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☆ Despite the Watch World’s Secrecy, Data Services Expand
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-12 | by ( Victoria Gomelsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Two decades after Fred Levin, one of the Swiss watch industry’s market research pioneers, introduced many watch businesses to the benefits of data, he is back with a new performance measurement service, Luxury Watch Barometer. The business tracks point-of-sale data provided by more than 400 retail companies, with 2,100 store locations, across the United States, the Swiss watch industry’s largest export market for the past few years. In exchange for providing information, Mr. Levin said, retailers receive the monthly reports free of charge. Brands pay an annual fee of $50,000 to $250,000 for the information. “Participating retailers not only get the data — things like gross margin return on investment, inventory turns and sales growth — they also get the benchmark report so they can understand how they’re performing relative to the average,” he said.

Persons: Fred Levin, Levin, ” Organizations: Brands Locations: United States

☆ Oh No! It’s Valentine’s Day and Flowers Just Won’t Do.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-10 | by ( Victoria Gomelsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

If Valentine’s Day sneaked up on you this year, do not worry. With overnight and even same-day shipping now commonly available, last-minute givers have plenty of options. To help spark your ideas, we asked nine tastemakers around the world to offer some 11th-hour recommendations. Their replies, edited for clarity, included experiential gifts ideal for romantic partners and practical items that could easily double as birthday presents for family and friends. A couple of suggestions, provided by Liesl Clark, don’t involve spending money at all.

Persons: Liesl Clark

☆ A Watch Honoring an Explorer Joins His Son’s Antarctic Trip
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-18 | by ( Victoria Gomelsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“It was very emotional.”The idea to run the marathon was Mr. Lecamp’s. When he invited Mr. Messner to join him in Antarctica, Mr. Lecamp insisted that they run the entire course together. Mr. Messner, an accomplished alpinist who scaled Mont Blanc in 2022 wearing a previous version of the 1858 Geosphere watch, was game. “I generally see life consisting of possibilities, and this was just another possibility to know my body a bit better,” Mr. Messner said. “I’m not always wearing a watch while mountaineering, but when running a marathon, it makes much more sense because time counts,” Mr. Messner said.

Persons: Messner, Arved Fuchs, ”, Lecamp’s, marathoner, Mr, Lecamp, . Messner, “ I’m, “ Locations: Swiss, Lake Baikal, Russia, Antarctica, Blanc

☆ Soon You May Know Exactly Where Your Diamond Was Mined
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-20 | by ( Victoria Gomelsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

He moved to the city, a diamond trading hub, after leaving De Beers, where he had worked for 16 years, including five years in Gaborone, Botswana’s capital. Greg Kwiat, chief executive of Kwiat Diamonds, a diamond jewelry brand in New York City, said the company’s Mine to Shine traceability program, introduced in June, was likewise based on a desire to show how diamonds positively affect the communities in Africa where they are mined. Consumers who buy Kwiat diamonds are able to follow their stones from the mine through the stages of cutting and setting into jewelry. “Right now, we’re sharing videos and imagery of the process as it’s occurring,” Mr. Kwiat said. In 2003, a coalition of governments, civil society and diamond industry established the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, aimed at preventing the flow of conflict diamonds.

Persons: Mr, Moltke, De, ”, Greg Kwiat, Kwiat, “ Organizations: Diamond Center, De, Kwiat, Consumers Locations: Antwerp, Belgium, De Beers, Gaborone, Botswana’s, “, Clearwater, Fla, New York City, Africa, Kimberley

☆ Gift Wrapping That Doesn’t Create Waste
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( Victoria Gomelsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Pull up the bottom corner of the furoshiki and cover the bottles. Pick up the corner of the fabric at bottom and tuck it in between the bottles. KAWAMURA My wife and I use them for gifts, and we always wrap cushions with furoshiki. And apart from that, there are some ways of using it as an organizer for your travels. The trait of furoshiki is versatility.

Persons: KAWAMURA

☆ Fireworks Over Bangkok’s River or Samba the Night Away
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( Victoria Gomelsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

If you have the day, you can rent a boat to visit the Princes’ Islands, a group of nine islands in the Sea of Marmara. Only four of them are open for public visits: Kinaliada, Burgazada, Heybeliada and Buyukada. They have a small private beach, as well as a restaurant open to the public called Elio Sedef. Every hour of the boat rental is 500 euros [$530] plus tax, plus catering. For the Princes’ Islands excursion, you need at least seven to eight hours.

Persons: Elio Sedef Organizations: Princes Locations: ’, Marmara, Turkey

☆ Watch Boutiques Blossom in the Digital Age
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-13 | by ( Victoria Gomelsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“As much as we’ve grown over the past five years, we’re expecting just as much in the next five years,” he said. (In 2022, the United States accounted for 15.7 percent of Swiss watch exports, making it far and away the industry’s No. Plenty of watchmakers would say the same about Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Southeast Asia are two of the luxury watch world’s most alluring destinations at the moment. So let’s create some.”Despite their modest production volume compared with that of corporate brands, independent watchmakers are equally focused on opening physical stores.

