Due to a few National holidays the Squiggly office is closed on the following days:
April 30, May 5 and May 13. These days there will be no mail pickup at the office which means that a delay of one or two days may occur with some orders.
April 30 – Queensday
The Swatch Girls Pro takes place between May 12th and 16th in Seignosse, France. The event consists of two parts, the WQS 6star and the Pro Junior 2star. The Pro Junior event will be held on May 12th and the WQS 6star events will run between May 13 and 16.
The Swatch Girls Pro will showcase some of the best female surfers including three times World Champion Stephanie Gilmore, Coco Ho, Alana Blanchard, Sally Fitzgibbons and Lee Ann Curren. High level of surfing can be expected as the girls battle for precious WQS points.
The event takes place in Hossegor – Seignosse, France.
On the 6th of May the Swatch & Art Collection Launch Event will take place in London, United Kingdom. A special website for the Swatch & Art has been launched on Swatch.com and can be found here.
The launch of the Swatch & Art Collection will be presented by four artists;
Ivan Navarro
Cassette Playa
Manish Arora
Enki Bilal
Andreas just wrote on his website:
“A special packaging of the Ivan Navarro Swatch (black and featuring a skull?!?), limited to 177 pcs, will be available for 150 CHF (~$140 US) in Switzerland.”
More information about this event can be found on the Swatch the Club page here.
In 2008 a Swatch Special was released for Nespresso. The watch was released for the ITN Technical Convention in Geneva, Switzerland. The special is a an Irony Chrono Raceway (YCS4020) from 2002 with a new special strap.
Dr. Ernst Thomke
was born on 21 April, 1939 in Biel/Bienne in Switzerland. First he studied to become a trained mechanic, but while he was working he acquired the Swiss federal maturity degree and pursued academic studies. The circumstances led him to become an efficient saviour of Swiss ailing companies throughout his career.
In 1978, at the peak of the Swiss watch industry crisis that faced a global onslaught by the cheap Japanese Quartz, Thomke was called to the rescue of ETA SA. In order to end the destructive internal competition between the Swiss Ebauches watch factories, Thomke suggested that only one conglomerate of all those companies could finally save the Swiss watch industry.
In 1978 ETA SA merged with former rival A. Schild SA (AS). The new ETA had 2,200 employees and introduced gradually improved new technology in the manufacturing of quartz movements and full automation throughout the production. Thomke also integrated as much as possible the other Ebauches factories since long owned by Ebauches SA.
In 1982 Thomke was also appointed on the Board of Directors of the ASUAG, the holding company of ETA SA.
Dr. Ernst Thomke with his collaborators Elmar Mock and Jacques Müller are the inventors of the Swatch as we know it. They had external assistance of Franz Sprecher, a fine marketing specialist. They are the instigators of the success of the Brand Swatch, which was the re-launch of the success of the Swiss Watch Industry.
Thomke was the first CEO from 1984 to 1991. In this period the company won universal major consideration for the successful integration of all the Ebauches factories into Eta SA and the regain of prestige for the exclusive brands Omega, Longines and Tissot.
Here a prototypes with the signature from the forgotten swatch creators
happy collecting
Recently, an special SHB103LD - GFL 2007 has surfaced. The watch is a Scuba Access Boarder-X (SHB103) with a special printed strap. The watch was distributed during Golden Flight Level 2007 (International Winter-Championships of Air Traffic Control personnel) in Oberstdorf, Germany.
Swatch Art Peace Hotel
Swatch Group introduces the restoration and unique operational concept at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai.
Biel / Bienne and Basel, Switzerland, and Shanghai, China, March 2010. The Swatch Group is presenting an exhibition at Baselworld in the Hall of Dreams from the 17th to the 19th of March, dedicated to its renovation of the South Building of the historic Peace Hotel, located on Shanghai’s legendary Bund, the city’s former financial district and today its most famous landmark. The Swatch Group is working closely with its joint venture partner, Jin Jiang International, China’s leading hotel and travel group. The restored hotel will re-open as the Swatch Art Peace Hotel later this year.
The extensive renovation of the Swatch Art Peace Hotel is slated to be completed in time for Shanghai EXPO 2010. Its retail space will open in mid-May and there will be a grand opening of the completely renovated hotel on the 1st of August.
When it has been fully and conscientiously restored, the Swatch Art Peace Hotel will start to welcome the arts and working artists from around the world to its splendid venues and become once again a focal point of Shanghai’s vibrant cultural life.
The South Building of the Peace Hotel, built in 1908, enjoys protected status as a cultural monument. The Swatch Art Peace Hotel project has called on the skills of experts in the field of historic preservation who are paying due respect to the hotel’s heritage and its status as one of Shanghai’s best known structures.
The Swatch Art Peace Hotel project invites gifted artists from around the world to live and work for a limited time in apartment/workshops. Artists from a range of creative disciplines are to be selected by a commission to ensure that a broad spectrum of nationalities is represented.
Selected artists are offered a chance to create in this unique environment with exhibitions showcasing their work at the hotel. They will be asked to leave a «trace» of their art at the hotel when they have completed their residencies.
The retail space on the ground floor includes a Swatch Boutique designed to convey the core values of the brand: emotion, joy of life, innovation and positive provocation. The Swatch Group’s most prestigious brands, Breguet, Blancpain and Omega, are also represented with boutiques of their own, featuring the period décor and cultural ambience of the Swatch Art Peace Hotel.
The exhibition can be viewed between March 17th and March 19th in the Plaza in the Hall of Dreams at Basel’s Exhibition Square.
More information on: http://www.swatch-art-peace-hotel.com/en/home
Rumour has it that the Swatch store at the Place Vendome and Via Della Spiga will be closed soon.
No new collections have been made in the last two years…
If more information is available it will probably appear on the forum.
