Watchonista Exclusive: Presenting The 2018 Winners Of The Gaïa Prize

From now on, it's official. Unlike in the past of this award, the results are already communicated before the date of the ceremony on the 20th September 2018. Because the public, journalists and former winners deserve to have the time to get documented and organized to be at the MIH that evening. On stage and at the microphone, historian Régis Huguenin-Dumittan, President of the Jury and Curator of the MIH. At his side, Annalise Eggimann, Director of Innosuisse, the Swiss Agency for the Promotion of Innovation.
 

By the way, about promotion and in order to celebrate in 2019 the quarter of a century of the prize, a fourth category will be born that evening: Horizon Gaïa. It will reward an individual one-year project by the attribution of a grant financed by the Watch Academy Foundation. The closing date for registration is 21 March 2019. The Gaïa Prize, created in memory of the patron Maurice Ditisheim, is even more reminiscent of the Nobel Prize, with a financial allotment.

The reluctant marketing man! Even though he’s the first to say no, Maximilian Büsser would really deserve a marketing professorship at some university.
 

He’s a man who makes decisions, but he attributes them to serendipitous encounters, to the kind of curiosity-driven opportunism that transforms ideas and contacts into life goals and then into an entrepreneurial career. What he does not say, is that they are born of a vision, of planning, in short of some calculation. And yet his choices could be taught like case studies in the most illustrious marketing institutions. Was it not he who, after meeting François-Paul Journe in the halls of Baselworld, decided to launch the Opus saga for a brand he was in charge of? A brand that had long maintained a high-jewelry image, before Büsser’s stroke of genius? In a twinkling of an eye, and disregarding the warnings from professionals in the sector against anyone who would so bold as to venture into the realm of co-branding, Büsser managed to endow Harry Winston with an ultra complex watchmaking dimension that has become highly coveted by collectors and those wishing to discover this world.
 

Another fact with high added marketing value was the launch of his own brand, adding to his initials the word “friends.” In some ways, he brought to watchmaking what street culture gave to hip-hop, a “featuring” aspect. He opened up his press pages where high-definition visuals are loaded and the latest press releases can be downloaded, while other brands barricade themselves behind codes and registrations that have to be confirmed and therefore undergo triage. He has applied the open source idea to information, and here too one finds a little revolution that is similar to the one of being totally transparent, because he also reveals the names of his suppliers, who’ve been subtly turned into friends.
 

Finally, by opening his M.A.D. Gallery, he not only created a vessel for the objects he likes, will like and will continue discovering, but he has also given birth to an unfamiliar and elegant brand boutique. You almost forget that you are in a place that not only sells timepieces, but also incites you to buy one. What better place to steep his retro-futurist spirit, his child’s soul, which sometimes lets itself be carried away and creates very daring pieces.