Mondaine at the 2018 Basel Fair

Mar 30, 2018

Last week, the top brands and buyers in the watch industry travelled to Basel, Switzerland, for the annual watch fair. Mondaine presented new ideas at our offsite exhibition, which is a bicycle shop the other 355 days of the year.

This is a time for us to listen and act upon what customers and watch wearers are looking for in their daily lives and here is what we heard:

“I am looking for a watch I can feel good about wearing”

For some brands that means responsibly sourcing diamonds, or being more conscious about packaging. For Mondaine, we go further by producing an eco-friendly collection of watches called essence. Born from nature and developed using eco-friendly, renewable materials including Rizinus (castor oil) for its case; natural rubber for the strap and recycled PET bottles for its packaging, Mondaine’s SBB essence is not only clean and simple in design, but also considerate of the world we live in. When we went looking to create a really well-priced Swiss watch, we knew it couldn’t be plastic and found something new to the watch world, an innovative material we can be proud to work with and our customers can feel good about wearing.

“I want a watch that works for me”

In the past 4 years, since Mondaine was among the first to create a horological smartwatch, many new connected devices have come out. We listened to what our customers are really looking for and will soon offer a new Mondaine Helvetica Smartwatch. In addition to the Activity monitoring, Get-Active Alerts, Dynamic Coaching, Sleep Monitoring, Sleep Cycle Alarm and most importantly the 2 year battery life from our first smartwatch, here are the updates this year:

Call and message notifications – a soft buzz and alert for what type of message you’ve received
A smaller case – we’ve made internal design updates to fit the smart hardware into a new size case
Updated design that remains aesthetically clean and clear

NEW 2018 Helvetica Smart Collection

Coming Soon

“I need a watch I can wear everyday”

A timepiece is an investment in essential style. It’s a personal choice that says a lot about the person wearing it. We hear you when you say that design originality, modernity without depending on trends, and distinctly unpretentious confidence are crucial and we promise each and every one of our styles hits those marks so that there is no need for more than a Mondaine.

As we leave Switzerland, where each of our watches are made by hand, we are reminded of the purity of our story, the authentic need for clear and consistent timekeeping and the origin of the Mondaine brand you see today from the clocks throughout the SBB train stations.