The luxury watch industry needs bigger, bolder innovation and ideas to lure new customers as it hits the limits of its well-worn strategy of boosting revenue with ever-pricier offerings.
That’s the view of some industry executives at the annual watch world post-summer gathering this week in Geneva. A record 71 brands set up shop in hotel rooms, boutiques and exhibition spaces to display their wares, but the bullish attendance figures belied watchmakers’ worries over the future.
After years of perfecting a blueprint for making more money through the sales of fewer but more expensive timepieces, Swiss watchmakers face younger consumers with less money to spend and a different view on what makes a luxury watch desirable. That, together with a booming resale market and competition from Japanese and credible Chinese contenders, is shrinking Swiss watchmakers’ exports, making the trends a more worrisome development than the war in the Middle East.
“Today, that’s the main challenge of the industry,” Jean-Christophe Babin, president of Geneva Watch Days and chairman of Bulgari, said in an interview.
Switzerland, which is the undisputed global leader of the luxury watch industry, exported only 14.6 million timepieces last year compared with 25.4 million in 2016, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry.
While Swiss manufacturers have sought to cushion the blow by moving further upmarket — lifting prices as volumes fell — that’s only protecting the largest brands like Rolex, Patek Philippe and Cartier, which have a cult-like following. Mid-market players and suppliers are being hit hard.
The ultra-high segment continues to command “collector interest, but it’s a tougher market for those in the middle,” said Rodolfo Festa-Bianchet, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Bianchet, whose watches fall in the higher end of the range.
Gen Z and young millennials are less driven by status and brand loyalty, and are “more about excitement, emotion, discovery,” said Babin.
Younger buyers are also helping fuel the secondary market. They are more comfortable buying secondhand and vintage watches online, where they can avoid waiting lists, access discontinued models and get immediate gratification rather than waiting months or years for a new piece.
Babin added that the industry has been too cautious and conservative in responding to changing tastes, focusing on technical improvements while failing to deliver bold new ideas.
He pointed to the Royal Pop collaboration between Audemars Piguet and Swatch as an example of the kind of disruption that he said can attract new buyers without alienating existing ones. The collection, unveiled earlier this year, recast Royal Oak design codes in an accessible, colorful pocket-watch format aimed in part at younger consumers.
Such radical departures have been few and far between, Babin bemoaned.
“This is really what we are missing, this type of innovation more often and for more brands. If we don’t do that, it will be very difficult to recover volumes,” said Babin.
To make matters worse, competition is intensifying. Chinese-made movement quality is now comparable to ETA SA or Sellita for standard complications, said Babin. Chinese luxury jeweler Laopu, which became one of the country’s most viral consumer brands, is cited as evidence that Western incumbents risk getting rapidly displaced.
Chinese watchmakers are also increasingly selling mechanical watches globally through online channels, bypassing traditional retail networks and adding more pressure on Swiss products, particularly mid-priced ones.
That section of the market is also having to take on Japanese brands – Seiko, Citizen, Casio – that are doing well because they don’t really try to trade up the way the Swiss manufacturers do, said Oliver Müller, founder of LuxeConsult, an industry advisory firm.
“Gen Z probably gives less weight to the Swiss-made hallmark,” he said. “Each of these brands is marginal on its own, but aggregated they are taking volume away from the institutional Swiss-made brands in the mid-price segment.”
While investors are seeking a revival of the luxury industry after a tough few years weighed down by geopolitical tensions, tariffs and dampened Chinese demand, Breitling CEO Georges Kern warns this might be the “new normal” for the sector.
For Swiss watchmakers, the challenge is no longer just how to keep raising prices. It’s how to persuade a new generation to buy more watches.
