OPINION: It’s time the watch industry showed its inner workings

There are two big moments in the annual watch calendar these days.

The first is Watches and Wonders, which will need no introduction. And the second is the release of the Morgan Stanley report, which I doubt will either.

Every spring for the past nine years, the investment bank has produced its report, now known as the “Swiss Watcher,” with, it says, the express purpose of giving its investors a heads-up on where they should be putting their money. And for a while, it was fair to say it was those investors who got the most out of it.

Not any more.

I can put my finger on exactly when that stopped being the case. I was at Watches and Wonders in 2023 and in a meeting with the chief executive of one of the watch brands — I’ll not say whom. Had I, came the enquiry, seen the Morgan Stanley report, and if I had, would I be ready to share it?

For all that I wanted to warm the room by obliging, the report had been shared with me by its author in full confidence that I’d keep it to myself. It wasn’t widely distributed back then, and frankly this gave me a competitive advantage, and one earned on trust at that. So I said no.

But the significance of the request was clear. Brands now cared about the report and where they ranked in it, and what PR value they could squeeze out of it. Three years on, and the report’s profile has soared. It comes earlier in the year now and when it lands, word spreads like wildfire. Watch media trumpet the headlines, and before the day’s out it seems everyone in watches knows who’s up and who’s down and by how much, and has formed an opinion — however half-baked or AI-generated — as to why.

Given we live in a time when whatever is said loudest is also regarded as most true, Morgan Stanley’s figures now carry an unintended burden of accuracy. They’re quoted so often they’ve become gospel, even while its authors make it clear listed revenues and volumes are, in almost every case, estimates. Of the 50 brands charted, only two publish their sales figures (Hermès and Christopher Ward), while the rest are either part of groups that hide the detail in consolidated accounts, or private companies that aren’t obliged to report at all — and so don’t.

Consequentially, this makes the Morgan Stanley report a lottery for the 48. Or, for those listed as backsliders, Russian roulette. At last, this year, one group fired back. Swatch Group’s unprecedented open letter ripped up the report, offered some counters, and hinted at legal action. Fair enough. But hadn’t it brought this on itself? Silence, a Swiss specialty, is golden only until it’s corrosive.

I contacted the group for comment, and to its credit, Tissot chief executive and Swatch Group management board member Sylvain Dolla stepped forward and agreed to go on the record and to share some numbers. As a board member of a listed company, he’s bound by market conduct rules, which, as he noted, means he has to be very careful to share accurate information.

He rubbished Morgan Stanley’s findings and gave me some numbers that left the needle pointing up, rather than down (highly unlikely he would have called to say otherwise). He didn’t give me Tissot’s 2025 turnover, but left me to work it out based on the numbers he’d given me — volumes and average selling price. A simple bit of maths, even accounting for wholesale and retail splits, which I based on figures he’d given in a previous interview. I invited Tissot to comment on the figure I came up with, but they declined. Safe to say, it was higher than Morgan Stanley’s — 801 million Swiss francs compared to 720 million.

Even while it felt like a door left half opened, it was refreshing to hear from a Swiss chief executive on a matter that has created such tension between the industry and journalists (brand bosses typically dismiss all questions posed to them by press about the report; some have even blacklisted those of us who use them).

The question now is why brands don’t do it more often. In this age of enforced transparency, by falling back on old ways brands only dig themselves a deeper hole. The watch-gazing diaspora is well-versed in this stuff now. Everyone’s an analyst. And the views buyers generate based on independently produced reports — see also those of the Swiss bank Vontobel, RBC Capital Markets and WatchCharts — are impacting purchasing decisions, secondary market values, and the long-term value in brands.

Coming clean won’t be easy. For some, it would be painful. I’m sure we could argue that publishing bad figures is every bit as damaging as letting someone else estimate them. But then again, there’s only one thing worse than performing badly, and that’s performing badly and trying to keep it a secret.

It’s slim evidence, but I can’t see any damage done to Hermès, which has recorded declining watch division sales over the past two years. In fact, I’d say the overall growth trajectory the French maison has reported since the turn of the decade is a sign that openness pays.

We could say the same of Christopher Ward. It publishes its revenues, even if it has to as a UK limited company. And it’s up. Big time. Audemars Piguet grew massively in the 2010s, and at every SIHH its former chief executive François-Henri Bennahmias would begin his press conferences by sharing previous year’s revenues.

I don’t want to sound naïve. I know there’s no nice, neat line to be drawn that connects transparency and sales. But there’s something in it. Buyers — people — want to know. And at some point, businesses built on discretionary spend have to give the people what they want. The market will decide.