As per the Federation of the Swiss Watchmaking Industry “The export growth posted by the watch industry at the start of the year gained some momentum in March to stand at +4.4%, with a value of 1.7 billion francs for the month. The first quarter has therefore passed the 5 billion francs mark, an increase of 2.9% on January-March 2018.”
However, while that may be true, there is a significant drop in volume of Exports. “In volume terms, the particularly negative result (-18.8%) was influenced by significant declines in the Other materials and Other metals categories and by steel timepieces. In the space of three months, exports have already fallen by nearly 800,000 pieces.”
We continue to see the familiar trend where the lower priced exports are keeping taking heat whereas the higher priced segments show entirely different statistics. “Watches costing less than 200 francs (export price) saw a particularly sharp decline, with the number of pieces down by 29.9%. At the other extreme, timepieces priced at over 3,000 francs reported a marked increase (+13.2% in value).”
Brexit also caused MASSIVE stockpiling in the UK, completely inflating the numbers there, this will just mean that those numbers will see a dramatic drop the next months to come. “The United Kingdom (+76.4%) was a special case once again because of stockpiling in the run-up to Brexit. The other European markets continued to lose ground.”