SimplyAbuDhabi XII

1 4 1 S I M P LY A B U DH A B I Abdul Hamied Seddiqi – Vice Chairman Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons “My time as a Jury member for the GPHG was nice, an experience for me. I met with a lot of people, not only with retailers but also with journalists who specialise in watches, also people from Christie’s auction house, collectors – it was nice and the GPHG were happy. I appreciate the GPHG because they appreciate us and recognise us as important in this field, in Switzerland and also in the UAE. I was the only one from the Gulf, there was one juror from Lebanon, but from the Gulf I was the only person, it was nice to have two people from the Middle East.” “I was a member of the Jury before three years ago, and since then the GPHG are moving to other countries like Shanghai andMoscow – so it came to my mind and I said why theMiddle East? As it is an important region, so I asked them what do you think if we also participate in this kind of event in the Middle East. They said OK and they were happy, but where? I said in Dubai, it is an ideal area and we can do it! OK, yalla, come to Dubai. I invited them to come and they came. We sat together with our marketing team and we decided to go ahead and started working on this event, since one year ago. It was not something which could be thrown together in one month, you know to get the location, to manufacture all the stands, it is very difficult. It takes time and locations get booked in Dubai quickly, it is the last day of our exhibition today and tomorrow something else starts here. You see this city is booming.” “The success of the GPHG Dubai and the calibre of audience was a team effort. Our marketing team, our database, we have a lot of information and we are professional. We are also involved ourselves as a family, so we also have contacts.” “We had workshops during the exhibitions and I was shocked, so many people attended, and there were even people outside wanting to come in. To educate, this is what we want to communicate. With this exhibition I am not here to sell, I want to educate the people. Teach about watches because a lot of people don’t know. They may know some of the big names but they don’t know that there are also some artists and watchmakers creating their own pieces, I think this is an art.” “We have taken people from Dubai and visited watch manufacturers to see how they are making the watches, some of the people didn’t know, they are used to checking their telephone for the time but watchmaking is an art and there is so much more behind watches. The luxury watch market is growing worldwide and the Middle East is part of this world, if something happens like a crisis, we are affected. In 2008 at the start of the crisis, people suffered and we suffered also. The first thing to be affected in hard times is luxury, something deemed not necessary so people say this year I will not buy any watches or any art or a Hermes bag, I will wait till next year and save my money and concentrate on the necessities.” Mr Claude Sfeir – Watch and Jewellery Collector/ Juror GPHG “I am a jeweller and I deal in high-end jewellery. I specialise in vintage jewellery, Cartier, Van Cleef, Harry Winston, and all the special coloured diamonds and coloured stones; star sapphires, star rubies - everything a little bit strange.” “I started when I was 17 years old and my first business was in Dubai in the gold souk. I have kept the same business but we changed the retail and the wholesale to just the high end, so now I follow the auctions all over the world to New York, Hong Kong, Geneva, London and sometimes Dubai when they have auctions. “ “I started into this because we are from Lebanon, and we had the war, so I finished my school and I wanted to do something – so I specialised in diamonds. I graduated from The Gemological Institute of America (GIA) and I started the business here from around 1979. From here we got our first watch, it was from Seddiqi & Sons from the Grandfather of Mohammed, and it was like $80 (300AED). It was affordable for me and I then started buying everyday from the Souk and from all the shops. Before we understood nothing about watches, sometimes we’d break the watches just to take out the gold, or break the movement because we had no idea about the vintage, about the modern, the vision was only for the jewellery.”” “After one or two years we had been travelling to Italy and Switzerland to collect some diamonds and jewellery and I sawmany catalogues in the bookshops and started reading and learnt about the watch auctions. So I started buying the catalogues, which were very expensive, maybe I spent £4000/£5000 every year just to get the catalogues from all the brands. I bought most of them and I started going to auctions after two years. I started going to the auctions in Geneva but buying the small pieces like 5000, 10,000, 20,000 – so not the big pieces. It was a big mistake to buy the small pieces because I don’t think there was a future for this business, but I didn’t know as nobody was giving me any advice. So I made a lot of mistakes, I got a lot of watches for a small amount, small Rolexes, small Breitlings, small Pilots watches, but I didn’t know that all these watches didn’t have any value. After maybe 10 years I made a lot of mistakes and sometimes you will ask advice and nobody will give you it, he will tell you don’t touch this watch and then you will go to the auction and see him bidding on the watch!” “When I started there was no Internet so I read a lot of books and after this, I learnt the best is to buy a rarity and not quantity, only exceptional quality. So from the 90s this is how I bought my watches. So for the last ten years I have only been buying unique pieces and prototype pieces.” “We live between Dubai and Geneva and all my operations are between Dubai, Geneva, New York and Hong Kong. I have now my son in the same business, he has just graduated from HRD in Belgium and fromGIA too, and my daughter also does jewellery design in GIA and interior design in The AmericanUniversity – she is currently doing an internship with Seddiqi & Sons in all the boutiques and management, with the two daughters of my best friend, Magied and Hamied Seddiqi.” “This year I am on the Jury of the GPHG. They changed all the jury and they have upgraded the jury this year, we have some artists, decorators, journalists and exceptional people like Philippe Stark. The President of the Jury is Aurel Bacs, the international director of the watch department of Christie’s for the last five years .”