As they do each year, Hublot started Baselworld 2018 with a "love" party. Since 2018 is a World Cup year it was fitting that the party focused on football (or as they say in the US: soccer).
Hublot has many brand ambassadors. Like this strategy or not, this means they also have deep relationships with various prominent figures and in this case legendary football players and athletes. They all also proudly wear Hublot watches.
For this year's event they decided to build a small football field inside the Congress Center and invite some of the legends to play a brief yet entertaining game of 15 minutes halves.
The star attraction was none other than 1986 World Cup winner Diego Armando Maradona. Some of the other legends joining "Diegito" were Roberto Carlos (Brazil), Marcel Dessailly (France), Hernan Crespo (Argentina), and Patrick Kluivert (The Netherlands) to name a few.
Opposing Diego's team was another team of star players but this time led by the fastest man on the planet and long time Hublot brand ambassador: Usain Bolt. And to make things even more fun, Hublot got the "special one", José Mourinho, to come and "coach".
Hublot's main announcement was its continued support and love for football as well as a new digital connected watch that referees, during the World Cup in Russia, will wear on their wrists to keep track of time during the matches.
I am meeting with Hublot this weekend and will update this post with photos of the watch when I get to see it up close.
One of the winners in the 2019 GPHG awards in the first week of November was a two year old upstart watch brand from Kuala Lumpur named MING Watches. The young brand won best watch in the Challenge category at the Geneva show to the delight of its founder and watch aficionados who have regularly helped sell out the brand’s 11 prior releases since its debut of the 17.01 watch.
MING watches are not limited per we but are produced in small batches of a few hundreds, which in effect make them limited. A quick perusal to their web site shows that all models, except for the two new 2019 models have sold out. Interestingly the new models are also priced much higher than the previous ones. However, before getting ahead of ourselves, how does one go about seeing or trying on a MING watch?