Barely days after Rolex, Patek Philippe, Tudor, and two other brands announced that they were leaving Baselworld 2021, the LVMH Group’s watch division has now announced their departure too. This means that Bulgari, TAG Heuer, Zenith, and Hublot will no longer be part of Baselworld.
It must be mentioned here that the LVHM Group had hosted an LVHM Watch Week in Dubai this January to showcase some of their early novelties for the year. According to a press release from the group, in light of the low representation of Swiss watch industry and the inevitable lower attendance at Baselworld in 2021, it “appears clear to the brands composing the Division and to the House of Bvlgari that they must also withdraw in order to preserve their image and their relations with their clients as well as with the media.”
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The LVMH Watchmaking Division on the one hand, and Bvlgari on the other, will decide on their plans in the coming weeks, according to their respective objectives. "We are sorry to have to leave this over 100-year-old Baselworld event to which our Maisons have been consistently loyal. It is nonetheless clear that we must respond quickly and make other arrangements. We are facing an opportunity to reinvent the format and content of one of the key moments of our watchmaking year, which represented both a major commercial challenge and a lever of influence for our brands. With this in mind, we will do our utmost to be present alongside the other prestigious Maisons that will gather in Geneva in April 2021, and thereby meet the requirements of our partners and clients while offering them an unrivalled experience,” said Stéphane Bianchi, CEO Watchmaking Division LVMH
"Grouping the entire Swiss watch industry in a single location, Geneva – the historical capital of watchmaking – and around a single date, is a major opportunity to at last revive a sector that all too many divisions and divergent interests have weakened compared to the rest of the luxury sector in which Bvlgari is active and that is making much faster progress. We are looking forward to going to Geneva in April 2021, even though we still need to define the terms of our participation, which we will specify in the coming weeks. We are also delighted not to have to make up for the lack of institutional watch shows, which in 2020 forced us to take tactical initiatives that were necessary in the short term but undesirable in the medium term,” said Jean-Christophe Babin, CEO Bvlgari Group.
