Liu Minxia

    mllmx@msn.com

    AN annual watch and clock fair that opened at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center today will showcase the latest watches and technology of nearly 600 brands brought by more than 400 watch and clock makers worldwide.

    Many overseas watch and clock makers joined this year’s fair, with 12 of them, from countries including Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Ukraine, bringing the world’s top designs and technology in an exclusive exhibition zone. ACHI, a watch and clock trade union from Switzerland brought a number of brands for its group exhibition.

    Philipp Haas, investment promotion director for the Embassy of Switzerland in Beijing, was inviting Chinese businessmen to invest in Switzerland’s watch and clock industry. He said he hopes Shenzhen’s watch and clock makers will relocate part of their businesses to Switzerland.

    The French exhibition group brought 10 brands, while German watch and clock makers, which had seen unexpectedly good sales in previous sessions of the fair, are also exhibiting a larger number of designs than in the previous year, according to the fair’s organizer, the Shenzhen Watch and Clock Association.

    The exhibition area for German brands will have two sections, with one for traditional German designs and the other for chic brands favored by the younger generation, for example, Lars Larsen and Pop Pilot.

    “Shenzhen’s watch and clock industry is embracing the Internet age by making innovations in research and development and sales,” said Zhu Shunhua, executive vice president of the Shenzhen Watch and Clock Association.

    The four-day fair, widely regarded as China’s premier exhibition for the timepiece sector, will also hold design competitions as well as seminars on a wide range of topics involving new trends in the timepiece industry.

    Shenzhen-made watches and clocks account for 60 percent of the country’s total market share, according to the association. Shenzhen is the biggest watch and clock manufacturing center in China, with more than 1,000 clock and watch-making firms which have a total annual production value of 10 billion yuan (US$1.52 billion), it said.