Bio and I, took a day off from work, grabbed the camera, put on our watches and were off!
I have to point something here, there was almost no or very little advertisement done for this fair. So not knowing what to expect, we were trying to rate the fair on a scale of 1-10 , with 10 being something like Basel World. Bio said he expected it to be a 4. I being a bit more optimistic gave it a 5.
On our way...
The famous Bandra-Worli Sea Link :p
Finally, we arrive at our destination - the Nehru Center
Seiko I think had the best setup. It was the first thing you saw when you entered the building.
They had a lot of watches on display and I was really happy to see the Spring Drive Spacewalk. This watch is stunning! The lovely lady there proudly told us some fact about the watch and proceeded to show us the other new models, all of which I have never seen before. I was however a lil disappointed not to see any Grand Seiko watches there. I believe they are sold only in Japan and I was really hoping to see one.
Titan, India's leading watch manufacturer, had a nice walk-in booth where you could see some of the the machines and tools they use. They even had a machine to laser print your name on the case back. Unfortunately, none of the automatic watches were on display.
They also had this machine to check the accuracy of your watch. The guy manning it said that if the reading was under 1, the watch is accurate. He demonstrated with his watch. The meter read just about 1, indicating that his watch was just about accurate, though it didn't mention anywhere how many seconds a day, the watch looses or gains. We both decided to give it a try anyway-
My Rolex Sub
and the result - it barely moved - highly accurate!
next was Bio's Edouard Lauzieres Tuscany-
and the result - again, the needle didn't move - "highly accurate" said the guy grinning
Also on display were some of the Titan Edge watches, which claim to be the slimmest watch in the Universe
Time for a quick wrist shot
It was a pleasant surprise to see Orient here. After hearing such rave reviews about the Mako, we immediately rushed over and asked the guy behind the counter whether they had one on display, and sure enough, they did!
The guy at the booth was pretty surprised that we knew about Orient watches and was really happy when I told him about all the good things I heard about them. From what I learnt, Orient as of now, have no plans of launching the brand here anytime soon. They were really interested in knowing what kind of watches do people normally wear here and whether Indians prefer bracelets or leather straps. I told him since its pretty humid here, we normally prefer bracelets. He immediately started taking notes about everything I was saying. I really hope they launch the brand here, although I am not sure how successful they will be. People generally prefer quartz movements, which was a bit of a concern to them.
I also asked the guy which watch he had on at the time. He pulled his sleeve back and proudly showed us his World Timer
There were a LOT of fashion brands here
I was told by the people at the Paco Rabanne booth that their watches are directly imported from France and have Swiss quartz movements.
Somewhere amongst all those fashion brands, we were able to find the Victorinox booth where they had the 500 Mecha (which is on my wish list)
Ah! HMT! With my recent fascination with this brand, I really wanted to check out all the new models they had to offer. They also had some larger sized dials (maybe 38-40mm) which might interest a lot of people.
Citizen was there too and no, they did not have the Campanola :(
Some more fashion brands
One such brand that caught our attention was Ice Watch. The are something similar to Toy Watch, with the colourful Submariner styled watches, running on the Miyota quartz movement. They were looking to launch their brand in India soon. With a price range of $80-$300 USD, they are in league with the other fashion brands and I honestly feel will do well if launched here.
Hey, what do we have here? Straps! They were very nice and available in all sizes and colours. The prices were pretty good too with the rubber straps going for Rs.350 ($8) and the leather ones from Rs.250 ($5-$6) to Rs.800 ($17). Unfortunately, they weren't selling any at the time so I had to make do by taking their business card to contact them later.
Apart from all this, there wasn't really something to get interested about and before we knew it, we were at the exit. We felt a bit disappointed and asked around if there was something else to be seen. There was! There was another section to be seen! We quickly headed over there only to find another small area full of clocks - the ones you have already seen at gift shops and some homes. There was this one neat mechanical clock but the guy at the booth was against me taking a pic of it :(
This was an interesting looking clock which is suppose to be very expensive but the price was not disclosed for some reason.
Thats pretty much about it. We were really hoping to see some big manufacturers like Rolex, TAG and Omega, which are pretty popular here, but they were nowhere to be seen. My optimistic rating of 5/10 now changed to 3/10. We decided to call it a day and grab a few drinks with friends before heading home.
Cheers!
