Inside Complecto: What It Took to Get to Geneva

Photo credit: Hodinkee

This week, we head back to Geneva for our fourth Watches and Wonders.

And the truth is, I have been thinking less about the show itself than about what it took for us to get here in the first place. Because when I think back to our first year in Geneva, I do not think about arrival. I think about survival.

Complecto was only a year old when we made that first trip in 2023. We were still green, still proving ourselves, still figuring out how to monetize and turn conviction into something the wider industry could actually see and understand. We were not credentialed by Watches and Wonders. In fact, 2026 is the first year I have been credentialed as official media for the show.

Back then, I didn't even know how it all worked. I just knew we needed to be there.

What It Took to Get in the Room

So I did what I have done at every stage of building Complecto: I found a way.

I made a decision to pitch a few brand partners on modest white-label content packages that could justify the trip and allow us to attend the show as their guests.

That decision got us to Geneva. It expanded Complecto’s creative and editorial portfolio. It gave us the chance to represent our community and values during the industry’s biggest moment. And most importantly, it let us meet brands where they were, instead of waiting for the the moments when they came through New York.

For the first time, we could immerse ourselves fully in the culture of the watchmaking, spend time in the environments that shaped the brands, and engage this world on a truly global level.

But despite how glossy we made it look on Instagram, there was nothing glamorous about it. It was chaotic, scrappy, exhausting, and expensive. But once we were there, we had the chance to do what is much harder to do from a distance: tell our story in person.

Not through a deck or an Instagram page alone. And not through secondhand assumptions about who we were or what kind of platform people thought we might be.

We could make the case directly. We could help people understand that Complecto was not just a “watch club,” a social media page, or another outlet chasing novelty. We were building a real platform backed by a real community, with real curiosity, real taste, and a perspective that connected culture, community, and horology in a way much of the industry still did not fully know how to read.

That part was not easy.

I will never forget some of those early meetings. I had to work twice as hard to explain what Complecto was and why it mattered. Sometimes there were language barriers, but more often, there was a gap in context. The brands across the table from me understood luxury, heritage, and product immediately. What they did not always immediately understand was how Complecto’s culture- and community-first approach created real business and brand value.

At the same time, I was battling a real sense of imposter syndrome. I was bootstrapping a business from scratch, without a roadmap, in an industry I had entered from the outside and was still learning on the fly. There were moments when the uncertainty around whether I truly belonged in those rooms felt as heavy as the pressure to prove why Complecto belonged there too. Because the weight was never only personal.

What Was at Stake

I felt a real sense of responsibility that Complecto represented something bigger than me. In those meetings, I was not just advocating for myself. I was advocating for our community, and for a broader vision of who gets to feel seen in this world and welcomed into it. I was trying to create and hold space for people who have historically been excluded from those rooms, whether or not they knew Complecto existed.

There were meetings I sweated through. The ones where I could feel the gap between what I knew Complecto was and what the person across from me was prepared to understand. I had to translate not just the business of Complecto, but the worldview behind it.

That translation was not always straightforward. So I had to learn how to lead with clarity, business value, and conviction, without watering down our values.

Building something like Complecto has never just been about good taste or good instincts. It has also been about making a case for why our perspective matters in rooms that have not always been conditioned to value it. It has meant showing up again and again, refining the language, deepening the relationships, and trusting that if we kept doing the work, eventually people would see what we saw.

And over time, they have.

Finding Our Voice

Our first year at the show, we were figuring everything out in real time. We did not really know what to expect, what we would shoot, or how to build a proper content strategy around a trip like that. We were filming for ten hours a day, getting back to the hotel, editing deep into the night, and trying to have social assets ready for the next morning. It constantly felt like we were playing catch-up, never quite able to get ahead of the algorithm, the pace of the week, or the sheer volume of what was happening around us.

Candidly, that is something we are still learning as we step into year four. But the one thing that has not changed is our vision or our commitment to our brand of storytelling.

Complecto has been producing cinematic, lifestyle-driven content since launching in 2022. From the beginning, we were less interested in simply documenting watches than in telling stories that felt immersive, narrative, and human. We wanted people to see and feel what it was like to be there — and more than that, to see themselves there with us.

Watches and Wonders gave us the chance to bring that approach to a much larger stage.

There was suddenly more room to stretch. More rooms to capture. More stories to tell. More opportunities to apply our visual language across the full scope of storytelling opportunities; brand meetings, manufacture visits, executive interviews, and product presentations.

When Complecto first launched, most watch content still leaned heavily toward straightforward product presentation. We wanted it to reflect not just the object, but the feeling, the people, and the context around it.

Over time, it has been encouraging to see more of the industry move in that direction. For us, that has simply reaffirmed something we believed from the start: that watch storytelling could hold more atmosphere, more humanity, and more emotional depth than the space often allowed for at the time.

For One Week, Geneva Becomes the Watch World

One of the reasons Watches and Wonders can be hard to explain is that it is no longer just Watches and Wonders.

Yes, the fair at Palexpo is still the center of gravity. It is where the industry gathers most visibly, where the biggest brands unveil the watches that will shape so much of the year’s conversation, and where an enormous amount of attention and expectation gets concentrated in one place.

But Geneva, during this week, has grown into something much bigger than the fair itself.

What happens around the show is now part of the story. The satellite fairs. The independent showcases. The private presentations. The hotel suites. The dinners. The side meetings. The chance encounters. The conversations in hallways and lobbies that can tell you just as much as the official launches do.

That is part of what makes the week so compelling. For a few days, the industry, the people, and the culture around it all compress into one place at one time.

