2021 is officially the Swiss watch industry’s best year on record as it shrugged off the impact of ongoing covid restrictions to post its highest ever export figures.
Demand exceeding supply used to be an issue for only a handful of watch models from the likes of Rolex, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet.
Now that [highly desirable] problem is spreading to prestige watchmakers like Hublot.
“Our issue is producing enough of the watches to meet demand,” says Hublot CEO Ricardo Guadalupe in an interview with WATCHPRO to be published in February.
Mr Guadalupe says that waiting lists are acceptable, but must not get out of hand as they do for watches like the Daytona, Nautilus and Royal Oak.
“It is OK for demand to exceed supply by a small amount, but the gap today is too big for us and other brands. It will take a few years to get that right,” he suggests.
Stock levels of luxury watches are at all-time lows around the world, caused by a combination of lost production as factories shut during the first wave of the pandemic and soaring demand since the world realised the sky was not falling in.
“Demand is still so high, and will not change from one month to another, so we are talking about two to three years to restore stock to the level we had in 2018 and 2019,” Mr Guadalupe predicts.
“It takes time to increase production of mechanical watches — 18 months to two years to ramp up capacity — and that is the main challenge we will have this year as we are confident we have the demand to grow,” he concludes.
- Read the full interview with Ricardo Guadalupe in the February edition of WATCHPRO magazine and online.
