This year, BaselWorld 2009 is being held from March 26th till April 2nd. Together with Frank from Monochrome.nl, I’ll be visiting Basel from March 26th till March 29th. We booked our flights, hotels and together with Kyle from Perpetuelle.com we are planning our meetings already.

The pre-Basel news is already flooding the various watch portals. My earlier post on the Omega Speedmaster Pro 40th anniversary model should also classify as pre-Basel news. Omega has their press-kits already available for the large public on http://www.omega.ch/index.php?id=65. Breitling will be introducing their Navitimer 125th Anniversary model, as does Bvlgari.

Their Sotirio Bvlgari watch is a tribute to its founder, 125 years ago. Besides limited editions, tributes and anniversary models, brands are also introducing regular models [pheww]. Blancpain already spread the word on their Blancpain 500 Fathoms watch. This 48mm diameter titanium built watch is water-resistant to 1000 metres.

Smaller brands, such as Linde Werdelin, are introducing their new watches as well of course. Linde Werdelin’s SpidoLite watch with a movement finished by Svend Anderson. Ariel Adams over at Ablogtoread.com already blogged about this watch.

As a Rolex fan, I wonder what this Geneva based company is going to reveal this year. They are known to keep their new watches secret till the day of the BaselWorld Expo. I also wonder whether the atmosphere in Basel will be influenced by the global credit crisis, as it did during the SIHH expo a few weeks ago.

Anyway, looking forward to meet some of the LinkedIn ‘A Passion for Watches’-group members (almost 1000 this month), people I have only communicated with via e-mail (or LinkedIn) and some of the ‘regulars’ who will also be visiting Basel.

According to IWC’s commercials, ladies are only interested in mens watches to wear. However, brands like Zenith, Omega and Blancpain mastered to take mens watches and rebuild them to a ladies’ watch. Blancpain introduces the Saint-Valentine 2009 watch for women that are in the need of a tough chronograph with a feminine dial and colors. Blancpain will produce 99 timepieces featuring fly-back chronograph and date functionality. The mother-of-pearl (mop) dial has a heart shaped (set by rubies) small seconds subregister. As you all know, Blancpain hasn’t produced a single watch with a quartz movement, also not for their ladies’ watches. The movement is therefore an inhouse Blancpain F185 caliber and has a 40 hour powerreserve.

What do you think? Do you rather see girls/ladies wearing a nice men’s watch or a classic timepiece (such as the Cartier Tank Francaise) or are timepieces like the one above the way to go for watchloving females? Please share your opinion and leave a comment!

Steltman Watches is one of the most famous watch stores in The Hague (The Netherlands). Famous for their impressive list of brands which they represent, like Lange & Soehne, Patek Philippe, Cartier, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Blancpain, Officine Panerai and more. But also famous for their lack of customer friendliness. My watch friend Frank (from the superb monochrome.nl blog) visited Steltman Watches last saturday, and it is unbelievable what kind of attitude this salesclerk allowed himself to express. I even think this guy is the owner of the store, so complaining to the management probably won’t help. Luckily, we have forums and blogs to at least prepare people on what they can expect when visiting stores with this kind of ’service’.

Please visit Monochrome to read the full story as a nice example on how to NOT treat a potential customer, but at least I want to quote some of it here at Fratello:

The core of the story is this:
“The salesman was Andrew Brom, the son of the owner of Steltman Watches. He told me he had seen me in the shop before and asked if i had bought a watch there before. I said i didn’t. Than he asked me if he should invest his time in me, since I had never bought a watch there….”

Maybe it looks a bit dull/lame to post these kind of experiences, but I happen to know this store and its way of treating customers (since I reside near The Hague) and it is a very recognizable story. So, I hear you think, Steltman may have a point.. someone who visited the store a few times (but to a maximum of 2 times a year, as Frank wrote) and never bought anything. However, that’s something you need to accept as a storeowner. Anyway, in one of the comments to Frank’s blogpost, Edwin H. responded with a similar experience. I will quote some text from his repsonse too, but I suggest you read it all over at Monochrome:

“I was wearing my Datograph during this visit and Mr. Brom was aware of that (as I had the Datograph laying in front of me on the countertop for everyone to see – he already made a remark as to which watch I was wearing) and I’m 99.9% positive that Mr. Brom knew I owned 3 Lange & Söhne watches at that time already.

Well … here I was standing next to the counter holding the rosé gold Lange-1 in my hands and telling the salesclerk how much I admired that piece. Mr. Brom walked by and heard me say something about the Lange and he replied “”Well Mr. H., don’t you think it is time that we [Steltman Watches] are going to benefit from your love for Lange Uhren”” … I shook my head in disbelieve and he continued with “”you have visited us 6 times now and never ever purchased something from us”.”

I do not want to curse on this blog, but WTF? What kind of books did he read? Let me be so free to offer a few solutions for this problem (because there obviously is one). My first solution is quite simple, just type in www.amazon.com in your favorite webbrowser (or click the hyperlink for that matter) and select the ‘Killer Customer Care’ book. For only 16,95 USD you can make a big difference for your customers.

My other suggestion is a bit more expensive, but I strongly believe in ‘Übung macht den Meister’ which is a German saying which I will freely translate in “Mastering by doing” or “Mastering by practicing”. Therefore, I suggest that the sales guy takes a course in becoming customer friendly. I found this training over at Infopeople.org. Go there, and select the course “Customer-Friendly Is More Than an Attitude“.

I wonder however, if this isn’t a bit too advanced, reading the introduction page. It mentions that being customer-friendly requires more than a smile and a pleasant manner. The latter seems to be regarded as one of the basics, so probably a tailor made ‘fixing the basics’-course might be required before enrolling into this course. Perhaps that the brands that they sell can offer such a training, providing their own Mr.Miyagi kind of tutor, to fix the whole thing, because I assume that brands like Patek Philippe, Lange & Soehne and Blancpain expects the best from their dealers.

Dutch/Belgian readers who might want to read some more about the Steltman experience, can click here. This Dutch forum has enough examples since 2006.