Change to winter time

During the night of 24 October, Switzerland will be changing to winter time and putting the clocks back one hour, from 3 am to 2 am. Enjoy the extra long night and treat yourself to a lie-in.

The idea of introducing Summer Time was first broached in 1784 by Benjamin Franklin in a letter to the editor of a Paris newspaper. He, however, simply took it to be a joke. The subject was not brought up again until 1907, when the Englishman, William Willett, lobbied – albeit unsuccessfully – for a system of maximising the daylight hours. Summer Time was introduced for the first time in 1916, in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ireland. But it was not until 1977 that large parts of Europe individually decided to observe summer time, based on the argument that they could save energy by making better use of the daylight.

Rebellious Switzerland
However, in Switzerland, resistance to this system of changing the time grew. In 1978, a petition submitted by Swiss farmers led to a referendum, which resulted two years later in Daylight Saving being revoked. But the chaos that this caused, particularly as regards international traffic, caused the Swiss Parliament to pass legislation to reintroduce Summer Time. And so since 1981, we have been ticking in rhythm with our central European neighbours.

September Hong Kong Jewellery & Gem Fair Outperforms expectations

The total number of trade visitors was up 5 percent to 39,146 - despite the difficult economic climate in the jewellery industry.

The event is the most international jewellery fair globally, featuring exhibitors from 44 countries, 21 group- and country pavilions and 23,248 visitors from overseas. In line with the shift in the global economic markets the amount of buyers from Asia, namely China and India increased, while the attendance from USA retracted slightly.

"The visitor figures are encouraging and they caught everyone by surprise," said Ms Celine Lau, director of Jewellery Fairs, UBM Asia. "Though many insiders still doubt the recovery of the global economy, we saw a 5- percent increase in the number of visitors. Also, although the number of visitors from the United States is down, the rate of decline is less than what we expected. Sure the US economy remains challenging, but it is still the fourth best-represented country at the Fair in terms of visitor figures, ranking right after Hong Kong, China and India."

Also the new arrangement of product sectors contributed to the success of the fair: the clear allocation of jewellery materials to Asia World Expo and finished jewellery to HK Convention and Exhibition Centre helped buyers to prepare their trips and navigate supplier's onsite more efficiently. Exhibitors and visitors confirmed that the improved arrangement has lead to more efficient sourcing.

Visitors were also helped with pre-fair information and onsite assistance provided by the media partners of the show, Jewellery News Asia, the publisher of the exhibition's show daily, and JewelleryNetAsia the internet portal and sponsor of the newly launched onsite Product Locator Kiosks.

The next dates for the September Hong Kong & Gem Fair are 14 - 18 September 2010, at AsiaWorld-Expo (exhibit profile: diamonds, pearls, gemstones, equipment & packaging) and 16 - 20 September 2010, at Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre (fine finished jewellery).

A Fair Report with detailed figures and pictures is available on request.