It was the best yearly result on record for the Swiss watch industry in 2022, with the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry (FH) reporting total exports climbing 11.6% year on year to CHF 23.7 billion (AU$36.6 billion). While the industry had an excellent year as a whole, the global hype around the MoonSwatch collaboration between Omega and Swatch saw about a million of the affordable quartz watches sold (twice the number predicted by Morgan Stanley), contributing to the overall success.
The Swatch Group (owners of Omega and Swatch) saw more modest growth of 4.6%, which was mainly due to reduced demand in China where Omega and Longines are some of the most popular brands. However, with an estimated 90% gross margin on the MoonSwatch and the Swatch Group’s operating profit of CHF 1.2 billion, the $380 Bioceramic (fancy plastic) watches could have been responsible for close to 20% of the group’s overall profit.
What’s more: with an estimated $342 million in profit from the MoonSwatch collection, it adds up to just under 1% of the entire Swiss watch industry in 2022 and 15.8% of the overall growth when compared to 2021. That’s an incredible performance by an affordable quartz timepiece, which aggressively bucks the trend in recent years of quartz watches declining 35% in export volume from 2013 to 2020. However, when you consider the watch world has literally never seen the sneaker-drop-level hype caused by the MoonSwatch, perhaps it isn’t surprising at all.