Persons: Ira Melnitsky, we’re, ”, Chopard, Hublot, Zenith, ” Julien Tornare, Mr . Kern, Breitling, “, Edouard Meylan, Moser Organizations: Bucherer, Moser & Cie Locations: California, Hawaii, U.S, United States, Swiss, Europe, Asia, Shanghai, Vienna, Cyprus, Riyadh, Bangkok, Saudi Arabia, Southeast Asia, Schaffhausen, Hong Kong

☆ Watch Brands Borrow Some of Music’s Cool
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-09 | by ( Victoria Gomelsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In 2022, when Mark Ronson, the Grammy- and Oscar-winning D.J., songwriter and super-producer, became a brand ambassador for the Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet (A.P. ), there was an element of kismet to the partnership. through music,” Mr. Ronson recalled last month on a phone call from his home in New York City. “I had to track it down,” he said. In July, the multi-hyphenate entertainer hit a high note in his relationship with the brand when, wearing a 1982 gold Royal Oak from his personal collection, he performed at a closing-night concert that he had curated on A.P.’s behalf at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

Persons: Mark Ronson, Audemars Piguet, “, ” Mr, Ronson, ” Organizations: Montreux Jazz Locations: Swiss, New York City, “, Paris, ”, Switzerland, Lake Geneva

☆ Think A.I. is Coming for the Watch World? It’s Already There.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-15 | by ( Victoria Gomelsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

During a press roundtable event at the Cartier booth at Watches and Wonders, Cyrille Vigneron, the brand’s chief executive, said that A.I. “By having so much data coming from call centers or web inquiries or even what words customers use on comments or on their own social media, you have a lot of words,” Mr. Vigneron said. “What we’ve done for the last five years is be distinctively ourselves,” Mr. Vigneron said. “That’s collective intelligence, and not artificial.”Expansion plansBrands aren’t the only watch-world entities looking to optimize their operations with A.I. Wristcheck, a Hong Kong retailer of pre-owned watches, is planning to introduce what it calls Wristcheck Intelligence this year.

Persons: Cyrille Vigneron, Cartier, Mr, Vigneron, “, ”, “ We’re, ” Mr, ” Austen Chu Organizations: Cartier, Normale, A.I Locations: Hong Kong

☆ It’s a ‘Superhero Cape’ for the Wrist
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-15 | by ( Victoria Gomelsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

WONG I totally hear you about the superhero cape. WONG I don’t know if I’d call myself a collector. I know collectors who have rooms of watches and they don’t know what they have. I’m going to come out and say I am a watch collector because I actually do put some thought into curating what I have. I experienced the best version of a watch meet-up on my very first one because it was a very diverse group.

Persons: WONG, Richard Mille, you’re, Suzanne, “, I’ve, Complecto Locations: New York

☆ You Shouldn’t Squish These Bugs
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-26 | by ( Victoria Gomelsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — “Bonkers About Beetles.” “Innumerable Insects.” “Bugs: A Pop-Up Book.” The volumes that line the shelves of the jewelry designer Daniela Villegas’s home in this part of greater Los Angeles underscore what is obvious to anyone who ventures inside: She is passionate about pests. Thousands of specimens — of the six, eight- and 100-plus-leg varieties — hang in frames on the walls, are displayed in bell jars on the shelves and lie beneath the glass atop her oversized coffee table. Much of the collection was acquired at bug fairs and is shared with her husband, the furniture designer Sami Hayek (Salma’s younger brother). It is likely to make visitors think they have wandered into the entomology section of a natural history museum, or rather, its deluxe gift shop. The eccentric décor includes a stuffed armadillo adorned with its own gemstone bracelet; a wicker table in the shape of a grasshopper, topped with a crab sculpture; and a collection of Ms. Villegas’s signature Khepri rings, honoring the scarab-face god of ancient Egypt.

☆ How Italy’s Heart of Gold is Melding with More Modern Jewelry Machinery
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-26 | by ( Victoria Gomelsky | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

It also is a hub for jewelry companies that continue to promote traditional handicrafts even as they experiment with cutting-edge techniques such as powder metallurgy — reducing precious metals to powder to be used in 3-D printing, or what the industry calls additive manufacturing. It is the kind of advancement that will allow jewelers to execute designs that are impossible to achieve through traditional casting methods, ensuring both quality and consistent results. “Vicenza is, without any doubt, the technological core of the machinery production for the gold sector,” Giovanni Bersaglio, the chief operation officer at Berkem, a supplier of plating equipment and chemical solutions for the jewelry industry, based in nearby Padua, wrote in an email. In 2022, exports of Italian gold and silver jewelry reached 9.8 billion euros (about $10.5 billion), a 22.5 percent increase over the same period in 2021, and a 40.8 percent increase over the same period in 2019, according to Confindustria Federorafi, a national association representing companies in Italy’s jewelry manufacturing sector. Damiano Zito, the chief executive of Progold, which designs and manufactures jewelry in Trissino, a small town about 15 miles west of Vicenza, said the pandemic highlighted an issue that has plagued the Italian industry for the better part of the past decade: its dwindling number of skilled workers.

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