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GET ACCESS TO Over 60,000 pages from the history of watchmaking, a journey through 60 years in the life of the industry from 1959 until the present day. Contact us: contact@europastar.com
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LA FRAN ND CE ITA LY
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72
A JOURNEY THROUGH
OUR ARCHIVES
1927
1960
2018
SPECIAL FEATURE COMPILED BY PIERRE MAILLARD
1927 The year the publishing house was born, devoted essentially to the international promotion of the watchmaking industry. Dozens of magazines, periodicals and guides in French, German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese and Chinese, etc. were published and sold all around the world. All of them have been carefully preserved in our Archives. 1960 Coinciding with the birth of the European Common Market and following the 1957 Treaty of Rome, all of these publications with varying titles, but sharing an identical purpose and covering all international markets, were gradually grouped together and made available under one name, Europa Star. 2018 This treasure trove of memories and information on the entire watchmaking industry gleaned over 90 years lay dormant in the hefty bound tomes constituting our Archives. We resolved to digitise the entire collection. It was no mean feat, entailing the processing of hundreds of thousands of pages and the development of a research tool to fully exploit all the resulting data. 2019 In early 2019, we make available for public consultation an initial batch of around 100,000 digitised pages covering the period between 1950 and 2018.* Similarly, data covering the period between 1927 and 1950 will be digitised in 2019 and made available in early 2020. P.S. In early 2019, our archives from 1950, up to and including the publication of The Eastern Jeweler and Watchmaker, will be digitised. * To have access to our archives, please see page 125.
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1960 2018 A FORETASTE Six decades of watchmaking. Six decades of upheavals ('twas ever thus!). The chronograph dies a death and is reborn, power is in the hands of youth, fashions change, lines shift, man conquers space, quartz arrives, turns the world upside down, quartz is rejected, mechanical watchmaking makes a comeback, brands and groups are formed and dissolved, appear and disappear, success follows upon crisis, crisis upon success, sociologies are transformed‌ in other words, things never really stop changing. And at an increasing pace. Until it reaches the point where watchmakers (and others besides) no longer remember what they did before. And yet, there are many lessons to be learned today from the successes and failures of the past.
By exploring a few select themes, the following pages present a foretaste of the research and investigation that can be undertaken into this living, breathing subject following its digitised renaissance. They also disprove the common conception about “dusty old archives�, showing them instead to be a dynamic, expressive reflection on past worlds that exert a continuing influence on the present day, as can be seen by the vintage wave currently unfurling.
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Early 1960s: the post-war years are over, the Marshall Plan has laid the foundations for the reconstruction of Europe, the horizon is clearing and young people want space to breathe and live life to the full. Everything is changing – morals, music, fashion. “Daddy’s” style of watch is looking old – grey, dull, conventional. It needs to change, take on some colour and get back in phase with the new, fast-moving world that is metamorphosing to the beat of the “consumer society”, in which commerce reigns. Horology – that “grand old lady”, as an ad in Europa Star terms it – has to get with it. Twisting time is here.
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THE RENAISSANCE OF THE CHRONOGRAPH In 1963, we wrote: “The editors of Europa Star believe in the future of the chronograph and fully support the watchmakers who are not afraid to make sacrifices to develop a neglected market with incalculable possibilities”. At the same period, the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry launched a vast chronograph promotion campaign aimed at young people in the hope of convincing the “watchmakers who no longer believe in them” to turn their attention back to this niche product, which was nevertheless acclaimed by young people the world over.
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’60S THE “WATCH OF THE ABYSSES” Given the “considerable impact” of its feature on chronographs, in 1964 Europa Star promoted “another domain reserved for young people: the submarine world that demanded endurance, physical strength and a taste for risk”. The Abysses feature explored all the latest developments in this field of technical horology, giving pride of place to the pioneering Rolex which, a few years earlier, on 23 January 1960, had made a splash by fixing a Deep Sea Special to the outside of Professor Piccard’s bathyscaphe. The watch attained the record depth of 10,900 metres, at which the pressure is around 1 tonne per square centimetre. And it emerged completely unscathed.
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HONG KONG: OPPORTUNITY AND RISK In 1963, Hong Kong had 4 million inhabitants, compared with 600,000 in 1948. The city was in the midst of an economic boom, with extreme poverty coexisting alongside insolent wealth. In the space of a few years, the city had grown into an important centre of industry; the shanty towns were razed to make space for tower blocks, and land was claimed from the sea to build “the world’s most modern airport”. This capitalist city “at the gateway to the collectivist world of communist China,” as Europa Star described it, had “grown into one of the largest importers and re-exporters of watches in the world”. Hong Kong was therefore already of key importance for Swiss watchmakers, who nevertheless were faced with numerous challenges.
