Watches: The LHC Watch, by Greg

Questions:

1. How can this be better?

2. Who wants to make it?

Watches: Rolex

Here are two watches from the Rolex catalog my coworkers picked up at Baselworld, They are the least expensive and the most expensive.

This is the least expensive at 4,400 Swiss Francs (about $4100).

This is the most expensive. At 262,000 Swiss Francs it is a little more expensive than my house in Chicago.

Notice that the more expensive one displays the date and day of the week. I'm guessing this is why you pay a little more.

Watches: Hublot's Big Bang Maradona

Some of my coworkers recently attended Baselworld, and brought back a stack of brochures. Flipping through them, I came across the Hublot Big Bang Maradona, a limited edition (only 250 pieces made) celebrating Argentinean superstar, Diego Maradona.

It features Maradona's number and signature in Argentinean blue. And the counter goes up to 45 minutes so you can time each half of a regulation soccer match.

I'd love to know why Hublot did this, because it doesn't make a truckload of sense to me.

A watch from one of Switzerland's premiere brands, celebrating a retired soccer player from Argentina. Why not a Larry Bird watch? Okay, so soccer's more popular than the NBA.

My guess is someone at Hublot has a man-crush on Maradona. I wonder how many members of Hublot's board are South American. And how long they debated whether they should go for Maradona, Pele or Ronaldo. I'd like to see the number of these watches than actually end up in the hands of actual Argentineans.

The 45-minute hand seems a cool at first. But if you're watching a soccer match, is it really going to be so much easier to check your Hublot instead of the game clock in the corner of the screen or right next to the jumbotron?

I haven't been able to find the price on this piece, but considering most watches in the Big Bang collection are not limited editions and range between 6,500 and 12,500 Euros, I'm guessing the Maradona edition is some serious cash.

So Argentinean millionaire soccer fans with a penchant for Swiss quality, here's your watch. Hurry. There are only 250.

Baselworld

Baselworld is the most important trade show for watch manufactures in the world. Who knew?

A few of my coworkers recently attended (I was offered a ticket, but had prior obligations – rats). Even though the majority of the booths are accessible by invite only, I would have loved to browse.

What blows me away is that the average high-end watch manufacturer (think Patek Phillipe or Rolex) plans to make 50% of their annual sales at Baselworld. So it’s basically like the auto show only you can’t get into any of the booths, and the rednecks are replaced with oil shieks, Japanese trust funders and Russian mafiosi.

Watches: Swatch

Back in 1984 when Howard Jones and his rack of synthesizers were inspiring my classmates to bleach and feather their hair, and girls started taking their fashion cues from Molly Ringwald movies, the fashionistas of my elementary school were discovering Swatches, sometimes wearing two on the same wrist, or using them as pony tail bands.

In my Levi jacket, spangled with enough Van Halen pins to pass for a Spanish general, I would have none of it. For a quarter of a century, I've associated Swatch watches with kids in my sixth grade glass who were affluent enough to be trendy.

It's taken me 26 years, but I finally have a great appreciation for Swatch as a brand. (Certainly a much stronger brand than Van Halen turned out to be.)

Cool things about Swatch:

• Launched in early 1983, they were smart enough to realize they needed a brand. They knew if they were just another Swiss watch, their deep-pocketed competition would demolish them.
• Switzerland was known for producing the best watches in the world, but they were also the most expensive. In the early 1980's, if you wanted a good watch for under a couple hundred bucks, you bought a Japanese Seiko. Swatch changed all that. (In fact, Swatch was short for "second watch" - the one you'd wear when you didn't want to scratch up your $10,000 piece.)
• Early on, Swatch started partnering with artists like Keith Haring to build their design cred.
• They remained true to their meticulous Swiss heritage, first developing the flattest watch in the world, and then figuring out a way to reduce the pieces needed from 91 to 51 without losing any accuracy.
• Today, the Swatch Group is the world's largest watch company and owns the following brands: Omega, Tissot, Mido, and the watch lines of Calvin Klein and Tiffany & Co.

