scapa
·I feel like there was a previous thread this point might have fit into, but I can't seem to find it, so here goes.
Just read a Guardian article in their daily biz update about the drop in demand for luxury goods (unsurprising) and there's an interesting note on watch sales at the end of the article:
https://www.theguardian.com/busines...covid-19-downturn-us-job-losses-business-live
The gloom in the luxury goods sector is deepening even though some countries have started to relax their coronavirus lockdowns.
Global sales of luxury handbags, clothes, watches and cosmetics are set to slump by 50% to 60% between April and June, compared with an estimated 25% decline in the first three months of the year, the consultancy Bain says in its spring report.
For 2020 as a whole, Bain is predicting that luxury sales will fall by 20% to 35%, and it will take two to three years to return to last year’s sales of $303bn. Shops in China have started to reopen and Chinese consumers are expected to account for nearly half the market by 2025.
Bain partner and report co-author Federico Levato says:
“As consumers slowly emerge from lockdowns, the way they see the world will have changed and luxury brands will need to adapt.
Safety in store will be mandatory, paired with the magic of the luxury experience: creative ways to attract customers to store, or to get the product to the customer, will make the difference.”
Luxury accessories such as handbags have fared a bit better while watch sales declined the most, because of a lack of online sales platforms.
Along with, I suspect, many of you here, I've bought several watches online, some successfully and others that I later flipped for reasons of fit, look, function, redundancy in a collection, visceral loathing, etc. I've had relatively (shockingly?) few in-store purchases that evoke the "magic of the luxury experience" -- and those have been in the UK/Europe or in the US, not in Canada. So my questions are:
1) Do you prefer to buy a watch online or in person? Can you imagine an enhanced online sales platform that might more closely approach the in-store experience?
2) Are luxury watches now really a buyer's market, and do recent pricing/offers now accurately reflect this?
3) What do you see changing about how you approach a watch purchase in light of the pandemic?
I'm sure there are many other question that might arise but was interested in thoughts on the what's-next in terms of the watch world.
Just read a Guardian article in their daily biz update about the drop in demand for luxury goods (unsurprising) and there's an interesting note on watch sales at the end of the article:
https://www.theguardian.com/busines...covid-19-downturn-us-job-losses-business-live
The gloom in the luxury goods sector is deepening even though some countries have started to relax their coronavirus lockdowns.
Global sales of luxury handbags, clothes, watches and cosmetics are set to slump by 50% to 60% between April and June, compared with an estimated 25% decline in the first three months of the year, the consultancy Bain says in its spring report.
For 2020 as a whole, Bain is predicting that luxury sales will fall by 20% to 35%, and it will take two to three years to return to last year’s sales of $303bn. Shops in China have started to reopen and Chinese consumers are expected to account for nearly half the market by 2025.
Bain partner and report co-author Federico Levato says:
“As consumers slowly emerge from lockdowns, the way they see the world will have changed and luxury brands will need to adapt.
Safety in store will be mandatory, paired with the magic of the luxury experience: creative ways to attract customers to store, or to get the product to the customer, will make the difference.”
Luxury accessories such as handbags have fared a bit better while watch sales declined the most, because of a lack of online sales platforms.
Along with, I suspect, many of you here, I've bought several watches online, some successfully and others that I later flipped for reasons of fit, look, function, redundancy in a collection, visceral loathing, etc. I've had relatively (shockingly?) few in-store purchases that evoke the "magic of the luxury experience" -- and those have been in the UK/Europe or in the US, not in Canada. So my questions are:
1) Do you prefer to buy a watch online or in person? Can you imagine an enhanced online sales platform that might more closely approach the in-store experience?
2) Are luxury watches now really a buyer's market, and do recent pricing/offers now accurately reflect this?
3) What do you see changing about how you approach a watch purchase in light of the pandemic?
I'm sure there are many other question that might arise but was interested in thoughts on the what's-next in terms of the watch world.