Is That Number Right? Swiss Watch Industry Export Statistics - February 2021

Following rough results from last month, Swiss watch exports rebounded to about no change year over year at -0.3%. Impacted by the negative base effect, the 12 month moving average also moved north to around -23%.

Steel and other metals saw positive changes year over year of about 8%, despite fairly week total Swiss Franc’s worth of sales. Watches over CHF 200 also so fairly good results, with extremely negative results under CHF 200.

Main markets show the real story for the last month. The Chinese market saw a growth of 161% YoY which really bolstered the unchanged results we see. The effects of the pandemic hit China around February of last year, and so with such a low base to grow off of, the results were extremely high. Encouraging results also came out of the USA, which has grown around 9% YoY despite the effects of the pandemic only hitting the US market in March 2020.

March Predictions
The pandemic had larger effects on global supply chains in March of last year. Because of this, the negative base effect is going to have huge implications on the watch export results for March. We predict watch exports to grow 6% for March 2021.

Enjoy!