Tag Heuer luxury watch sales could reach 2019 levels this season
19 June, 2021
The principle executive of Tag Heuer - the maker of luxury watches beloved by athletes - expects sales to recuperate to 2019 levels this season after last year’s pandemic shock.
The forecast of the brand owned by luxury group LVMH comes as the industry became more polarised amid lockdowns last year.
The most significant privately owned timepiece brands such as Rolex outperformed, whereas lower-priced brands such as for example Swatch suffered more, a March report by Vontobel said. Tag Heuer ranked ninth when it comes to sales in this same report.
“There was a demand shock with all the current lockdowns throughout the world, there is a supply shock”, which weighed more on sales because of “long-lead times” in the supply chain, leader Frederic Arnault said within an interview with Bloomberg TV on Friday. When lockdowns were lifted last summer, demand recovered to “high levels”.
The 26-year-old executive - fourth child of billionaire Bernard Arnault - became leader of Tag Heuer this past year. Four of the five Arnault siblings currently work at LVMH.
Sales of luxury watches have increasingly moved online, whereas demand has become more local amid a lack of international visitors in tourism hotspots such as Europe, Mr Arnault said.
Demand in China has been “quite strong” for days gone by year, but the trend in Korea and Japan is currently “a little more difficult,” he said. The US is “doing perfectly, the demand is extremely strong”.
Tag Heuer is performing “very strongly” with local clients in Europe, notably with British, French and German customers.
The watch industry was also disrupted by the arrival of the Apple Watch in 2015, but Tag Heuer retaliated with its own smartwatch the same year.
Models for its linked watches start ta $1,800, weighed against $1,249 for Apple’s series 6 model with the premium Hermes leather strap.
Your choice to launch a smartwatch was in the beginning a “defensive move,” Mr Arnault said.
Tag Heuer is “convinced that traditional watches will keep strong desirability and also have a bright future ahead, and we see smartwatches as a new business opportunity and it’s bringing clients to the brand”.
Source: www.thenationalnews.com