Swiss Creative Lab: the independents get organized

The six brands – Ludovic Ballouard, Edelberg, Jämes C. Pellaton, Snyper Genève, Pierre Thomas Genève and WATCHe – will be in Basel, not on Baselworld’s premises, but in the immediate vicinity. The seventh, A. Favre & Fils, will miss the meeting due to a business trip to Asia. The brands are joined under a single banner that says a great deal about their creativity and sense of experimentation. They will be joined by another fifteen.

Swiss Creative Lab (picture 1)

Rehearsal at Lamborghini’s

The setting: Lamborghini’s showroom (picture 1) close to the golden triangle of Plan-les-Ouates (a.k.a. ‘Plan-Les-Watches’) and approximately two hundred handpicked people comfortably settled among – wait for it – myriad sports cars! The colors alone are enough to evoke the legendary roar of the engines. Their products, timepieces or accessories, attracted a group of delighted Genevans (picture 2) – collectors, journalists, contractors and of course, rubberneckers (picture 3) likely to catch the horology virus or incubating it already. The contact with this community, by the way, is the locus of the greatest transmission of passion. This proves that the attractiveness of watchmaking remains the one clincher of the show.

Swiss Creative Lab (picture 2)

As often happens when fellow human beings converge, the challenge here was to cast aside egos and learn to coexist. It seems that this team – which had already bonded during an initial exhibition in China in what may be considered their baptism of fire – has decided to give a constructive answer to the stifling conditions imposed on them by groups and the major squatters of the markets. Unity is perhaps tiring as it requires a collective investment, but unity is also strength.

Swiss Creative Lab (picture 3)

Meeting at the hotel..

Carlo Enea Naldi is founder of the high-end Edelberg manufacture, which produces writing instruments and accessories related to watchmaking. Naldi stepped up as spokesperson of the group and is also its leader in some ways. As an entrepreneur, he is familiar with risk-taking and therefore did not hesitate to rent three floors (380 square meters) at the Ramada Plaza Hotel, the "palace" closest to Baselworld’s main entrance. His aim is not rebellion, it's more like survival, or rather existence. The result will be an increase in the number of exhibiting brands from six to twenty. Armed with their collections and their determination to conquer new markets, they will continue to generate news. They already have the stage, lots of surface space spread out over three stories.

Ramada Plaza Hotel. Free entry. 27 March to 3 April 2014, Basel

Six independent brands: (left to right), Michel Dawalibi (Jämes C. Pellaton), Carlo Enea Naldi (Edelberg), Ludovic Ballouard, independent watchmaker, Luc Pellaton (WATCHe), Bernard Dick (Snyper Genève), Thomas Engeler (Pierre Thomas Genève)

Carlo Lamprecht, former Minister of Economic Affairs for Geneva, now President of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève (GPHG), attended the event with his wife.