Even as Swiss watch exports continue to decline, watchmakers are sharply focused on trying to find just the right combination of marketing and retail strategies in Hong Kong and mainland China, the industry’s No.1 and No.4 sales markets.
For the first six months of this year, exports totalled $9.9 billion worldwide, a 10.6 percent slide from the same period in 2015. The steepest drop came in Hong Kong, which underwent a 26.7 percent decrease, with June the region’s 17th consecutive month of decline.
Analysts attribute the slump in the city, long a favourite tax-free shopping spot for mainland Chinese and Western tourists alike, to numerous issues, including Beijing’s four-year-old anticorruption crackdown on gifts, changing consumer preferences and global currency challenges, chiefly a soaring Swiss franc and a strong dollar.
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What makes this crisis considerably more daunting for the watch industry than the global recession of 2008 is that the Swiss brands now have thoroughly assessed the mainland Chinese market and no longer expect that its demand, which peaked in 2012, will propel a spectacular recovery.
Swiss watch executives are gradually embracing the idea that to entice young buyers, a “combination of a strong social media strategy with smart celebrity endorsements becomes really powerful,” said David Sadigh, founder and chief executive of the Digital Luxury Group, a Geneva-based digital marketing agency.
Piaget has teamed with Hu Ge, the Chinese actor, singer and social media darling, to appear in Beijing last month for the Polo S collection while watchmaker Carl F. Bucherer announced Li Bingbing as its ambassador.
(Source: NY Times)