A year of the rabbit for watch brands?
China, which weighed on watch exports at end 2022, will be the key to activity in 2023, a year that opens with mixed prospects. Will China’s impact on luxury sales be as great as in 2021?
News
What next for the pre-owned market?
Once dismissed as a hang-out for unscrupulous traders touting fakes, in little more than a decade the pre-owned watch market has grown to remarkable proportions and is expected to surpass sales of new watches. Consultancy firm LuxeConsult predicts this reversal in roles for 2033.
Watchmaking's after-sales headache
It's a simple piece of arithmetic. Take a company that produces 10,000 watches a year. If success is on the cards, after twenty years it will have sold 200,000 watches to customers at the four corners of the globe (Fine Watchmaking being an international market). Of these, the company can expect an annual return rate of around 10%, ranging from vintage pieces to watches suffering from stopped mechanisms, manufacturing defects, misuse or simply in need of a service. Add two and two together and some 20,000 watches will be making their way to the company's after-sales service door: twice annual production.
The MIH pays tribute to Swiss artists
The Neuchâtel enamel painter Louis Reguin and the almost-centenarian artist Hans Erni are given pride of place at the Musée International d’Horlogerie (MIH) in La Chaux-de-Fonds. The former for his "Monumental Miniatures" and the latter for his famous triptych, created for Expo '58 in Brussels, on the measurement of time.
