Why luxury watchmakers are targeting fashion lovers through e-commerce sites
Houses such as Cartier, IWC Schaffhausen, Piaget, Montblanc and Chanel have launched collections on Net-a-Porter and are doing well, but some brands think there’s no comparison to brick-and-mortar stores
Would you pay almost HK$600,000 to buy a watch online? Cartier believes someone would and it is right. A Panthère de Cartier white gold diamond watch was sold on Net-a-Porter within two weeks of the collection’s launch on the multibrand luxury e-commerce site.
“In terms of selling, we are not seeing price resistance across the board,” says Lisa Aiken, the e-commerce site’s retail fashion director.
Apart from expanding their own online stores, luxury watchmakers and high jewellers are tapping multibrand e-commerce sites to reach new customers and keep up with the digital market growth.
“Panthère de Cartier is also a fashion accessory, hence we felt that collaborating with the fashion e-commerce powerhouse makes a lot of sense,” says Arnaud Carrez, Cartier’s international marketing and communication director.
The potential for digital luxury market certainly looks promising. McKinsey & Company projects that by 2025, the online share of total luxury sales to be 18 per cent, worth about 70 billion euros (HK$605.8 billion) annually, making e-commerce the world’s third largest luxury market, after China and the United States.
Luxury conglomerate LVMH’s first multibrand e-commerce platform 24Sèvres.com is due to open later this month, featuring first-tier luxury brands such as Dior and Louis Vuitton. It’s still unclear whether LVMH-owned watches and jewellery brands will be featured on 24Sèvres.com.
