2009 Salon International de la Haute Horologie - SIHH

It is the end of February and the Swiss Watch version of the annual garden party has come and gone. The SIHH (Salon International de la Haute Horologie) annual watch fair in Geneva has brought together a select cadre of elite swiss watch manufacturing houses and the world's premier watch dealers and press. The purpose is to debut new products and to provide the most opportune time for orders to be placed for the coming year.

The SIHH or Geneva Fair is the outgrowth of the schism created when The Vendome Group began to accelerate it's acquisition of leading elite brands and the subsequent competition for space and prominence in the traditional watch fair in Basel. The Vendome Group merely created their own fair to showcase their many brands and allied companies. Today the participants in the Geneva Fair are Vendome Group Brands: Cartier, Baume & Mercier, Piaget, Jaeger LeCoultre, Vacheron Constantin, Mont Blanc, IWC and Officine Panerai and Roger Dubuis and allied but independent brands Audemars Piguet, Girard Perregaux, Jean Richard, Urwerk and Parmigiani Fleurier.

Despite the diversity of these many brands it is evident that there is a commonality of purpose and methodology in this vertically integrated industry where virtually every watch manufacturing concern is intimately associated with the same suppliers for parts and services and the worlds distributors and retailers are a small and select group that the brands are in constant battle for influence over and prominence amongst the press, watch retailers and the public.

In such an integrated industry how does innovation flourish and how does one's technological advances remain secret in a world where the brands are nearly all owned by one of three giant conglomerates? Very carefully and rarely for long. When Richemont or Vendome Group seek competitive advantages in styling or technical innovation it is immediately adopted by its subsidiaries as an economy of scale in an effort to capture market share and the spotlight from other groups such as Swatch Group (Omega, Longines, Glashutte Original, Blancpain, Breguet, Tissot etc. and LVMH (Tag Heur, Boucheron, Louis Vuitton and Hublot.)

O.K. So what is new for 2009? Nothing truly innovative but variations on existing themes and despite the social veneer movers and shakers are very very worried about the economic firestorm in the major watch consuming markets of the U.S. and Asia. When the recovery begins we will see more new products and aggressive advances in technology but for now the industry is preparing for a very difficult year. Charles Darwin would tell you that next year we will know who did the best job of overcoming 2009 as a challenge to survival.