Times are changing at Baselworld
The economic slowdown in China and upsurge in smartwatch sales result in new strategies at world’s biggest watch fair
Caution rather than confidence was the prevailing mood among attendees and brands at Baselworld. With sales growth in luxury watches stymied by an economic slowdown in China as well as the rise of smartwatches, international watchmakers responded to the downmarket conditions with lower prices, smaller watch cases and a general sense of less-is-more.
Last year’s fair, which attracted upwards of 120,000 people including 3,600 journalists, was dominated by the Apple Watch, the Cupertino-based company’s big play to dominate the watch industry the way it has with mobile phones, tablets and portable music players. Despite the huge fanfare, global marketing and enthusiasm, the Apple Watch hasn’t, quite yet, caught fire in sales terms. Unlike with its other devices, Apple has been conspicuously shy about releasing sales figures for the Apple Watch, but several highly respected tech analysts believe the company has sold about five million watches so far. For Apple, five million is a relatively paltry number but from a standing start, and with no prior watchmaking pedigree, this figure already makes the company one of the world’s biggest watchmakers, and this fact continues to reverberate.
Baselworld this year saw the smartwatch given more prominence, a telling indication of where the industry is shifting its focus. Many traditional Swiss watchmakers are now embracing the smartwatch. A slew of smartwatch launches this year followed the Apple path with timepieces that featured large, tactile touch-screen dials offering features such as calls, texting and health and wellness trackers all of which seem standard now.
Big smartwatch launches came from Tissot and Mondaine and updates and tweaks from companies such as Frederique Constant and Fossil that embraced the shift earlier than others.
At the higher end of the market, blue chip brands that up until last year were considered recession proof showed a palpable change in strategy to more accessible pricing in some cases and a focus on bestselling icon watches for others. The ever increasing inflation in prices over the past decade has seemingly ground to a halt due to softening demand. Of course, that is not to say the bigger brands would contemplate cutting prices, instead, new iterations and models which featured complications became more accessible. Tourbillons, an age-old complication that attempts to protect the movement from the effects of gravity, were once rare and highly expensive but this year saw some of the cheapest tourbillon watches to hit the market.
Patek Philippe took one of its most iconic complications, the world time complication with 24 time zones, and put it inside a smaller and thinner case.
The 2000s and early 2010s were a golden time for the watch industry, buoyed by exponential demand from newly rich nations such as China and Russia. However, the halcyon days are firmly over, and this year’s Baselworld watchmakers have to recalibrate their offerings for an uncertain future.