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COUNTERFEITING “A great calamity has befallen regular importers of Swiss watches in Hong Kong. The falsification of famous watch brands on the one hand and the fraudulent use of the words ‘Swiss made’ on the other. It is not just a question of a few pieces made by a handful of dishonest dealers but of a real industry threatening the actual position of the Swiss watch on this all-important market. How many watches are sold under a faked trademark? It is difficult to give the exact number but an authority on Hong Kong affairs has advanced the figure of 25,000 pieces monthly. These watches are not all sold by far in the British colony, so that for some years imitations of Omegas, Rolexes, Eternas, etc., have been found all over Asia. What are the reasons for this sudden rise of counterfeit production?” asked Europa Star in 1963.
THE JAPANESE PERIL In its Hong Kong special report of 1963, Europa Star explains that “a great battle is being fought s in g & between co the Swiss watch, which detains the monopoly in actual fact, and its young Japanese rival. Every night, innumerable neon signs advertise the fact that the Swiss watch is the best, the most sold, the unique and unequalled. But every day, the Japanese pressure is felt more strongly, more insistently in the newspapers and in the bazaars. Japanese arguments are tempting: price, good standard quality, mass production. The battle has only started and nobody can foresee the issue.”
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As Europa Star wrote in 1969, rather over-emphatically but correctly nevertheless, the first man to walk on the moon “wore on his right wrist an Omega Speedmaster Professional, a fact that will have made its mark forever with the watchmaking fraternity and will no doubt remain in the memory of the man in the street many years hence.� Needless to say, at the time, this exploit influenced virtually every watchmaker. In 1969 and the few years following it, an incalculable number of brands attempted to capitalise on this event by portraying their watches suspended in space, with the moon for a backdrop, or accompanied by intersidereal objects. It was quite an epidemic.
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The events of May 1968 shredded the straitjacket of the prudish 1950s. Taboos fell and watchmaking, which until then had been rather shy, threw restraint to the winds. Oh, nothing too torrid, but half-naked women began vaunting the virtues of the watch on their wrist –an advertising pretext aimed at attracting a little more attention from largely male watchmakers, but also a sign of the times, when minds and bodies were being liberated.
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For a few years in the early 1970s, fashion suddenly took a bizarre turn. Out went the timeless elegance, restraint and harmonious finesse of the classic watch case. In came massive, clunky cases, usually non-scratch, but always heavyweights. This rather strange fashion has never yet seen a revival, and watches of that ilk are not generally sought after by collectors. They were consigned to the profit and loss column. Although you never know... After all, we were convinced that platform shoes would never make a comeback!
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QUARTZ, THE BETA 21 SAGA At the 1970 Basel Fair “of which we had high expectations,” as Europa Star wrote the day after, “because rumours were insistently circulating about the massive entry of electronics into most of the collections... the reality surpassed the fiction”. It was a date which would “perhaps mark the twilight of the traditional watch in all its forms”. Better still – or even worse – with the advent of quartz “all the manufacturing techniques that to us appear ultra-modern” risked being swept away, our editor continued. This anticipated shock came from the presentation of the Beta 21. This was the fruit of research undertaken by a consortium entitled “Community of interests for the industrialisation of the Beta Calibre”, which comprised around 20 brands, including Rolex, Patek Philippe, Omega, Girard-Perregaux, LeCoultre & Cie, Zenith, IWC, Bulova and many others who were presenting their first collections. Europa Star reports extensively on this venture in its columns, detailing at length its technical characteristics and unveiling the first models of this new era. But things quickly took quite another turn...
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With the Beta 21, the Swiss had struck a strong blow, but the powerful existing industrial infrastructure was not designed to support this kind of revolution. The Japanese, on the other hand, were not weighed down by the same history, society or industry. From the outset they viewed quartz as a totally industrial product and an engine for job creation – whereas in Switzerland, the so-called “quartz crisis” went on to wipe out 60,000 jobs, leaving no more than 30,000. The beginnings were relatively modest, but over the course of the decade, the Japanese wave inexorably gained speed. The declared ambition of Seiko in 1976 says it all: “Changing the world’s standards of accuracy”. From that period on, the internationally oriented Europa Star reflected this Japanese rise to power (which whipped up the occasional controversy between us and the Swiss watchmakers...).
