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Highlights of Federation 2019 Swiss Watch Look-Back

  1. cvalue13 Feb 25, 2020

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    While the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry put out its 2019 look-back press release back on Jan. 28th, that release is largely marketing speak.

    Maybe more interesting for folks around here are the just-posted breakdown stats and graphs that can be found here (country by value) and here (regions by value and units) and most interesting here (type of product by both unit and value year-over-year since 2013).

    A few highlights as they relate to the OF community (with my own color commentary in italics):

    Overall exports by value continue to climb (up 2.6% to 20.5B francs) while exports by units continue to fall drastically (down 13.1%), explained by high-value mechanical wristwatches selling more, and lower value watches - especially electronic watches - selling far less every year.

    Specifically, in the 2019 wrist watch sector, mechanical watches were only ~35% of Swiss sales by unit (7.2M of 20.6M), but ~83% by value (17B of 20.5B CHF), but total mechanical sales by unit dipped slightly in 2019 (-250K units) while rising by value (+~700M CHF): this continues a broader trend toward not just more mechanicals, but more higher-end mechanicals in the >3K CHF categories (which category by both unit and value have trended upward along with the prevalence of smartwatches).

    By value, the top 5 markets remained the same in 2019, most increasing, but 3 of those 5 are potentially subject to market effects of the coronavirus that could have significant impact on the industry in 2020:

    E0B77718-B760-446D-B74E-8E3E4944D099.jpeg

    The 2019 dip in HK shown above was caused by pre-coronavirus political unrest, and was offset in 2019 by gains in China; but 2020 has the potential to further hit HK, while also decreasing China sales (not to mention Japan, and the rest of the Asian market that collectively represents >50% of Swiss watch exports).

    Finally, the 2019 press release contains the following curious and unexplained note: “The growth in value was almost exclusively due to mechanical, precious metal or bimetal watches priced at over 3,000 francs (export price). Other price segments, quartz watches and steel products, in particular, declined in 2019.”

    The data released by FH to date does not allow one to break out whether steel products have declined only because steel quartz unit sales have declined, or instead because steel mechanicals also declined in either number or direct value. But (whatever mechanical steel watches did year-over-year by value), there was a marked increase in precious metal/bi-metal sales at the high end.
     
    Edited Feb 26, 2020