While Doha’s jewellery week draws to its close, the gold trade’s centre of gravity has shifted quietly up the Gulf. The 58th Watch & Jewellery Middle East Show opened on Tuesday at Expo Centre Sharjah, and for five days — through 4 October — more than 500 brands from 19 countries are spread across some 30,000 square metres of the emirate’s exhibition halls.
The Sharjah show has never traded on the velvet-rope theatre of its Doha counterpart. Its currency is commerce in the oldest sense: gold sets and diamonds, coloured stones and pearls, bought across the counter by families who have been doing exactly this, in exactly this building, for decades. Twice a year the show returns, and twice a year it grows. The previous edition drew over 96,000 visitors and closed with purchasing up 41 per cent — numbers most luxury fairs would not dare print.
This edition leans international. Five national pavilions — Hong Kong, India, Italy, Singapore and Thailand — anchor the floor, with Emirati designers and regional houses filling the halls between them. Organised by Expo Centre Sharjah under the Sharjah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the show positions the emirate as it has long seen itself: the hinge between the Gulf’s gold souks and the workshops of Asia and Europe. CEO Saif Mohammed Al Midfa notes the show arrives at a time when the industry is witnessing rapid developments — a diplomatic way of saying that with gold at historic highs, the appetite for it here has only sharpened.
For readers minded to go: the fair runs daily through Saturday, and the best of it — as ever in Sharjah — is found by walking slowly.
