My WORST of the 2008 Shows...

- Rolex "Day-Date II": There is not a single model with the new large movement that is actually buyable. They look like something that you see after a long night with two family sized pizzas heavy on the anchovies chased down with several bottles of poorly distilled liquor. We are talking scary shit here man! I though it would be a great occasion to go "practical" with a DD2 but I guess it won't be this year.

- Bathrooms: They are still too few and too far away! I am considering peeing behind the stands next year. See if they fix this problem then!

- The fish are still there... The Breitling stand looks like a brothel out of a Tarantino movie. The circular stars at the sides with girls in short miniskirts leading the way to the rooms up on the top, plus the bar at the bottom... can't buy class like that.


- A lot of BS... At the end of this year's trip I must say I was a little saturated with the mountains of nonsense spoon fed by salesmen in the industry. Claims like: "we are the prettiest..., we are the tallest..., we the smartest..." are really getting to be annoying at best. First, statements like these are rarely true in the industry since most people are inspired by (copy) others and most things have been done decades before. If you do your homework you always find somebody somewhere that was way ahead of you. Honestly, it looks like many of these guys have been hired away from the automotive sales branch. Plus, there is no advantage to be taken by putting the competition down, even if some statements were to be true. Somebody should go and teach them to be competitive due to their owns merits (which incidentally most of them have) and not demerit the others.

- Hotels: As always taking advantage of the situation and over-charging for the rooms and turning five star hotels into mediocre accommodations.

- Swatch Group: I don't understand their plan. Commercially I find all their brands weak. I simply don't see many being too keen on buying a Glashutte Original, Jaquet Droz, Blancpain, Tissot, Rado, etc... Frankly, commercially their brands compared to Richmond's look like a sinking ship to me. I would love warn Breguet and Omega to get the hell out of there if they could. I don't think things will go too hot for them these years to come, since what will be hurting most will be the midrange and non-consolidated brands. Who knows, they might turnout with an excess of movements and could actually reconsider stopping the supply to smaller guys. Wouldn't that be a pisser!

- No WiFi: Nowhere inside the halls, or stands was WiFi to be seen. At this point it would not hurt the organizations to make an effort and have free, yes free, wireless connections for all. Would be a nice touch.

- Suits & Smells: It could be interesting to reconsider everybody's dress code. I understand that traveling for over a week and changing hotels at least once is a hassle. Yet having only ONE trolley with you is downright disgusting. Why? Because even if you change your underwear every day (which judging by the size of trolleys I doubt) the same suit will start to develop a "musky" aroma after day 4. After day 7 the thing will have people lean away from you in an elevator. At day 10 it needs to be tied down to a chair since now it has developed a life of its own and could actually be on the plane back home without you in it. By the way, being well dressed is wearing a suit in conjunction with a tie, yes a tie. All other combos are casual at best. You might as well do without the suit altogether. If you are going to be away from home for that long there is no shame in traveling with a large suitcase and not a small trolley. Really, its OK.

- Visiting Patek and Rolex: They still have that "my shit don't smell..." attitude which makes visiting them not a joy. At the Rolex stand they top that feeling having bouncers at the entrance. Just like in a Nightclub. I don't like these visits being Press and I can't imagine a regular Rolex/Patek enthusiast that paid for his ticket to the show. If they don't wish to be disturbed by their end buyers they should move to the Geneva fair. Since Geneva is not accessible to the general public they could do without the bouncers. Guys, If you choose to stay in Basel, then attending the general pubic with info and brochures is the LEAST you could do. Somewhere in there somebody forgot that their real customers are the ones wearing the watches and not only the Jewelers that buy the watches from them.