Several members of the Watch Gecko team have recently been fortunate enough to visit watch events at home and abroad. Following the welcome success of the British Watchmakers’ Day held in London on March 9th, 2024, I jetted off to Atlanta, Georgia, to take part in the Intersect Atlanta watch event, organised by the Atlanta Watch Society, and held in a northwestern suburb of the city they call the “New York of the South” on Saturday, March 23rd, 2024.
Arcanaut Stand at Intersect Atlanta - Credit Arcanaut
Officially, I was present in my capacity as the Head of Brand Development for Arcanaut, the Denmark-based maker of experimental watches. That afforded me a front-row seat to the action. Seeing the event unfold throughout the day as a brand representative manning an immoveable stand and subject to the ebb and flow of the crowd is always illuminating, but here, at this event, I saw enthusiasm and knowledge that surpassed even what I’d seen (and thought relatively unsurpassable) at the BWD just two weeks prior.
In fairness, this was a niche but very involved crowd. The total number of visitors hovered around the 400 mark (which is a couple of thousand fewer than passed through the doors of Lindley Hall a fortnight ago), but it seemed as if each and every one of them had fallen irretrievably deep down the watchmaking rabbit hole. Of course, that was great news for us brand owners and also made for an extremely convivial and open environment (with several strangers striking up the kind of conversations you could imagine blossoming into lifelong friendships on the fly).
Here’s what I witnessed while on the Arcanaut stand: the level of knowledge amongst Intersect’s members is jaw-dropping. I mean it. It’s an easy thing to say if you want to compliment the organisers for corralling such an engaged group, but I’m not saying it for the benefit of their egos. I’m saying it for the brands and for fellow visitors who might think about attending an Intersect event in the future. Do it. It’s incredible value for money. In comparison to what some brands pay to exhibit at major fairs and how much public tickets cost, the investment is genuinely negligible.
Case in point, the “catering” service we received at Baselworld for one day while I was there with NOMOS was almost exactly the entire cost of exhibiting at Intersect Atlanta (and we got free coffee and water here).
The camaraderie between the brands is excellent. There is no sniping, no jealousy, and little guardedness. There seems to be genuine excitement and enthusiasm for each others’ wares and efforts. The old mantra, “a rising tide lifts all ships”, was frequently heard echoing off the walls of the exhibition space (which, by the way, was a massive industrial estate hanger full of classic automobiles, which couldn’t have been more perfect for Arcanaut given our association with Fordite).
FORMEX Essence 43 - Credit WatchGecko
Special credit in this regard goes to the organisers. Wes from Nodus, Markus from Formex, and Giancarlo from Atlanta Watch Society, amongst many others, were responsible for curating a harmonising group of brands and sorting out the logistics down to a T. When a fair runs smoothly and everyone’s expectations are met, no small thing has been achieved. It’s normal (and not entirely unhealthy) to hear small criticisms of certain things start to creep in towards the end of the day as feet start to smart, knees start to ache, and throats start to ossify, but over this weekend I heard nary a grumble.
From the perspective of a visitor, I’m not surprised the response was so positive. Although the fair was not held anywhere near the centre of Atlanta, the location was perfectly fit for purpose. These secure, inconspicuous, out-of-the-way spots work all the better in the States because you kind of have to drive everywhere so anywhere is as accessible as anywhere else. Having the added peace of mind of being squirrelled away in a quiet corner of an industrial park on a cul-de-sac was even better. This was a destination fair and everyone who came brought with them the right attitude.
Eventually, I was able to get out from behind the Arcanaut booth to stretch my legs and take a look at the other brands showing at the fair. I saw some of my old favourites such as anOrdain (with the stand manned by the charming Erlend, expertly representing the absent and much-missed Lewis Heath), Christopher Ward (peerlessly overseen by watchmaking’s busiest man, Michael Pearson), and, of course, Fears (who, like their Managing Director Nicholas Bowman-Scargill, feel very much like an elder statesman of these events these days).
But the real treat was being able to discover a new brand I’d never heard of and also to learn more about a couple I had.
To the latter group first, spending more time with Nodus, Lorier, Formex, and Tornek-Rayville watches confirmed my respect for all four. I love the value proposition of Nodus, the designs of Lorier, the innovation and materials of Formex (at THAT price point!), and the story behind and execution of the Tornek-Rayville product (which is a watch we simply need to get into our photography studio and shoot on a bunch of Watch Gecko straps, because it is an absolute monster).
I love those brands and will likely own something from each in the near future. But the brand that surprised me most and almost had me reaching for my credit card was So Labs. Designed in Chicago (despite the name and the dial designs somehow suggesting California to me), the keys here are colour and layout. There is nothing particularly complex or genuinely innovative about the display, but it could very well be described as ingenious. To take a bog-standard day/date calibre and, with no mechanical modification, create a display that shifts through a gamut of colour daily to change the on-the-wrist appearance without intervention as time passes is, if not world-changing, damn cool. And, at around £1,000, the buy-in is low enough and the quality high enough to make this a very tempting possibility indeed. My only slight (read: massive) regret, was not learning about this brand to buy into its inaugural collection of acrylic-cased quartz watches that (consensually) tickled the ‘90s kid in me.
And that’s the beauty of these events. Being able to see the new stuff emerging at the corners of the industry and get it on your wrist before it blows up. Let’s face it, some of the brands in that hall last Saturday are going to grow very rapidly over the next few years, so why not get them on the wrist before they get as hot as they’re going to be?
