WatchTime - August 2012

EDITOR´S
Letter
The scene at last year's
IBG New York event
Jeff Kingston (center)
talks watches with
attendees at the
New York IBG.
8 WatchTime August 2012
New and Improved:
Our IBG Events
Here’s a heads-up for anyone
thinking of attending any of
WatchTime’s “Inside Basel/
Geneva” events this year. Sign
up soon! As I write this in early
June, more than three months before the first
event, tickets are selling well. For example,
more than 100 people have already purchased
tickets for the New York City event on Sept. 20.
The New York event always sells out, but this
year sales are brisker than usual.
There are literally hundreds of excellent reasons
not to miss an Inside Basel/Geneva (IBG)
event: namely, the hundreds of new watches
from the world’s top watch companies that are
on display for you to behold and hold. But this
year, there are a few more good reasons to join
your fellow aficionados at one of our five
events. That’s because Jeff Kingston, the wellknown
watch expert who is the star of the
shows, and Dominik Grau, WatchTime’s publisher,
who organizes them, sat down at the end
of last year’s show cycle and critically reviewed
them. They decided to make some improvements
in the events for 2012, our seventh show
season.
The first major change was to upgrade the
event venues. The shows will be held over a
four-week period starting in Chicago on Sept.
11 and ending in Los Angeles on Oct. 4. In between
we’ll be in Philadelphia (Sept. 18), New
York (Sept. 20), and San Francisco (Oct. 2). The
Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles
events will be in new locations,
all of them renowned fivestar
hotels or private clubs.
The event consists of two parts.
It begins with a two-hour watch
fair cum cocktail reception at
which around 20 watch brands
show their latest creations. Following
that is a dinner at which
Kingston offers a multi-media presentation
of the top watches at the
SIHH and Baselworld shows.
There will be improvements to the
cocktail reception, the dinner, and the presentation.
The reception will feature live music.
Kingston, a self-confessed foodie, will work
with the head chef at each hotel to design the
dinner menus specifically for the IBG event. The
menus will be created solely for IBG and will
not be available anywhere else. Wines, too, will
get special attention, with Kingston and the hotel’s
sommelier picking Champagnes and wines
that best complement the meal.
There will also be changes in Kingston’s
presentation. He has revised the format to make
it shorter, 75 minutes instead of the 90-minuteplus
presentations of previous years. That’s because
he has altered the video portion of the
program. Instead of various watch company executives
talking about their watches, the videos
will be short mini-documentaries shot in the
Vallée de Joux and La Chaux-de-Fonds showing
Kingston exploring different aspects of Swiss
watchmaking. One features Kingston talking
about watchmaking with Philippe Dufour, one
of the world’s most celebrated watchmakers.
Another change is that Kingston will present
the new watches by product category rather
than by brand as in previous years. New, too,
will be an interactive segment in the presentation
with a discussion of the current watch scene
between Kingston and yours truly. (Jimmy Durante
was right: Everybody wants to get into the
act!)
One thing will not change, however: the
goodie bags! At the end of the evening, each attendee
will receive a bag containing gifts from
the watch-company sponsors. We did not dare
tamper with this tradition.
To register for an IBG event, go to our website
at watchtime.com and click on “Events.”
Or call 1-800-596-5898. For questions about
the events, please email event manager Rose
Alonzo at ralonzo@watchtime.com.
I’ll be at all the events. If you see me, please
say hello. It is always a treat for me to meet our
readers.
Joe Thompson
Editor-in-Chief