If you’ve referred to your Rolex as an “investment piece,” please know that you’re causing Jean-Frédéric Dufour, the watchmaker’s CEO, a great deal of emotional distress.
“I don’t like it when people compare watches with stocks,” he told the Swiss German-language newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, as translated by Google. “This sends the wrong message and is dangerous. We manufacture products, not investments.”
His comments come as his company just unveiled a slate of new timepieces at the Watches and Wonders trade show in Geneva, including a $60,000 number with a rubber bracelet. It also discontinued a white-gold throwback Le Mans edition of its Daytona model.
Whether Dufour likes it or not, though, people do treat their Rolexes like investment. The fashion resale website Stock X, which grew out of the commodification of collectible sneakers, even displays sales data for its selection of secondhand Rolex watches that one can follow like Apple stock.
But it makes sense that Dufour would offer that kind of sentiment when watch sales are flagging. When the newspaper asked about what kind of year the luxury watch market has in store for 2024, he said it would be “a challenge” and not just because the price of gold is on the rise. Gone are the days when crypto millionaires and other fast-money, low-interest-rate tycoons around the world were splashing millions of dollars on shiny high-end status items like fancy watches.
“A phase in which all manufacturers were doing well is coming to an end,” Dufour said.
That’s putting it mildly. In its most recent market report, the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry said that the value of its exports had begun a reversal.
“Swiss watch exports saw their first significant decline (-3.8%) in February, after more than two years of steady growth,” the report said. “They suffered from an unfavourable base effect and a more pronounced fall in Greater China.”
China and Hong Kong, which together buy more Swiss watches than the U.S., imported 25% and 19% fewer watches than the did a year before. Just the other week, Gucci parent company Kering was also warning that sales were slowing down in the country amid economic uncertainty.