I regularly observe the export numbers of Swiss watches, as compiled monthly by the Swiss Watch Federation. Up until November 2024 a consistent decline is visible with the 12 month moving average slowly declining. I am not a trend analyst, but the current trend shows me a situation where not much growth is to be expected for 2025. What can we expect?
New Watches
Looking at the main markets in November 2024 (the most recent numbers available) we see an overall decline of 7,9% globally, strongly influenced by the Asian markets. Hong Kong and China show a decline of 18,8% and 27,0% respectively. The economic downturn and declining stock markets indicate that pressure will be on here for a while. The US market shows more strength as well as some specific markets such as Spain (21.7%) and India (59.7%). Nice, but surely not sufficient to break the decline trend that set in in September 2024 any time soon.
When we look at the price categories we see the biggest hit is taken in the CHF 500/3,000 segment both in numbers sold and in value. The high-end segment, with retail prices above CHF 3,000 is suffering the least, especially in value. Here we probably see the effect of the prices increases widely implemented.
Pre-owned Market
The pre-owned market is more diverse but in general it follows the same movement. Looking at the Chronopulse data, based on actual transactions on Chrono24 we see a rather strong decline in the second part of 2024, followed by a magical rise before the end of the year. It results in an almost flat 2024 (-0,40%). We still haven’t seen the December 2024 export numbers, it will be interesting to see if there is an upside here as well. In the bigger picture it seems like 2024 has been a consolidation year after a strong decline in 2022 and 2023, right after the April 2022 hype peak.
So, a consolidation year in general, measuring all brands in all segments. What if we zoom in on some important brands?
Rolex
