Exports of Swiss watches are breaking records, but sales of second-hand pieces are also exploding, driven in particular by Generation Z who want to consume luxury more responsibly.
The market for pre-owned watches is estimated at almost 20 billion Swiss francs and could reach 35 billion Swiss francs or more than 50 billion Canadian dollars by 2030, according to a study by the accounting and consulting firm Deloitte.
Originally aimed at collectors looking for rare pieces at auctions, this market is becoming more and more professional with the proliferation of online sales sites that verify their authenticity and attract the interest of watch manufacturers themselves.
“Today there is a global awareness that we need to consume more responsibly,” says Fabienne Lupo, former president of the Foundation for Fine Watchmaking, which organized a fair for second-hand luxury in Geneva in November, in particular the online auction Ebay, the watch sales platform Watchbox and Swiss brands such as Zenith, which belongs to the French group LVMH.
Don’t buy new
According to Ms. Lupo, the enthusiasm for second-hand watches can be explained in particular by the consumption choices of Millennials (the generation born between 1980 and late 1990s) and Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2010), who “are very concerned about the future of the planet and don’t want to buy any more”.
Add to that the search for “vintage” objects “that you can’t find everywhere”, but also the difficulty of buying specific pieces as Swiss watchmakers’ waiting lists grow longer in a booming market.
“And then there’s digitization, which has accelerated with the pandemic,” she told AFP.
The growth of this market is so great that the British platform Subdial has developed an index tracking the development of the 50 most traded second-hand models. This index showed that the price of the reference basket fell from a record high of CHF 45,000 in mid-February 2022 to CHF 35,000 in mid-September, but this “correction” does not call into question the trend towards second-hand luxury, according to Deloitte.
Watchmaker-certified online platforms for pre-owned watches are multiplying, with the segment still attracting new entrants such as American Bezel, which completed a fundraiser in early January with investors including former Disney chairman Michael Ovitz, comedian and actor Kevin Hart and the musician John Legend.
But already in 2018, the luxury giant Richemont, owner of Cartier, IWC and Piaget, had participated in this market with the purchase of the British platform Watchfinder.
In December, the Rolex brand also took the plunge and pulled the rug out from under counterfeiters by launching a second-hand program with Swiss retailer Bucherer, which is responsible for authenticating its watches, initially in six countries including France and the United Kingdom, with the aim of then expanding it to the United States.
Watch your image
Watchmakers have long been “concerned about the secondary market,” says Jon Cox, analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux. “But they recognize that there is a halo effect,” high prices in the secondary market “amplifies the value of their brand in the primary market,” he told AFP.
For very high luxury brands like Richard Mille, whose average price is over 260,000 francs, second-hand watches are even a way to polish their image.
“You can have a customer say, ‘there was a limited edition of 100, it’s always been my dream to get it and now I can afford it, but they don’t produce it anymore and it’s almost impossible to get it to find.’ , confides in Alexandre Mille, successor to his father, founder of the brand, and explains that his teams can start a search to find the part.
According to Deloitte, buying a cheaper watch is the main motivation for 44% of those surveyed in its study. But Jon Cox also conjures up the ‘reserve of wealth’ effect, which makes it possible to wear a watch that ‘holds its value’ and can then be ‘resold’ again.