renewed inflation<\/a> pressures and doubts about consumer confidence are injecting new uncertainty into the market that generates tens of billions of dollars in revenue each year.<\/p>\n\u201cThe war in the Middle East will have certainly a huge impact for the Swiss exports because it represents 10% of the total Swiss watch exports, so it\u2019s quite substantial,” said Oliver M\u00fcller, founder of Swiss consultancy LuxeConsult.<\/p>\n
“Some markets in the Middle East are totally halted,” he said. In the United Arab Emirates, for example, “60% of business is done with tourists. You can imagine that nothing is going on currently.\u201d<\/p>\n
A \u2018cloud\u2019 over Watches and Wonders show<\/h2>\n
The show is an elite gathering that showcases innovations, drums up deals and hosts some 65 exhibiting brands from around the world: That’s just a sliver of an industry that counts some 450 watchmakers in Switzerland alone. About 60,000 visitors are expected to attend.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have very few cancellations. We had to adapt some travels, but we are expecting a record edition in terms of numbers of visitors,” said Mathieu Humair, the CEO of Watches and Wonders.<\/p>\n
Celebrities were in the mix. Tennis star Jannik Sinner and actor Patrick Dempsey were on hand for the opening Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Morgan Stanley, in the 9th Annual Swiss Watcher report put together with LuxeConsult, said in February that Swiss watch exports declined 1.7% last year in value terms \u2014 a year when Switzerland’s franc was relatively strong compared with the U.S. dollar and the euro.<\/p>\n
It was a second straight year of market contraction, the report said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look back at a year ago, the sort of theme was: The tariffs and the uncertainty,” said industry analyst Ming Liu. \u201cUnfortunately, we aren\u2019t anywhere closer to certainty, probably even less with what\u2019s happening in the Middle East.”<\/p>\n
Similar to the luxury goods sector as a whole, the biggest brands have been gaining market share. Four of Switzerland’s 450-odd watch brands \u2014 Rolex, Cartier, Patek Philippe, and Omega \u2014 make up over half the total Swiss retail market share, the report said.<\/p>\n
And the upper-end segment has been growing: hand-crafted watches priced at more than 50,000 francs (more than $63,000) apiece made up 37% of the total value of Swiss watch exports last year \u2014 up from 33.5% in 2024, it said.<\/p>\n
Switzerland still stands out in the luxury watch business<\/h2>\n
The Morgan Stanley report said Swiss-made watches represent about 96% percent of the global luxury watch market, or those that retail for at least 2,000 francs each (more than $2,200).<\/p>\n
Japan’s Grand Seiko is the \u201cmost credible non-Swiss challenger\u201d and India’s Titan is making a run at the top tier, the report said.<\/p>\n
The Swiss are coming off a turbulent year. Trump imposed exceptionally high U.S. tariffs on goods from Switzerland last year, hitting a peak of 39% \u2014 the highest faced by any developed Western country.<\/p>\n
A delegation of Swiss business executives traveled to the White House and offered Trump gifts, including a Rolex clock, in November. The following month a deal was announced that sharply lowered U.S. tariffs on Swiss products.<\/p>\n
\u2014Jamey Kaeten, Associated Press<\/em><\/p>\nAP video journalist Mustakim Hasnath contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The bling is back, but the\u00a0Iran war\u00a0has tarnished the outlook for the luxury watch industry \u2014 the ultimate in opulence. Starting Tuesday, Geneva hosts the annual Watches and Wonders fair, a premiere gathering in an industry eager for a rebound after two years of market contraction, hopefully including sales in oil-rich Gulf Arab countries. The\u00a0U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brand-spotlights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}