Luxury Watch Sales In Hard Economic Times: The Good, The Bad, And The Immune

To say that luxury watch sales are down in these difficult economic times is obvious, but the picture is not that simple. Some areas are actually doing quite well, while others are more or less not effected by the economic situation. For the higher end watches, a lot of people see the slow down in sales as a psychological reaction in the minds of wealthy buyers to not wanting to spend so much when the economy is down. Thus, the most effected segment of the market are roughly those watches in the $2000 - $50,000 range. Yes this is a big range, but across the board this segment is suffering - in two ways. First, people are going down a notch in price points when purchasing. If they would have spent $10,000 on a watch a few years ago, today they are spending $2,000 - $5,000. Alternatively people aren't buying watches at all in this segment, and waiting until things get better to buy.

One segment that is doing remarkably well is the $100 - $500 segment. Typically not really considered part of the luxury watch group, watches in this range are gaining a lot of momentum.. Buyers are looking to decrease the amount of money spent on watches, but still want to buy watches, which is why this segment is doing remarkably well. A major point of this finding is that people will always want watches, and the demand is still there. Although retailers are typically loathe to offer these lower margin watches, the economic reality of today is forcing them to amend their points of view on this price segment.