Five reasons to buy the new issue of NOW, the Time+Tide watch buying guide
Luke BenedictusSometimes you need to cut through the clutter. That’s the reason we assemble Time+Tide’s NOW magazine, a watch buying guide that curates the top watch releases of the year so far (207 of the blighters to be precise). But that’s not all. We’ve also assembled a wildly entertaining assortment of some of the best watch writing around. Here is a little sneak peak…
Hublot’s Sporting Gamble
Top watch brands are so obsessed with reinforcing their luxury status – and thereby justifying their prices – that they usually only want to be associated with “premium sports” – think sailing, golf and anything to do with horses or vintage cars. You know, the sports that quite frankly you don’t really care about.
Demonstrating their characteristic audacity, Hublot took a bolder approach. They went for the spectator sports that actually get serious eyeballs. They sponsored Floyd Mayweather in his fights against Manny Pacquiao and Conor McGregor (aka the two biggest pay-per-view events of all time). They sponsored football’s 2018 World Cup (more than half of the global population aged four and over tuned in to watch one of the games). And they sponsored the cricket World Cup (Nielsen figures estimates the audience of the 2019 competition as 1.6 billion). In the process, Hublot turbocharged their brand awareness on a global scale. CEO Ricardo Guadalupe explains how this marketing gamble paid off.
Clowning Around
In 2017, Russian independent watchmaker Konstantin Chaykin made that rarest of things: a truly original watch design. The Joker was a charmingly quirky watch with its disc-based time display and moon phase tongue. It’s since expanded into multiple iterations and spawned the “Wristmons” series of characters. In this revealing interview, Konstantin explains why he put a smile on the dial to dream up one of the craziest designs of all time.
An Oral History of the MoonSwatch
Watch launches don’t usually become tabloid news. But Swatch’s shock tribute to the Omega Speedmaster provoked utter hysteria. Around the world, police were called in to manage the wild crowds who’d queued overnight in the hope of securing one of the 11 different models, each inspired by a different planet in the solar system, and retailing for a mere $380. The MoonSwatch was probably the biggest watch release of the decade and no one saw it coming. Here, some of the key players behind the launch – from Swatch Group CEO Nicholas Hayek to Gregory Kissling, Omega’s VP of Product who dreamed up the interplanetary concept – explain how this momentous release came about.
Beats & Pieces
Audemars Piguet’s decision to sign up Mark Ronson has resulted in a fresh musical collab in the latest chapter of the brand’s cultural push. The super producer explains to T+T why he’s loved the brand ever since tracking down his gold Royal Oak many years ago, while CEO François-Henry Bennahmias discusses the brand’s previous musical collaborations with everyone from Quincy Jones to Jay-Z.
The Watch Guide…
OK, so this is the really useful part. We’ve cast the horological net far and wide, and picked out the best 207 watch releases of the year so far that range from $100 to over a million. Whether you’re after a new diver, dress watch or GMT, we’ve got you covered. What time is it? Time to get a watch.
Order your copy of NOW, the Time+Tide Watch Buying Guide here for $19.95 AUD