The recovery continues for the swiss watch industry as watch exports in May 2021 amounted to just shy of CHF 1.8 billion, the same as April 2021. Although this is a negative results compared to May 2019 of -11.9% growth, this did move the 12-month moving average into the positive territory. If you compared this to 2020, which is fairly irrelevant because of the type of year 2020 was, this result for May is a +174.2% growth.

May 2019 was a strong month, and can be seen in both watches by materials and price categories. The bulk of watches by materials were in precious metals and steel, with precious metals only down around 6% compared to 2019. More expensive watches above CHF 3,000 were basically flat compared to 2019 in both units and value.

The top 6 markets were split down the middle, with China, USA and the UK seeing positive variance compared to 2019. The other three markets, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore with negative results. Most markets in the top 30 were negative, pointing to limited growth in the recovery of global markets compared to 2019.

June Predictions
We were slightly off in our estimates for May, as we thought we would see positive results in exports compared to May 2019. June 2019 swiss watch exports amounted to approximately CHF 1.7 billion. While there is a recovery for global economies, watch exports will most likely stay very similar to May 2021 of around CHF 1.8 billion, so we predict a growth of around +5% for June 2021 compared to June 2019.

Enjoy!