Swiss watch exports grow only slightly in January

According to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, Swiss watch exports nominally increased by 0.2 percent to CHF 1.62 in January. Due to last year‘s excellent results, analysts even expected them to be shrinking. The Swiss watch federation believes that unfavorable base effects will have an adverse effect on exports on the first half of 2019.

Decline in China

Exports to Hong Kong, the most critical market for the Swiss watch industry, increased by almost 2 percent in January, but those to China decreased by 15 percent. Main reasons for this are the high base effects (due to increase by 44 percent last year).

The watch industry’s second-biggest market, the US, grew by 9 percent, the countries with the most significant growth rates were Japan (+ 29 percent), and Great Britain (+24 percent), France (-12 percent) and Italy (-16 percent) experienced sharp declines.

Expensive watches are popular

Popular this year were expensive watches over CHF 3,000, development in the three other price categories was disappointing though, exports for watches below CHF 500 were particularly low.

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