I am very curious to see how retailers will react to this year’s Watches & Wonders. The past few months have not been easy for some of them, and with several countries in a state of crisis, consumers reacted immediately by not spending their hard-earned money. Retailers know the status quo like the back of their hands because they are confronted with the hard facts every day. From what I’ve seen and heard, retailers are very active, and brands are taking a lot of orders from them.

This is a very promising message, contradicted by the recent decline of certain “trophy watches”, as some call them. Perhaps we are returning to normal, and the rising prices in the market are simply a reflection of the speculative side of investing. Now that speculators seem to be moving on, we’ll be able to enjoy all the good replica  watches again.

Despite the criticism, Watches & Wonders 2023 gives me a very positive feeling overall. It gives me a lot of hope for the rest of the year for watches. We saw some really good stuff and weren’t led by the hype. However, some of the most common questions I received during Watches & Wonders 2023 were whether Omega would be doing something as well and why the brand wasn’t at the show.

To be honest, I think “Watches & Wonders” would have been helpful for fake Omega, Glashütte Original, Blancpain, Breguet and Jaquet Droz press conferences. Or they could at least do something similar to “Watches & Wonders” on their own. So far, the silence from some of these brands has been deafening. Let us hope that this will change in the coming months. Breitling and Audemars Piguet, for example, did their own events on different dates and got the exposure they deserved ahead of the Watches & Wonders exhibition.