Dubai Watch Week is unique in the world of horology. The key to its success has been that it steered clear of becoming a commercially driven event; instead, the organiser – Hind Seddiqi [below], who is the CMO of Ahmed Seddiqi and Sons, (one of the largest watch retailers in the world) – has aimed to create an accessible, fun and insightful fair that turns those with a curiosity for watches into veritable connoisseurs. The latest edition ran for five days in late November at the DIFC Gate and it encompassed a Masterclass Area where you could learn all about the art of engraving, watchmaking and more; an Exhibition Hall where there were an incredible number of new limited-edition timepieces across a range of prices; and of course, our favourite space, the Horology Forum, where some of the industry’s biggest names debate hot topics with renowned journalists, celebrities, influencers and collectors. The latest edition was the fifth so far in Dubai and it attracted a record attendance of 16,000 visitors, as well as a very impressive roster of panellists including Breitling’s CEO, AP’s CEO, Nick Foulkes, Mr. Wonderful, Watch Anish and Will.i.am [below]. This supplement aims to share some highlights of that fair.
EXHIBITION: Audemars Piguet
AP put together its first DWW exhibition, dedicating the space to the Offshore.
Just before it kicked off the 50th anniversary celebrations of its Royal Oak, AP put together an exhibition at DWW dedicated to its Royal Oak Offshore. Entitled ‘Beyond the Limits: A Journey through Time, Design and Materials’, it showcased how multiform this model is, with its endless colours and materials, clearly serving as one of the brand’s main platforms for creative experimentation. Notable inclusions were the Royal Oak Offshore Selfwinding Chronograph, the Diver, the Tourbillon Chronograph, the Women Collection, not to mention the T3 and the Alinghi in forged carbon. To us though, the most extraordinary thing about the Offshore was that, when it came out in 1993, its design and unheard-of XL proportions were criticised, even by Gerald Genta, the designer of the Royal Oak. Crazy, right?
ATTRACTION: Food
DWW proves the way to a person’s heart is through their stomach.One rather smart move first introduced by the Dubai Watch Week a couple of years ago was the inclusion of food concepts within the exhibition area. How’s that smart? For two reasons. The first is that the fair takes place from 10am to 10pm over five days, so the need to offer options for breakfast, lunch and dinner within the premises (and not force people to wander off to the concourse level of DIFC) is pretty important. The second is that by making well considered options for those food stalls, you can attract more locals, many of whom might well come for the food but stay for the horological fun and insights.
The options this year included the local food truck turned burger sensation, Salt, who created a limited-edition menu just for the event and had people (especially Emirati families) lining up in an orderly queue all day every day. It was a sight to behold. Moving further upmarket, there was a Cipriani pop-up serving popular breakfast favourites, as well as a selection of carpaccio, burrata, salads, Chilean seabass and gnocchi. And, of course, their vanilla meringue cake was as popular as ever. Besides those two, there were coffee and treat options in the form of Home Bakery as well as Twst. No wonder everyone was happy to stay all day.
INTERVIEW: Jacob & Co
Forget that he’s known as the ‘King of Bling’, Jacob also clearly loves complications.
Founded in New York in 2007, Jacob & Co. is a new brand of highly complicated and often ostentatious watches. As Apollinaria Bakhanova, the brand’s Regional Director for the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia, explains, their watches need to be experienced. “There’s a lot of storytelling, as they’re not just highly complicated watches, most are limited edition and many are pièces uniques.”
Jacob Arabo is the embodiment of the American dream, is he not?
[Apollinaria Bakhanova] Absolutely. He was a kid, who moved to Queens from Uzbekistan at the age of 14 and built his business without any investors or partners. All he needed was a bank loan and, till now whatever he earns, he invests back into the business, into future technologies, into production, into pushing the envelope further. He’s a hardworking guy too. Every morning he’s on calls from 8am to 12pm with his watchmakers in Geneva and for one week every month he’s there in person, pushing them all to make the impossible possible.
What is your largest market today?
