Grinding Gears: Your Official Dubai Watch Week Bingo Card

Here at Grinding Gears, we're happy to announce an important tool to enhance your Dubai Watch Week experience — the 2023 Dubai Watch Week Bingo Card. This simple yet essential tool allows you to make the most out of the many Masterclasses, Horology Forums and events on offer and have some fun along the way. Thanks to exhaustive industry research, we've put together a list of 25 industry buzzwords and jargon terms you can expect to hear over the week, as well as a short, real-world explanation of what they mean,

Playing Dubai Watch Week Bingo is simple: every time you hear one of the key phrases, mark it off your card, and when you have five in a row, stand up and loudly yell 'Bingo!' Please do be aware that Dubai Watch Week Bingo is a Grinding Gears initiative, not officially sanctioned by Dubai Watch Week, and security may ask you to leave if you cause a scene.

DNA

Usually, 'Brand DNA' is a mostly meaningless shorthand for what makes the brand unique and different from all the other watch brands that essentially do the same thing.

Sustainable

Now that the corporate world has decided to take a position on climate change, sustainability is how brands are attempting to profit off the shifting cultural mood. Just don't ask too many questions about gold mining.

Heritage

The history of the watch brand, or if that history is lacking, lots of sepia-toned stock images and old-fashioned calligraphy.

Proprietary Material

What you get when you marginally change the composition of a common alloy, so you can give it an irritating new name to use in press releases.

Collaboration

When one business uses another business to make itself look cooler.

Revolutionary

If you hear this word in the context of luxury watches, don't worry; it doesn't mean anything.

Sportive

Swiss-English for 'Sporty', which actually means it's not as formal as a dress watch and not as chunky as a diver.

Icon

Either referring to a design that sells well, or a design that someone mildly famous once wore.

AI

One of the biggest global trends right now, and one that no one really understands.

Manufacture

An upscale factory.

Exclusive

What a watch brand says when they didn't make enough.

In-House

Probably made by someone else, but they promised to make it just for us.

Savoir-Faire

"Our watchmaking savoir-faire" sounds better than "we know how to make watches."

Integrated

The sort of bracelet everyone wants to buy.

Community

Customer.

Improved Ergonomics

We made it bigger/smaller.

Artisanal

An actual human was involved in making this, not just a machine.

Patented

We changed a few parts around, and advised legal.

Industry First

Common practice elsewhere, but no one ever saw the need to do it on a watch,

Strong Customer Demand

Available at discount

Friend of the Brand

We paid them money.

Technical term for plastic

Often simply 'resin', but if there are any technical sounding acronyms that are suspiciously vague, it's probably plastic.

Accessible

Expensive, but not stupidly so.

Novelty

For most of the world this refers to tacky socks or cheap trinkets, but in watchland it just means 'new'.

Disruptive

Essentially meaningless, but it sounds cool, and probably involves either AI or corporate-sanctioned graffiti.