it.
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Where are the Europeans?
The Salon de Time offers an opportunity to compare and contrast the two styles of east and west. Europe is heavily represented by the Swiss Independent Watch Pavilion, headed by Pilo and including such small brands as the Gréco, Adriatica, Marvin, and H992 (the elevation of a fountain in La-Chaux-de-Fonds), a two-year-old brand that has been scoring some success.
Salon de Time at the Hong Kong Watch & Clock Fair
The other group is France Eclat, where one finds Lip and Yema, two brands that have experienced something of a comeback these past years. The western watches radiate a great deal of care in the details, not only physical, but aesthetic as well.
Several visitors I spoke to wondered why there weren’t more European exhibitors. What could I do but shrug? There are old preset ideas that die hard, and Hong Kong, rightly or wrongly, maybe appears to lack seriousness. But several people, watchmakers, journalists, observers, pointed out to me in casual conversations, that the Chinese are learning very fast and ignoring this could be perilous.
Precisely because it is a young industry and one filled with youthful energy, the local watches are being appreciated by millennials and Gen-Z, two groups that will be rising through the earning ranks fairly soon.
It’s a party!
Typhoon Yagi has come and is drenching the city, but the show goes on. If there is a single word that can describe the atmosphere at the HKCWF, it is “fun.” The organizers have understood that the best way to let business thrive is to keep a modicum of entertainment going, so there is always something happening.
If you need a break from watches and components, a fashion show presenting all sorts of creations, from clothes to accessories.
For more information, please visit www.hktdc.com/event/hkwatchfair/
You might also enjoy:
Hong Kong Takes Time with the 2024 Clock and Watch Fair (HKCWF) 3-7 September
The Re-Edition/Reissue Issue: Living in the Shadow of the Original
Cartier Santos Review: The Luxury Sports Watch You Might Not Have Considered
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Thanks for the very interesting report from HK. I guess in the watch industry we`ll see a similar development like we do already with the car industry right now. The Chinese in terms of quality and design are meanwhile often in par with swiss oder german made products. The lack is still in promoting, marketing, distributing, sales and – very important – after sales experience with the customer. But they will learn quickly and then for lots of watch manufacturers in europe it will become more and more harder to justify their high price levels.
Thanks for the reply, Patrick. Have you been reading my notes for the wrap-up? You are absolutely right, a lot of the non-engineering skills are not yet effective (last year I had to write about 5 emails per brand to get proper photographic material and answers to questions… this morning I already have three mails…). And there is more to it, namely the market drifting, so stay tuned…
Vers interesting report, thank you Marton!
Informative and well written piece
Learning quite a few things too especially as I know very little about this creative industry
Marci, beautiful and overpriced, comme d’habitude, but I do find the gambling one lots of fun!!!