It fluctuates quarter by quarter but it’s between the Middle East and Asia. I can tell you though that three years ago when we opened our first store in the UAE, in Fashion Avenue of the Dubai Mall, it quickly became the number one sales point, of our entire global network, in terms of watches sold.
Can you define the Jacob customer?
It’s definitely someone with new money, an entrepreneur, someone who enjoys life, someone who doesn’t mind showing their status. More often than not they’re watch collectors, as they appreciate our complications and all the other things that Jacob has pioneered over the years, whether it’s offering diamond watches for men, applying gems to watch strap buckles or his patented diamond setting that entirely hides the metal clasps.
How many watches do you currently make a year?
We produce around 2,000 watches a year but we always have the ability to tailor our production plan so that, if a client requires his or her watch immediately, we can bump it up the plan and cater to their needs. Of course, clients need to understand though that each watch requires a different amount of time to create. For example, the [1.3 million USD] sapphire crystal takes six months and the Chiron [below] takes three months.
Does Jacob & Co. produce any everyday watches?
We do for sure, whether the Messi or the Khabib, these are chronographs you can wear all day long and they are more affordable too, at 25,000 USD.
Can you tell us how you ended up partnering Bugatti?
They actually reached out to us. Stephen Winkelmann [the former President of Bugatti] already understood what we were doing with our complications so things moved quickly. In fact, we signed the deal in March or April, and by September 1st we had already prepared and produced 110 chronographs for their 110th anniversary. After that came the Twin Turbo Furious, now we have the Chiron and later in 2022 we are going to launch something Bugatti lovers will go crazy for – it’s something very special, and something Jacob has never done before. [The Jean Bugatti is an innovative double retrograde chronograph with twin-flying tourbillon regulator.]
How about your other collaborations?
In the past we had a very successful partnership with Ronaldo, then with Luis Figo, but Jacob always wanted to work with Messi and that happened too. It was a great experience. We also did a collaboration with the American street artist Alec Monopoly and we are doing an entire line with the UFC Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Will Jacob & Co. survive after Jacob Arabo?
Sure. Two years ago, Jacob’s middle son, Ben Arabo – who’s a successful digital entrepreneur and one of Forbes magazine’s “30 under 30” – joined the company as CEO. He’s already changing a lot, whether through digitalisation or the way we work internally.
REVEAL: Aramedes
A new Swiss watch brand with a world-first Islamic function.
Aramedes was launched at the latest DWW with a very novel Mecca Collection that offers three separate Islamic functions: (1) a pointer to Mecca (Qibla), (2) a daily prayer time indicator (Salah), and (3) a fasting time indicator for Ramadan (Sawm). To achieve this, the Aramedes team designed and developed a patented high-tech electronic component that is integrated into the watch case alongside its mechanical movement.
That way, all you have to do is initialise and calibrate the watch with an app, connecting it via Bluetooth by using the pusher at 2 o’clock on the watch case. After this, the watch and its module work independently of the app and your phone. Prices for their Mecca watches vary from 5,750 to 150,000 CHF.
EXHIBITION: Rolex
A new exhibition helps shed light on the pioneering success of Rolex.
Rolex returned to DWW with a new exhibition, this time dedicated to ‘Waterproofness’. It showcased how Rolex was the first brand to ever create a hermetically sealed, waterproof watch, named ‘Oyster’, back in 1926. In fact, just a year later they put this watch to the test when it was worn by a young swimmer who successfully crossed the English Channel. In 1953, they went a step further with the world’s first diver’s watch, the Submariner capable of plunging to a depth of 100 metres. And seven years later, they tested an experimental Deep-Sea variant that survived depths of 10,916 metres. And by 1960, the Sea-Dweller was born, offering waterproofness to a depth of 610 metres. A true pioneer, indeed.
INTERVIEW: Audemars Piguet
High demand is a double-edged sword because with it comes frustration from clients and those trying to get into the brand.
Interestingly, Olivia Crouan, the Chief Brand Officer for Audemars Piguet, hasn’t always been a watch person. She spent most of her career (almost 20 years) working with brands in the wine and spirits division of LVMH. In fact, she only joined the horological world after moving to Geneva in 2018.
