As Chief Commercial Officer of Seddiqi Holding, the holding group behind Ahmed Seddiqi & Sons, the organisers of the Dubai Watch Week, Mohammed Seddiqi is responsible for the business strategy and retail development of the company and is heavily involved in the organization of the Dubai Watch Week.
How does this second edition of the Dubai Watch Week compare with the first edition last year?
Our marketing team started working on this second edition of the Dubai Watch Week the day after we finished the first Dubai Watch Week. At Seddiqi we always strive to do even better and the results so far have been unbelievable. The panels are amazing, the master classes with more watchmakers than we had last year are extraordinary. Having a gallery with all the winners of the GPHG 2016 makes it easier for end consumers to see who won and why they won. I think the overall result is exceptional and educational and it is an experience that we hope we can improve on even more next year, even though that is a challenge at this level. But I am confident that our team can do it.
Have you had any feedback from the exhibition in the Dubai Mall?
The feedback coming from a lot of people is the question of when we will have a watch museum in Dubai. I think it’s too early for that, but to have a big chunk of museum pieces from Switzerland coming to Dubai for the first time along with our family collection has delivered something that people might never see again. The comments we receive from people who do not know about watches is that they are excited to learn about the history of them. This is one of the few products today in our market that has a rich history of which we can show proof. We can show the human beings that produced the watches and it is not necessarily the type of history we learn at school. We learn for example about people like Ferdinand Berthoud who left Switzerland to move to Paris and became watchmaker to the emperor. I think children are more interested in hearing this type of history.
Is that what makes it all the more important to have people like Philippe Dufour here, as well as the watchmakers giving the master classes, so that people can also feel the human part that goes into making a watch?
This is crucial to show people the effort that goes into making a watch. Listening to the experts here who can explain this is a great story.
The Dubai Watch Week already has a global dimension. Would you like to increase that?
The focus for us is on Dubai. But today Dubai is not just a city for us. It is a city that has proved to the whole world that nothing is impossible. Everything can be done. Linking our watch week to the very name Dubai gives it more credibility and shows that we can also deliver what Dubai is doing, at a much smaller scale. No other city could do what Dubai has done over the past twenty years.
Do you have any ideas for improvements or new things to consider for the next edition of the Dubai Watch Week?
We will have a debrief after the event and see what went wrong, where we can improve to make it even better and offer even greater exposure next year.
