We’re About to See What’s Next for Luxury Watches
At the Baselworld fair this month, the Swiss watch industry will showcase how it plans to grapple with troubling global conditions for the timepiece market.
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Since March 2015, exports of luxury watches from Switzerland have been steadily declining. In January, the value totaled 1.5 billion Swiss francs, which is down 7.9 percent from the same month a year earlier.
The dampening factors are well-known, starting with the spike in relative value of the franc after Switzerland's central bank changed its policies in January 2015 and stopped pegging its own currency to the euro. To the rest of the world, suddenly Swiss watches became more expensive, while not much within the Swiss manufactures had actually changed. Followed by extreme global market uncertainty later in the year, and China's slowdown, the combined effect was tough for an industry that had previously been on something of a roll.