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THE DEATH OF THE MECHANICAL WATCH? In the early 1980s, the question was being put quite openly. The mechanical watch had reached a dead end, if it wasn’t dead altogether. Valentin Philibert, editor-inchief, mused, without batting an eyelid: “Switzerland to Stop Producing Mechanical Watches?” The tone was lugubrious: “After sinking slowly for five years, we have now touched the bottom. Everything seems to have been in league to destroy the very foundation of what was once a flourishing and seemingly indestructible industry.” Brrr… As the new collections being issued showed, if the 1980s did not seal the definitive triumph of quartz, nothing would. In retrospect, the choice of illustrating them, as ETA does in Europa Star, in terms of a desert-crossing, is a curious one.
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In late 1982, Europa Star presented in its columns “a new kind of watch made of synthetic material – the ‘Swatch’ – in which a completely new concept and production technology are applied.” Scarcely one year later, one of our headlines ran “These Swatches that throw the watch market into confusion”. By winter 1988, Swatch had already clocked up 268 different models, sold to more than 40 million ‘fans’. Swatchmania was at its height. Italian collectors went loco over it. And the craze did not slow down: finally, it gave its name to the group that produced it. In 1988, “to pay tribute to the history of the little Swiss watch that became the symbol of industrial recovery,” SMH became the Swatch Group.
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The 1980s saw another phenomenon burst onto the horological stage: the fashion watch. With its strong ongoing internationalisation, diversification into accessories and knowledge of retail, the fashion world was out for its share of the watchmaking cake. One man came to symbolise this mounting trend: Séverin Wunderman who, in June 1988, not far from Biel, inaugurated the construction site of the new “industrial and operational” headquarters of the Severin Group, the flagship brand of which was Gucci, a highly successful venture that had begun back in 1972 and pointed the way for numerous players from the worlds of fashion, perfume and accessories. As for Séverin Wunderman, the Gucci venture enabled him to acquire Corum and launch his Bubbles collection.
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’80s THE MECHANICAL WATCH RENAISSANCE Scarcely five years had gone by since the announcement in 1980 of the imminent demise of the mechanical watch and here it was, back again. In 1985, our editor, back from Basel, noted that, “The mechanical holds its own with the quartz, even improving its standing thanks to an increase of special models in the upper bracket”. Watchmaking was metamorphosing, the aim being to move upmarket, in order to relegate quartz watches to the ranks of mass-produced goods. Complete calendars, moon phases, perpetual calendars, automatic chronographs – such were the luxury tools put to the purpose of reconquering hearts and minds. One symbol of this – not the only one, but one that has remained engraved in people’s memories thanks to the PR savvy of a certain Jean-Claude Biver – is Blancpain. In 1985 in Basel it launched a collection that included an extra-slim automatic with the day, date, month and moon phases.
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THE WATCHES OF 1990 1990 was a record year, with world production estimated at 753 million units and a 12.2% rise in Swiss exports. Note, however, that while the overall production of mechanical watches had fallen globally, the opposite was true in Switzerland: mechanical watch sales were booming and exports were driven by the outstanding growth in watches with complications and other “deluxe� mechanical watches. The path for the following decade seemed to be laid out in advance, as this compilation of the most beautiful models from 1990, published in Europa Star in early 1991, shows. 103
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THE TRIUMPHAL FIGURES OF 1991
The upward trend of Swiss watchmaking was confirmed in 1991, with a total export figure of CHF 6.8 billion, despite the outbreak of the first Gulf War in January of that year. But even in the Middle East, exports resumed from April. At the head of his group, Nicolas Hayek was jubilant: it was the best year on record for his 12 brands and his industrial empire. Sales of finished watches and movements were up 34%. Omega, Rado and Longines alone accounted for 33% of sales volumes and around 50% or more – the figures were not supplied – of the rising profits.
