NEWS
A NEW SHOW IN LATIN AMERICA
The South American watch industry has enjoyed rapid growth in recent years,
enough to warrant, in the opinion of many, a trade show of its own. While the JCK
and Couture shows have long drawn retailers from both North and South America,
for many years no specific watch show existed specifically to serve the Latin
American watch market.
For the past three years, Bogota, Colombia, has hosted such a gathering in its
spacious Confreria Convention Center. WatchBo, as the show is known, has grown
apace with the industry it serves, starting with just over 50 participating brands in
2013 and reaching a figure greater than 90 in 2015.
Many of the brands that have committed to Watchbo are themselves international, using the fair as a vehicle to break into the South American marketplace. In
addition to the many well-known Swiss brands, this also includes marques from
Austria, Japan, and the United States, making WatchBo the largest watch fair in
Latin America.
WatchBo invited WristWatch to Bogota in early October to gain insight into this
rapidly growing gathering of watchmakers, which has become an essential stop
for many of South America’s leading watch retailers.
When surveying the landscape of the show, we were struck not only by the
rather obvious enthusiasm its presenters and attendees, but also by how different
the watch distribution landscape is in South America than it is in the United States
or Europe.
The older-style network of independent watch distributors handling major
brands still remains more or less intact in Colombia, whereas in the United States
most of the top performing brands have established subsidiary offices in New
York. This leads interesting arrangements in which one distributor may handle
multiple brands from competing groups. For example, the same entity handles the
wholesale distribution of Movado, Breitling and Ulysse Nardin in Colombia. All of
these companies were present at WatchBo.
The participating companies at this year’s WatchBo ranged from the popular
and accessible (Hummer Watch, Citizen and Invicta, to name a few) to high luxury.
At the very high-end, the amicable Franc Vila was presenting for the second time
at WatchBo.
“We hope that in five years this will be the meeting point for all of the brands
to do business in Latin America, from Mexico to Argentina,” says Santiago Velilla
Mejia, the General Director of the show.
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WRISTWATCH | 2016