There are so many watch companies in Switzerland, and so many have zero branding acumen. It's not surprising to me that the one who understood the power of branding could rise from start-up to market goliath in less than 30 years.

Watches: The Greg Christensen Collection

We've looked at Patek Phillipe, Enigma, and DeWitt. This week, I present my personal watch collection:

On the left, is a Swiss Military. Made in Switzerland, but purchased at a Costco in Oregon.

In the middle is a Puma, which I love, but the battery has been dead for about two years.

On the right, a Skagen from my mother- and father-in-law for Christmas. Easily my favorite. But since it's made in Denmark, I can't really brag about it to my co-workers.

I think if I sold all three on eBay, I'd have enough to make 1/100th of a downpayment on a DeWitt.

Watches: Tissot

Tissot is a Swiss watch brand you've probably heard of. They advertise in Wired and they're not astronomically priced.

I've noticed a lot of watches have interesting, see-through backs. Tissot has quite a few. It's a shame that the only thing to really see this is a sweaty wrist. But it's probably a cool feeling for the owner to know they've got this back door they only let a few select members of their inner circle know about.

Watches: Mido

Mido is Swiss watch company that sounds like a Japanese one. They're not as intriguing as DeWitt, and not as high-end as Patek Philippe. But they've got an elegance about them.

I'm not a rectangular-watch-face guy. Not sure why. But I like how they treat the roman numerals on this one.

I don't particularly like this model. But it's the highest-priced one in the Mido catalogue: 9,400 Swiss Francs (over $9000).

Watches: Flik Flak

The last few watches I've featured have been out of my price range by $1000 to $65,000. So I'm taking a break from crazyland to feature the three Flik Flak watches we gave our kids for Valentine's Day.

My wife introduced me to Flik Flak. They're the children's line of Swatch (kind of the Land of Nod to Crate & Barrel). Honestly, they seem more Old Navy than Swiss precision machines to me. But our kids were pretty thrilled with them.

Watches: Patek Philippe

It seems around Geneva, Patek Philippe is the king of watch brands. Which is pretty amazing for anyone to stand out, considering the market is so choked with competition.

To me, it's not surprising that that they have such a strong brand, and seem to be one of the only watch manufactures that have a strategy behind their advertising. Their line for years has been, "You never really own a Patek Philippe. You simply look after it for the next generation."

Here are a couple of their funkier pieces...

But it's hard to beat the elegance of something simple...
I can't even guess what these go for. They won't list them on their site, but the dinged-up ones on eBay start around $3500. Someone's even a Patek Philippe ad that starts at $9.99.

I hope someone tries to sell one of my ads on eBay someday.

Watches: ENIGMA

Bulgari Enigma was a luxury watch and jewelry brand we pitched last year. Pretty interesting to be in the room with a real-life member of the Bulgari family. (We didn't get the business, which was too bad. We had a fantastic idea for it.)

Still, their watches are pretty nice. The one on the left is the Genius. I tried on the one on the right when I visited their boutique in Geneva. They had me stand in front of a full-length mirror like I was trying on a new suit. It was about $5000, and was just for "casual, day-to-day wearing."

Watches: DeWitt

I suppose it's hard to be in Geneva this long without starting to think watches are pretty cool. I never gave them much thought, but since I pass at least 20 different watch billboards and posters on my 20-minute commute to work, and another 10 to 15 shop windows with different brands all displayed, I've started to drink the Swiss-made Kool-aid.

Last month, our agency pitched and won the account for DeWitt, a brand I had never heard of, but which produces some pretty amazing pieces. (Count Jerome DeWitt is the owner, and keeps the title Count because he's a descendant of Napoleon's brother.)

Here are a few of my favorite DeWitt pieces. I love the first one with the bike chain.