Swiss brands and retailers now have a few options to determine what’s happening with the industry. Just a couple of years ago, they had almost none.
Two decades after Fred Levin, one of the Swiss watch industry’s market research pioneers, introduced many watch businesses to the benefits of data, he is back with a new performance measurement service, Luxury Watch Barometer.
The business tracks point-of-sale data provided by more than 400 retail companies, with 2,100 store locations, across the United States, the Swiss watch industry’s largest export market for the past few years.
In exchange for providing information, Mr. Levin said, retailers receive the monthly reports free of charge. Brands pay an annual fee of $50,000 to $250,000 for the information.
“Participating retailers not only get the data — things like gross margin return on investment, inventory turns and sales growth — they also get the benchmark report so they can understand how they’re performing relative to the average,” he said.
The service, introduced in November, is one example of a new wave of number-crunching companies in the luxury watch business offering information from pricing and inventory trends to the ratio between sales and product allotments, called the sell-through rate. As a result, brands and store owners now may have access to more real-time market details than ever before.
The industry’s dearth of data stems from a deep-rooted tradition of discretion that has characterized the Swiss watch trade for centuries, said Oliver R. Müller, founder of LuxeConsult, a watch consultancy in Aubonne, Switzerland.
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