The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry has shared the latest statistics for March. “Last month, performance increased by 37.2% compared with March 2020, to 1.9 billion Swiss francs”. Granted this is looking back at one of the worst months of the year. However, “compared with the 2019 baseline, the month-on-month change was +7.4%. The first quarter saw growth of 6.6% compared with 2020 and a very slight decline (-1.3%) compared with 2019.”
Looking a bit shorter term then, the number of watches exported increased by +33.7%, to 1.2 million items. As per the FH, “this was the first increase in over 30 months”. All price segments and all types of watches essentially showed positive numbers (excluding the mysterious ‘other materials’ category).
The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry further highlights that “a sharp increase does not yet mean a return to normal, but only a partial offsetting of the significant declines suffered last year. This phenomenon will be exacerbated over the next few months.”
Small reminder that all the figures released by the FH refer to exports data and not to sales to end-consumers. Differences between these two types of data may therefore exist. These data must be regarded as consolidated figures gathering export results from all Swiss watch companies.