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Each March, the jewellery & watch world migrates to the Swiss city of Basel for our industry’s most important trade show, BaselWorld. Jewellery & watch houses spend millions of Euros each in having permanent exhibition stands in place solely for this fortnight, the remaining 50 weeks of the year they lie empty. The Messeplatz in Basel is the central downtown location where vast exhibition halls, probably four times the size of Olympia, house millions, if not billions of pounds of gems, treasures and watches.

IMG_4459We’ve been visiting Basel for a good 20 years – it offers us the opportunity to see what new ranges and designs there are in meeting with current suppliers, makers and workshops. In particular, our watch brands Cartier, Bremont, Longines and Tag Heuer all launch their new designs at this time, though many of these land throughout the rest of the year.

Additionally, we also scout the rest of the show; looking for inspiration, trends and being on the hunt for something special. Of late, we’ve initially found Hulchi Belluni and Roberto Demeglio at BaselWorld.

 The trip itself is quite a packed itinerary. Over two days we have between 6 and 10 appointments where we look over specific ranges, then spend 4 to 6 hours walking the halls. It came as quite a surprise when I found I’d walked 6 miles each day this year – thanks apple watch!

I felt the watch companies’ launches were very practical this year; not many brands launched entirely new styles. Cartier did, the Drive de Cartier which arrives later in 2016. I quite liked the sensible approach taken by the watch brands where prices remain sensible, and the watches themselves evolve naturally.

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 With regards jewellery this year, we’ve found more rose and yellow gold a trend, with coloured gemstones still increasing in representation. (In the last decade, diamond jewellery had been the most popular). I saw a lot of cutting edge fashion jewellery made of wood or brass combined with precious metals and whilst interesting, I wasn’t convinced it would last well and as many of you know, we’re very keen to make sure your experience over the whole lifetime of owning jewellery is up to standard! Mikimoto brought some really super elegant pieces and we look forward to seeing them in 3months back in Reading. We’re particularly excited by a new line from Hulchi Belluni, and new colours due from Gianfranco Bigli. Over the coming months many new ‘Jacobs’ lines will be landing and indeed I feel once they are here our range will really be something quite special with plenty of classics, and with plenty of ‘just a little bit different’. Indeed the frustration sometimes is we see so many lovely pieces we can’t choose them all, and what we do choose, we have to wait for them to be made for us!

 Stay tuned to our social media channels, click on them top left of this page,  to see these as they land in the coming months, and we look forward to sharing them with you in Reading , Berkshire and beyond soon.

If you have anything you’d like to ask, a special event in mind you’d like some help or inspiration with, don’t hesitate to get in touch.