In terms of social media engagement, loyalty and unpaid advertising, Audemars Piguet and arguably Lamborghini are right at the top of the pile. What exactly is your social media strategy?
[Olivia Crouan] We nurture it for sure but I think Covid-19 actually helped us think again. If you look at what we were doing before the pandemic it was just product, product, product. But, when I joined Audemars Piguet, I really felt this feeling of family but that wasn’t reflected in our advertising or social media, so the idea has been to try and better reflect who we are and that has been working well. We share a lot of different types of content. We share a lot about our history and products, but we also look towards the future, lifestyle, people who make the brand. Diversity of content is important, but it’s not finished.
What has been your most important achievement so far?
I would say it was defining the why of Audemars Piguet. I don’t know if you know the teachings of Simon Sinek, but your “why” is a statement of purpose that describes the reason for your existence. For example, people don’t come to your brand for the product, they come for the purpose of the brand. It’s the reason why we exist. And in the case of Audemars Piguet, the reason why we exist is the philosophy of the founders. They had the utmost belief in themselves but they also knew they wouldn’t make it alone so they gathered a huge array of talent and this was what we call the “établissage” system, consisting of a myriad of small highly specialised suppliers each producing specific components of the watch (gears, springs, dials, hands etc.) which are assembled by the manufacturer in-house. So, we have always fostered talent and developed people.
How much of your communication is directed at existing customers and how much towards aspiring ones?
We craft 42,000 watches today and our CEO announced that next year we will reach 50,000. We will never go up in the sky, we are grounded in excellence and uncompromising qualities but we want to gather our family often, nurture them and connect them with elements that really touch them, whether those are technical things, historical things, lifestyle things, ways of life, hobbies like golf, art and so on, so we have a whole communication dedicated to that. And then it’s true we are also aiming to touch more people in the world. Marketing theory fifteen years ago used to inform us that it is more expensive to retain people than to recruit more people, then it swung back. But for me I believe in an even split although it depends on the year. For example, 2022 is the 50th anniversary of the Royal Oak and it’s very important that we celebrate this within the family.
Let’s speak about the supply chain briefly as it creates a lot of negative brand equity, especially when you have so many people unable to buy the APs they want.
Education is the answer. We craft 42,000 watches a year not because we don’t want to produce more but because we simply cannot. So, it’s all about education and letting people know why we have that level of production and why we can’t sell watches to everyone who wants one and it’s important that we remain humble and honest. If you tell people the truth, they will get it, but you’re right, it’s difficult for the brand and it’s important we manage it properly.
The hype of the Nautilus has often upset Patek Philippe, but that’s not the case for Audemars Piguet is it, as for many years the brand was relying on the one key model line that is the Royal Oak.
Yes, we embrace it. Of course, we were living from 1875 to 1972 without the Royal Oak and now we have our newborn the Code 11.59 but what’s important is not the collections whether Royal Oak, the Offshore, Concept and Code 11.59 but beyond the watches and products this is the philosophy of the family and, as soon as you explain that it’s all the same family, it’s all okay. The Code 11.59 may have had a difficult start because people weren’t expecting it but it’s now surpassing all our expectations and it really encapsulates everything the brand stands for whether it is playing with materials, the way it captures the light. And this is only the beginning.
REVEAL: Hublot Concrete Sand
An Hublot special, made using Emirati sand and camel leather.
The 2021 Dubai Watch Week was special for many reasons, not least the fact that, a few days after the fair closed, the United Arab Emirates celebrated its National Day, marking 50 years since the country was founded in 1971.
To fete the occasion, Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons introduced 35 limited edition watches and jewellery pieces, including a rework of Hublot’s Classic Fusion Chronograph, which combines their signature concrete case, a dial made of sand that was actually sourced from the desert in the UAE, and a strap made of camel leather.
“We are happy to celebrate the UAE’s 50th anniversary with our partners Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons by launching this special edition, which is a perfect representation of the nation’s creativity and ingenuity. We are looking forward to seeing the watch on the wrists of Hublotistas and collectors in the Emirates,” said the brand’s CEO, Ricardo Guadalupe, during its launch at the DWW.
