Watches & Wonders 2022 is history. We spent a week in Geneva covering the show, and it was quite a whirlwind. I’ve been anticipating this for a long time: I was scheduled to travel to Basel in 2020 for what would have been my first European trade show, but the chaos that ensued that Spring kept that from happening. For a time, it wasn’t clear if this show would happen, with Covid-19 still very much a concern and the international nature of an event like this, part of me refused to believe with certainty that I’d really be heading to Switzerland until I was very nearly at Logan International with boarding pass in hand and luggage checked.
Naturally, and as you’d expect, our coverage of the event was very focused on watches. It’s a watch blog, after all. But I think there’s some pulling back of the curtain that is worth exploring, and might be interesting to some, and since it was my first time at an event like this and it was all so new to me, I wanted to take the opportunity to get some of this down in writing for posterity. So, some observations.
Nobody Can Prepare You for the Size and Scale of Palexpo
When I first started reading watch blogs and would get to coverage of events like Baselworld and SIHH, I’d often see writers like myself describing these enormous booths that brands set up to showcase their watches. “They’re as big as a house!” I’d often hear. Well, yes, they are. But what makes these booths so impressive isn’t just their size, but where they’re situated. Palexpo, the cavernous convention center where Watches & Wonders takes place, is one of the largest buildings I’ve ever spent a significant amount of time in. It’s 100,000 square meters of floor space with towering ceilings that watch brands take full advantage of to create booths that have a verticality to them that I wasn’t quite ready for. It’s a headspinningly large space, and you get your steps in, as they say, when walking the hall. If you have back to back meetings scheduled with brands on opposite ends of Palexpo, you’re going to be late to meeting number two. When Blake and I did a leisurely walk-through of just about half the hall for Instagram, the video went on for 20 minutes.