Please join our Quill & Pad round table discussion on Baselworld 2016. This time we take on some of the same topics that GaryG and his collector group use to the discuss their impressions of a watch fair: best of show, worst of show, watch you would buy with your own money, watch you would buy if money were no object, investment watch, patronage watch, fun watch, and a fantasy money no object watch.
Post-SIHH reports indicate that the inclusion of the so-called indies was a big success for both visitors and the small brands alike, but also that there was a little grumbling from some of the large established SIHH brands generated by the fact that visitors to the fair remarked − with justification − that there were more interesting watches in the Carré des Horlogers than in the rest of the SIHH altogether. What can the industry learn from their inclusion in 2016’s first fair?
As the SIHH closes its doors, the Hautlence team will no longer include co-founder Guillaume Tetu. At the end of 2015, Tetu announced that he would be leaving his own company to “take up a new challenge.” So what happens to Hautlence now? Read on to find out.
Welcome to the 2015 edition of Quill & Pad’s early Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) predictions in which we pick our favorites and explain why. The six pre-selected finalists in the Mechanical Exception category are the Christophe Claret Maestoso, Dewitt Academia Mathematical, Emmanuel Bouchet Complication One, Hautlence Vortex, HYT H3, and Jaquet Droz’s The Charming Bird.
The Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG) has just published the list of 2015’s pre-selected watches in the run-up to the big red carpet event in Geneva on October 29. The pre-selected watches will go on a world tour that includes stops in Hong Kong, Seoul, Dubai, Geneva, and London in October and November. But enough preamble, let’s have a look at the watches that are now in serious contention to take home big prizes this year.
Over its eleven years of existence, Hautlence has experienced the tumult of both changes in investors and senior management. Hautlence co-founder and CEO Guillaume Tetu has been through it all. And he’s still smiling!
Vortex is the brand’s latest, and most complicated, watch post-MELB acquisition, and it’s success, or lack thereof, will be an important milestone for Hautlence as it looks to the future. So how is the watch?
The date was March 2004. The place was Basel. I had gotten wind of a new “brand” and was heading down the street from Baselworld’s Hall 1 toward the local Starbucks to meet with the founders. In the ten years since that coffee-fueled day, Hautlence has basically experienced its own birth, middle age, near death and reincarnation. That’s quite a lot of history for any 10-year old brand. Read this story to find out where it is now and why Eric Cantona is the new “gentleman rebel” face.