Bleak news for August Swiss watch exports

The Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry has released its monthly export figures for the month of August, and it makes for grim reading.

Even with the caveat of the boom in exports to the USA in July (in order to ship them before President Trump’s 39% tariff came into force), as well as the caveat of one fewer working days in August this year compared to last,  it’s still hard to put a positive spin on the most recent figures.

All of the top 10 countries in the world for Swiss watch exports are down (most of them significantly) year on year versus the same period in 2024, with the exception of Italy, which has seen underwhelming growth of 3.12%, in terms of sales value.

Although the well-documented issues with the States goes some way to explain its poor August performance, the UK market should be concerned at the 20.45% negative growth it saw. It did admittedly have two of its best ever years for total Swiss export sales value in 2023 and 2024, so hopefully the most recent data is not a sign of long-term decline.