To the Hong Kong Watch and Clock Fair at the Convention and Exhibition Centre. "The biggest timepiece event in the world", we read on one notice, although we always thought that a similar event held in Basel was bigger. We don't know much about the watch industry.
Clearly watches are about more than telling the time. They are jewellery, they are fashion accessories and, as such, say something about the owner - rich, not rich, sporty, outgoing and so on. There were thousands and thousands of watches on display.
We approached a buyer from the US, who informed us: "One thing you gotta understand - there's a lotta hypocrisy in this business." By which he meant the Swiss premium. The "Made in Switzerland" tag carries a premium, except that these days a lot of Swiss watches have much of their mechanisms made in China. "The Chinese make the best watches in the world," our buyer told us.
We were advised shortly after this encounter that the top 10 Swiss brands account for about half the industry's revenues, which are estimated at US$40 billion. While the luxury end of the market is pretty static in the US and Europe, it is growing at about 10 per cent in China, we are told. Further down the scale the trends are for colourful watches. Fashion watches are another trend, "but they have got to look better than their price".
One thought we came away with was that one of the highest-margin areas of the business - in other words where we get ripped off the most - is branded quartz watches.
"It's just a case with a simple mechanism."