Singapore's pre-eminent watch retailer, The Hour Glass, was established in October 1979 by Dr. Henry Tay and Jannie Chan. The two had had the vision of transforming the face of watch retail, presenting to customers a destination that was refined, upscale and focused on fine watchmaking, something until then that had been absent on the Singapore landscape. Right around the same time more than four decades ago, a man by the name of Carlo Crocco was crafting his own destiny in Italy. His ambition was to create a radically different luxury-sports watch, the very notion of which had only been invented a few years before. It was in April 1980 at the Basel Fair that the world would see the first Hublot ever produced, barely months after The Hour Glass opened its doors.