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RENAISSANCE OF THE MANUFACTURES The quartz industrial crisis was over, the renaissance of the manufactures was beginning. The word was on everyone’s lips. The 1990s saw an unprecedented blossoming of new factory projects. While Patek Philippe was launching the construction of its new, ultramodern production site, others were not far behind: Jaeger-LeCoultre, IWC, Piaget, Vacheron Constantin and many others besides were opening vast work projects as far away as India, where Titan, part of the Tata Group, inaugurated an immense and magnificent production centre near Bangalore with help from France Ebauches. But the industrial decline of France had just begun, while Germany, in the throes of reunification, saw its watch industry in Glashütte recovering under the impetus of a visionary figure: Günter Blümlein. 106
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The 1990s fulfilled all their promises, reaffirming with unprecedented force the absolute supremacy of the mechanical watch. For the occasion, Europa Star inaugurated a series of Portfolios and entrusted them to renowned photographers, who immortalised this return to grace of mechanical ingenuity and beauty. A new Golden Age seemed to be opening up, as this photo of a watch by Vincent Calabrese symbolises in its quasi-religious intensity.
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THE WATCHMAKER OF THE FUTURE, AS VIEWED IN 2000 Changes of millennium are propitious for fuelling fears – witness the famous Y2K bug – as well as lofty dreams. In 2000, Europa Star issued a Millennium special edition in which we presented, among other things, our predictions for the future of watchmaking, from Internet-enabled watches (www.europastar.com had been launched back in 1997) and mass-printed watches right through to hologram watches in crazy designs. Everything was possible, so it seemed.
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TERRITORIAL EXPANSION BY THE MAJOR GROUPS The noughties marked a period of global expansion, with large groups from the luxury sector moving massively into watchmaking. Side by side with the industrially based Swatch Group, Richemont was asserting itself ever more strongly, while at the same time LVMH was making its entry into the watchmaking arena, multiplying its acquisitions in the luxury watch sector. The race was on to attain critical mass, to integrate production and verticalise. The purchase, in 2000, of LMH (Jaeger-LeCoultre, IWC and Lange & Söhne) by Richemont for the sum, judged madness at the time, of CHF 3.08 billion was emblematic of this expansionist frenzy.. Questioned by Europa Star, Franco Cologni imperiously replied: “We paid that price because we believe that luxury is eternal”.
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SIHH and Basel, 2001. Rather than presenting watches by their traditional categories, from the most complex to the simplest and from the most classic to the most innovative, that year Europa Star decided to present them according to the ‘lifestyle’ they represented – a classification based on a study by the Advanced Communications Centre in Paris and the European Observatory on Trends, which identified seven “principal mentalities” and “12 strong trends”. The result was not intended to be strictly scientific but bore witness nevertheless to consumer aspirations: a strong demand for “proximity”, “conviviality” and “personalisation”, and a strong emphasis on the notion of “service”. And this was observed across all the social categories surveyed. But what was really striking during these years was the simultaneous existence of the most diverse trends possible. A grand free-for-all. rope 2/2001
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RETAIL: THE GREAT UPHEAVAL The traditional distribution networks, the division of territory among local watch retailers, often family businesses, established in every town, were vanishing. There were two reasons for this: the strong emergence of the concept of brand and, as they reindustrialised, a move by the large groups to take back direct control of their distribution channels. The creation of spin-offs in the international distribution networks on the one hand, and the emergence of brand-owned boutiques on the other, were ringing the death knell of the traditional multibrand retailer. This phenomenon, which began in the early 2000s, rapidly went global. Our correspondents in Italy, Germany, the US and Japan regularly wrote of it in the columns of Europa Star.
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History never goes just one way. At the same time as the large groups were becoming ever more dominant, independent watchmakers were not only getting their heads back above water, they were also asserting themselves as the creative force in mechanical watchmaking. As Europa Star headlined in 2001: “The independent watchmakers have the creativity, the groups the markets.” With the creation of the Académie des Horlogers Créateurs Indépendants (Academy of Independent Watch Designers, AHCI) in 1985, independent watchmakers found an excellent incubator. Established brands and groups gradually came to realise that they constituted a genuine centre of research into new mechanical horology. They began to make contact with these renegade watchmakers. Operation Golden Arrow, launched in 2001 with seven watchmakers from the AHCI, who presented 14 innovative watches, marked minds and sparked a trend for collaboration. 119
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The noughties, which began so promisingly, ended under gathering storm clouds. The 2008-09 financial crisis came and went with devastating effect. The economic crash was responsible for much of the damage, certainly, but watchmakers themselves were not entirely blameless. Watchmaking had gone into overdrive. Everything was possible, the industry thought. Prices had attained astronomical heights, brands were forever going upmarket, the Swiss had abandoned mid-range products, and the fashion for bling-bling had had a catastrophic effect. Watchmaking was paying for its excesses. Would it recover during the decade that was just beginning, the 2010s? In late 2009, Europa Star ran the headline: “The positive side of the crisis�. Perhaps it had taught watchmakers not to rush headlong into things, but to act without haste, calmly and consistently, to let time do its work. Have they learned their lesson? It is up to the present decade to provide the answer.
