(Photo credit: Jake’s Rolex World)
The monthly statistics presented Thursday by the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry surprised luxury experts. The decline recorded in the first quarter did not continue in April. Watch exports for April are up 4.3% compared to the same month in 2023.
At the opening of Watches and Wonders last month, Rolex CEO Jean-Frédéric Dufour predicted 2024 would “be a challenge. A phase in which all manufacturers were doing well is coming to an end,” Dufour told Swiss newspaper NZZ.
Jean-Philippe Bertschy, a luxury goods analyst at Vontobel, a private banking and investment management group based in Zurich, said in his morning notes on Thursday: “The April statistics turned out to be surprisingly strong, at +4.5%. We expected a decline of 10%.”
China was the only one of the top ten export markets to show a drop, at -7.5%, a decline that was less than expected. The Swiss leading market, the United States, was up a robust 11.6% year-over-year. Japan registered the highest increase of all markets, at 13.6%.