OPINION: Past the point of no return
Decreasing volumes and soaring average price points are not new trends. For years now, the Swiss watch industry has looked like it’s in rude health as sales across the board have largely soared. But is the situation unsustainable? If it’s not, then are we edging towards a watershed moment where decreasing volumes are an ever-growing crack that can no longer be papered over? Leading watch writer and podcast host Robin Swithinbank certainly thinks so.
And another one. The new watch brand klaxon sounded — again — earlier this month as N3W5 dropped, making it the eleventy-third such announcement so far this year. Hang on, this one is different, you might say. And you’d be right, you clever thing. It is. A brand created in the image of former AP boss Francois-Henri Bennahmias is always going to be different — plus, this one’s got a really weird name. And all this interest despite the fact it hasn’t shown us a watch yet.
N3W5 may yet be a roaring success. In fact, I think it’s more likely it will be than it won’t. And then, like other newbies before it, it will quickly become part of the watch biz story. So many do. Rexhep Rexepi? Seven years old. Furlan Marri? Just turned five. Biver? It’s only three years since the first of those landed. At 25, Richard Mille is ancient.
But launching now? As anyone who’s been paying even the slightest bit of attention will know, luxury watchmaking is a tough game at the moment.
At the top, you’ve got Le Big Four beasting the market, creating a quadropoly that’s leaving the rest fighting for scraps. In the middle, you’ve got price hikes and a volume drain that is whittling away perceptions of value to the extent buyers would rather spend their cash on FIFA’s rip-off World Cup than a nice watch.
And then at the bottom, you’ve got myriad technological, economical, political, and behavioural issues — all of them global — over which you have absolutely no control.
To paraphrase what Bremont boss Davide Cerrato said to me on The Luxury Society Podcast recently, if a watch brand says it’s not a challenge to sell watches at the moment, they’re cheating.
Most concerningly, none of this is now new. In fact, it’s been like this for quite some time, the deceit that it wasn’t created by the misdirection of a global pandemic.
The volumes to value shift we’ve been observing in watchmaking over the past decade is no longer a blip.”
And so it’s time for honesty. To judge things for what they are, and not what we hope and want them to be. The volumes to value shift we’ve been observing in watchmaking over the past decade is no longer a blip. It’s completely and utterly and irrevocably permanent.
We don’t need to go over the figures again. We know Swiss watch export volumes have halved since 2015. And we know they’re still going down. We know average sales prices have rocketed over the same period. And we know they’re still going up. Nothing can stop this now. If you’ll forgive me, it is what it is.
And yet it seems the last people on earth to realise this are the Swiss themselves. Not so much the brands, plenty of whom are now saying — at least privately — that they are building strategies around volume caps well below historic highs, but the Swiss government itself.
Very quietly, in May, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) announced it would be extending Switzerland’s short working hours (RHT) scheme until January next year. That allows employers to put workers on reduced hours for 24 months, where the norm is 12. Furthermore, SECO has said it can keep the limit at 24 months until the end of 2028. Whether it will or not, we can’t know.
The idea behind RHT is smart. In a downturn, it gives businesses time to pivot without losing skills. But it’s not a long-term solution. And it can’t mask the fact that in watchmaking at least (SECO has been clear the decision to extend was in no way specific to one sector), the need for watch parts and watches continues to fade.
As such, RHT is a fig leaf. At some point, the leaf will be lifted, and what’s underneath will prove more than a little embarrassing. Jobs will go. Businesses will go bust. And skills and experience will be lost, most likely forever.
Depending on how you view these things, this is either the inevitable forces of capitalism doing what they do, or it’s really quite sad. I suppose you could feel both.
Volumes have gone, and they’re not coming back, but brands still need to make money. I’m not saying that’s bad, but let’s call it. This is what’s happening.”
Whichever, the storm clouds will part at some point, revealing a new landscape shaped by the influence of collectors, people with safety deposit boxes to fill, rather than by aspirational buyers looking to enter the category. Volumes have gone, and they’re not coming back, but brands still need to make money. I’m not saying that’s bad, but let’s call it. This is what’s happening.
Even chief executives of mid-range brands are starting to readjust their expectations of a volume revival. Post-Covid, watch meet-up culture has thrived and there are clubs and small-scale collector events in just about every city in the world these days. The impression these can give is of an enraptured new generation of watch buyers. But then again, do they represent the mainstream, or just another tribe — a tribe within a tribe? As time passes, it’s clear Gen Z’s introduction to the market is not translating into a volume bounce.
So now, what has been warned for years by a boat-rocking minority is about to come to pass. The volume death knell is sounding, Swiss watchmaking is going to have to downsize, and a risk-averse, demand-led model will replace the “if you build it they will come” posture the industry revelled in for the first two decades of this century.
Is there any suggestion the opposite could still be true? That volumes will return? If it happens, it will only be because the Swiss have walked away from Swiss Made and sourced labour as well as parts from the Far East, or because they’ve abandoned their lofty coefficients. And I wouldn’t be putting money on either of those happening.
Which takes us back to the rush of new brands. There will be winners. And they’ll be those who launch fully adapted to the new paradigm. Because this is it, folks. The industry has passed the point of no return.
This article was originally published in the July 2026 edition of Watch Insider.
