Aurum Holdings has released five years worth of internal data to give a clearer picture of the prevailing tastes of the UK watch-buying public.
Aurum is the parent company of retailers Watches of Switzerland, Mappin & Webb, Goldsmiths, boutique.Goldsmiths as well as online retailers Watchshop.com and Watch Hut.
Brian Duffy, chief executive officer of Aurum, presented the internal figures to the press at Watches of Switzerland’s 155 Regent Street flagship showroom on Friday.
The company’s own purchasing habits were used to compile the statistics while 2.5m consumer transactions are currently being crunched for release at a later date.
In the year to April 30 2016, Aurum saw branch sales of £620m (£460m net) which represented 10% year-on-year growth.
Despite the watch industry experiencing challenging conditions worldwide, Aurum managed to sustain its market share with 31% of UK watch sales. The 2014/15 figure was 31.8%.
It’s dominance of the luxury watch market is far more pronounced, extending to 46% in the UK. It claims one in ten of sales made in the market for ‘classic’ watches and one in five fashion watches sold.
Duffy described the UK as the cheapest place in the world to buy a luxury watch, pointing to a number of brands reducing their prices in the UK to reflect currency fluctuations. Duffy stated that no luxury brands had increased their prices for three years.
Aurum’s five-year buying data has been analysed in search of aesthetic trends and buying habits. Aurum has now shared this data and more focused brand-specific figures with the watch brands it works with. We look at Aurum’s figures here.
