The United Kingdom has not traditionally been a popular marketplace for expensive wristwatches. Historically, working people have preferred to own watches on the lower end of the price scale. Even those who prefer to make extravagant purchases only class an expensive watch as a “once in a lifetime” purchase.
Many would expect that these trends would continue in recent years, especially after a long recession. But the Federation of Swiss Watch Industry have published some new statistics recently which make for interesting reading. This new data shows that the UK luxury timepiece market has not reduced, but actually increased in recent years. The increase is not a small increase either, the market has almost doubled since 2010.
The UK Luxury Timepiece Market Fourth Biggest In The World
In October 2015 the UK timepiece market was 8th in the World, but figures from November show a sharp increase taking it up to 4th. This was unexpected as the UK has never traditionally been a strong market for luxury timepieces. The statistics used for these findings take the value of Swiss watch exports by country worldwide. The numbers for November put the UK behind Italy in 3rd, the United States in 2nd and Hong Kong in 1st.
In the past, the majority of UK luxury timepiece sales have been made to foreign visitors to London. But chief executive of Aurum Holdings, Brian Duffy, told Swiss Info that the recent surge in sales of luxury timepieces in the UK is down to a number of factors:
“Our flagship Watches of Switzerland store on London’s Regent Street has now been open for a full year and is proving extremely successful, and we’ve opened another huge store on Oxford Street. There have also been a number of significant mono-brand store openings by makers such as Patek Philippe, Jaeger-LeCoultre and IWC – and the Patek Philippe exhibition held at the Saatchi Gallery during the summer brought in a great deal of business, thanks to the large number of visitors coming from both this country and abroad.”
Duffy also believes that people in the UK have traditionally not been comfortable with the idea of buying a luxury timepiece. He states that “British people realise that they don’t need an expensive watch to be able to tell the time.” But he believes that in recent years British people are becoming more comfortable with the idea of investing in luxury watches in an act of “rational indulgence.” He states that this is because they realise “a watch can be a very resilient investment and a family heirloom.”
This increase in the standing of the UK luxury timepiece market is incredibly surprising, especially as it coincides with a large increase in interest in the wearable tech market. This appears to point towards the idea that Swiss watch sales can remain strong alongside the much-vaunted “smartwatch revolution.”
These figures go a long way to backing up the feeling that the Swiss watch market has nothing to fear from new advancements in wearable technology. This means that Swiss watch manufacturers can go into Baselworld 2016 with a lot more confidence than they did last year, especially as the expected Swiss watch market crash of 2015 never actually materialised. Keep an eye out on this blog as we will have full coverage of Baselworld 2016 right here on First Class Watches.
Images: Mohammad Fahmi Mohd Shah,
