Swiss watch exports to the UK were higher than both China and Hong Kong, a chilling report from the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry reveals today.
This almost absurd statistics says little about the strength of the British market, but everything about the implosion of sales in Asia’s “tiger” economy.
Exports to mainland China dropped by an eye-watering 50%, year-on-year to CHF 128.9 million.
To Hong Kong, exports declined by 35% to CHF 128.9 million.
The UK market received exports valued at CHF 150.5 million, making the country the third largest market in the world for Swiss watchmakers in September.
That is catchy headline news, but its absurdity highlights the ever-rising importance of the world’s biggest market, by a mile: the United States of America.
For the first nine months of 2024, Swiss watch exports are down by 3% with the United States (+5%) and Japan (+10%) the only significant bright spots in the industry’s major markets.
But even the USA appears to be storing up problems for itself.
Luxury Watch Barometer, which gathers point of sale retail and inventory data from 2,351 stores across the country, is reporting year-on-year monthly sales falls of between -5% and -15% in the first half of 2024 and rising levels of unsold inventory in the channel.
For the year-to-date, the United States is now a larger market for Swiss watchmakers than China and Hong Kong combined with exports valued at CHF 3.18 billion compared to CHF 3 billion for Asia’s two biggest markets.
Globally, Swiss watch exports were heavily impacted in September by the downward trend in steel watches, both by value (-19%) and volume (-21%).
Precious metal watches also lost ground (-9.% by value).
Declines were seen across price segments, but the CHF 500-3,000 saw the sharpest decline of 33% in the month while exports for watches priced at over CHF 3,000 were comparatively stable at -7.3%.
Aside from the USA and Japan, other normally resilient markets including the UAE (-5%) and Singapore (-14%) were down in September and are now flat, year-on-year, for the first nine months of 2024.