And this year, that atmosphere feels especially charged.

Part of that is scale. Watches and Wonders itself continues to expand, and the wider Geneva Watch Week ecosystem around it has grown with it — from Time to Watches and Chronopolis to AHCI’s Masters of Horology and the citywide programming that now stretches beyond Palexpo.

But part of it is also timing.

Several of the brands anchoring the conversation are arriving against the backdrop of significant milestones. Rolex enters the year with the Oyster case turning 100. TUDOR is marking its centenary. And for Patek Philippe, this year marks 50 years since the launch of the Nautilus.

Anniversaries do not automatically make for better watches, but they do change the emotional temperature of a year like this. They sharpen scrutiny. They heighten expectation. They remind you that Watches and Wonders is never only about novelty. It is also about history, continuity, pressure, memory, and the stories brands choose to tell when the whole world is paying attention.

That growth says something about the industry. But it also mirrors something I have felt in Complecto.

When we first came to Geneva, we were still trying to make ourselves legible. In 2026, we are still lean and still doing a great deal with a small team, but we have real relationships now. We have trust. We have a clearer editorial perspective and a stronger sense of where our voice adds value and where it does not.

What Has Meant the Most

And through all of it, the part that has always meant the most to me is the community.

Over the last few years, Complecto has grown far beyond New York. Our members are spread around the world, and Geneva has become one of those rare places where that global reach becomes tangible in person. Every year, there are familiar faces we get to reconnect with and new members we finally get to meet for the first time after knowing each other only through messages, comments, emails, or Instagram.

That part matters deeply to me. Because for all the conversation around launches, access, and industry momentum, the most meaningful part of the journey has always been the people — from different cities, countries, backgrounds, and collecting journeys, all arriving in the same place because of a shared passion for this world.

In that sense, Geneva is not just a trade week. It's kind of like one giant meet-up.

And not just in Switzerland. That has been true in every state and country we have traveled to. Meeting members of the Complecto family around the world has been the most rewarding part of the journey. More than any credential, any partnership, or any industry milestone, that is the part that has stayed with me most.

Because at the end of the day, that is what has made all of this feel most real.

Not the access or the optics. The people.

And that is also what makes the question of whether the trip is “worth it” a little more complicated than it seems.

Who Should Actually Make the Trip

People ask me all the time whether Watches and Wonders is worth the trip. The honest answer is: it depends on what you are looking for.

If you work in the industry, collect at a high level, want to build relationships, or simply want to understand how the industry actually works in person, then Geneva can be deeply worthwhile. There is no substitute for seeing watches in the metal, hearing how brands talk when they are not just speaking through a press release, and sensing who feels clear in their identity and who does not.

For collectors and enthusiasts who are already engaged in this world, Watches and Wonders is one of the few moments where online relationships become real ones.

But if your goal is simply to know what launched, what matters, what people are talking about, and which releases are actually worth your attention, there is also a very real case for staying home.

That might sound strange coming from someone just landed in Switzerland, but it's true.

Watches and Wonders public access is limited to the final three days, and tickets are sold online only. And that is before airfare, hotels, meals, and the general cost of being in Geneva. An already expensive city becomes extraodinarily so during Watches and Wonders, especially if you're paying your own way.

So no, I do not think Geneva is a must for everyone.

For a lot of people, the smarter move is to follow the week from home through coverage you trust. Not because the trip is not special, but because the magic of being there and the practical value of being there don't always align.And that, in turn, raises the bar for what our coverage should actually do.

What We’re Really There to Do

That is shaping how I think about our coverage this year.

We are not trying to win the race to post every novelty first, or flood people with launch after launch. There are already enough outlets doing that, and by day two a lot of it starts to blur together.

What I want our coverage to do is help people feel the week more honestly.

Yes, we will show watches. Yes, we will share the standouts, the surprises, the hands-on moments, the conversations, and the releases that deserve attention.

But more than that, I want to capture the texture of the week.

How the ecosystem keeps expanding. How some of the most interesting takeaways come not from the loudest launch, but from a quiet conversation, a meeting that runs long, a watch that lands differently in person, or a brand that starts to make more sense once you spend time with the people behind it.

And in a year like this, I also want to pay attention to the tension between heritage and expectation. When a Rolex, a TUDOR, or a Patek walks into Geneva under the weight of a centenary or a major anniversary, that matters. Not as trivia, but as context. It shapes the mood around the brand, the scrutiny, and the anticipation around what comes next.

Just as importantly, I want our audience at home to feel connected to it too.

Many of you will not be in Geneva, and you should not feel like the story belongs only to the people who made the trip. Part of our job is to bring you into the week with us in a way that feels accessible and inclusive rather than insider for the sake of it.

And it would feel incomplete to write about this moment without acknowledging the wider uncertainty in the world right now. That uncertainty has real implications for people, for this industry, and for businesses like Complecto that live within it.

As much as Watches and Wonders is a celebration of craft, design, and innovation, none of it exists in a vacuum. For us, that is not a reason to posture. It is a reason to stay anchored in what actually matters: people, values, community, and a way of showing up that honors them.

That is what we will be chasing all week. Why This Trip Still Matters

I have fought, clawed, and willed Complecto to this point. I am proud of that. I am grateful for it. It has only been possible because of our team, community and partners. And I also know we still have so much more work to do.

That is part of what makes this trip meaningful.

Not because it signals that we have arrived in any final sense. But because it gives us a chance to look around, take stock of how far we have come, and then get back to work with even more clarity about where we are going.

This week, we will do what we have always tried to do: pay attention closely, tell the truth about what we see, and bring the Completo family into the room with us.