Vive la France! Dire Swiss export figures propped up by the French

January’s Swiss watch export figures have been released by the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry (FH).

They make for largely grim reading, with France a rare highlight, seeing exports to the country rising 37% (in terms of sales value), year-on-year. This continues the momentum from December, where it saw a 51% increase.

In contrast, its European counterparts are still in the doldrums, with the UK down 6% (from a fairly low base), and Germany increasingly fading into irrelevance as a major export market, down 16% to CHF 77.4 million. Italy actually fell out of the top 10 export markets altogether.

The States lost all its momentum from a positive December, when exports had grown 19% year-on-year on the back of the announcement that tariffs on Swiss goods coming into the country would be brought down from 39% to the EU-standard 15%.

Total Swiss exports (sales value) were down 3.57% across the board, with China and Hong Kong at least showing modest increases year-on-year. This will be particularly encouraging for Omega, which has bet the house on a Chinese recovery.

Another morsel of encouragement is the performance of the often tricky CHF 500–3,000 price point, which was up 17.7% year-on-year.