Exports of Swiss watches fell 16 percent in March, compared with the year prior. That's the largest monthly decline in exports since 2020.
on Thursday. Last month, they fell 16 percent by value compared with the year prior, to 2 billion Swiss francs , according to Federation of the SwissWhen a Hairy Wrist Gives Your Watch Bangs
“The negative trend is even worse than we expected, and the decline in China is really worrying and probably indicates that inventories in the region were once again too high,” Jean-Philippe Bertschy, an analyst at the Swiss firm Vontobel, told Bloomberg. Bertschy was referring to the fact that exports to China fell a whopping 41.5 percent last month, a notable downturn in the second largest market for Swiss watches. That dip brought exports in the Asian country to an even lower level than that in March 2020, when the watch industry shut down due to pandemic restrictions, Bloomberg noted.
A similarly large decline was experienced in Hong Kong, where exports dropped 44 percent. The United States, which is the, saw a more modest decrease of 6.5 percent. In total, 1.1 million watches were shipped out of Switzerland in March, a 25 percent decline from the past year.The overall dip was due to a number of factors, including geopolitical tensions and high interest rates around the world, Bloomberg notes.
The poor news resulted in unfavorable results for Swiss watchmakers. Shares of Swatch Group, which owns brands like Omega and Longines, fell to their lowest point in the past year. And shares in Richemont, which oversees Cartier and Vacheron Constantin, dropped about 1 percent.Tori Latham is a digital staff writer at Robb Report. She was previously a copy editor at The Atlantic, and has written for publications including The Cut and The Hollywood Reporter.
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