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2010‌ The decade we are currently living through, and which is now drawing to a close, has witnessed the same implacable historical cycles we see repeated in our Archives since the 1960s. The watch industry is like an arrow continually turning in circles. But it never describes exactly the same loop. Let’s take an example: the current technology crisis, which has seen digital watches rise to a dominant position, is strongly reminiscent of the quartz crisis. Anyone who proclaimed that the mechanical watch was dead, as Europa Star did in 1980, could scarcely have predicted that, as early as 1985, it would already be making a comeback. For the media too, the decade that began in 2010 has been synonymous with technological, sociological and financial upheaval. Although Europa Star was an early adopter of the web, it always believed that paper would remain an essential ingredient. But only as long as it offered something extra, some editorial added value, aesthetic pleasure, a personality, and a material presence. And that is precisely what we have done over the course of the current decade, by giving our magazines a thorough overhaul, enriching their content and updating their graphic design. After all, archivists teach us that paper is the only guarantee of posterity. Our paper archives are proving more valuable than ever, but thanks to digital technology, they are also far more accessible.* * To find out more about accessing the Europa Star Archives, see page 125.
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TO BE CONTINUED... To date, we have digitised exactly 62,393 pages of archives, from a total of over 300,000. We began with our Europe edition (December 1959 to December 2016), followed by the Global edition (January 2017 to the present). Among the most-mentioned watch brands are Patek Philippe, Omega, Rolex and Longines, which each have more than 1,000 pages of editorials. Almost all watch brands in the history of the 20th century have been featured in Europa Star. We will continue to digitise everything produced by our publishing house since its creation in 1927. Here is the complete list: • 1927 GUIDE RAPID, BULLETIN D’INFORMATIONS, BULLETIN DES ACHETEURS, BULLETIN GUIDE DES MACHINES (Switzerland) • 1929 GUIDE DES ACHETEURS (Switzerland) • 1940 ELEGÂNCIA E PRECISÃO (Brazil) • 1942 INFORMATIONS TECHNIQUES (Switzerland) • 1942 LA REVISTA RELOJERA (Argentina and Latin America) • 1945 BELORA (Portugal) • 1949 ORO Y HORA (Spain) • 1950 ESTRELLA DEL SUR (Latin America) • 1950 THE EASTERN JEWELER AND WATCHMAKER (Far East and Asia) • 1950 AS SÂ’ÂT WAL-DJAWÂHER / ORAFRICA (Middle East and Africa) • 1959 EUROPA STAR (Europe) • 1959 EUROTEC (Europe) • 1967 EUROPA STAR / EUROTEC COMECON (Eastern Europe) • 1967 EUROPA STAR USA & CANADA • 1968 EUROPASTAR AFRICA, NEAR & MIDDLE EAST • 1968 EUROPA STAR FAR EAST & AUSTRALASIA • 1968 EUROPA STAR AMERICA LATINA Y BRASIL • 1989 EUROPA STAR DIAMOND INTELLIGENCE BRIEFS • 1975 EUROPA STAR JEWELLERY MAGAZINE • 1993 EUROPA STAR ESPAÑA • 1993 EUROPA STAR CHINA PRECIOUS • 1997 EUROPA STAR/COUTURE INTERNATIONAL JEWELER • 1997 EUROPA STAR/AMERICAN TIME • 1997 EUROPA STAR HORA LATINA • 1997 EUROPA STAR CHINA • 1997 EUROPA STAR ASIA/MIDDLE EAST • 1998 EUROPA STAR PREMIÈRE (Newsletter for Switzerland) • 2001 EUROPA STAR WATCHES-FOR-CHINA • 2003 EUROPA STAR BASEL TRIBUNE (ES-CIJ-NJ) • 2004 EUROPA STAR INTERNATIONAL • 2006 EUROPA STAR WEB SPECIAL USA & CANADA • 2006 EUROPA STAR UKRAINE • 2009 EUROPA STAR TRENDS & COLOURS • 2015 EUROPA STAR PREMIÈRE (Newspaper for Switzerland) • 2017 EUROPA STAR WATCH AFICIONADO (USA) • 2017 EUROPA STAR GLOBAL
Interested in one of the most complete watch archives of the 20th century? Don’t hesitate to contact us!
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