Swiss watch exports took a knock this past month as many industries have due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus (Covid-19). After a positive start to the year where January exports came in at +9.4% year over year, exports declined 9.2% in February coming in at CHF 1.6 billion.

With both wrist watches and other products seeing large declines, the 12 month moving average moved lower, back to its December 2019 rate of around 3.4%.

Looking at the breakdown of exports by price segment, the overall results continue to get worse. Units sold fell by 22% and value fell by 8.7%. The largest hit price segment was the CHF 200-500 which declined by 55% in units and 52% in value. This is a price segment that is extremely approachable for many watch enthusiasts so a large segment of the market is most likely not buying watches.

The USA led the way in main markets making up 12% of total exports for the month of February. These results are probably due to the fact that Covid-19 had not been as widespread in the USA as in other Asian countries. Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore all made the top 6 markets but had serious declines in exports year over year. The United Kingdom and Germany rounded out the list. Notably, China was absent from the top 6 markets due to the rapid spread of Covid-19 shutting down many businesses.

March Predictions

The month of March has seen huge increases in the number of cases of Covid-19. This extremely fast paced spread has caused global markets to shutter, and economic indicators will almost certainly follow. This will obviously have an effect on watch exports, and it would not be surprising if watch exports continued to decline next month.

Enjoy!