This is an episode of the Glossy Fashion Podcast, which features candid conversations about how today’s trends are shaping the future of the fashion industry. More from the series →
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On the Glossy Podcast, senior fashion reporter Danny Parisi and international reporter Zofia Zwieglinska break down some of the biggest fashion news of the week.
This week, we remember Giorgio Armani, whose death was announced Thursday morning. We also talk about the appointment of Chloe Malle as the new editor of U.S. Vogue and Rachel Scott as the new creative director of Proenza Schouler. And we discuss the phenomenon of creative directors leading multiple brands at once, as Scott will continue to design for her own brand, Diotima.
Lastly, we talk about MyTheresa announcing layoffs at Yoox Net-a-Porter and the state of the luxury e-commerce market.
Later in the episode, we speak with Eugene Tutunikov, the founder and CEO of SwissWatchExpo. The Swiss watch industry is in a time of turmoil right now, as U.S. tariffs wreak havoc on its export plans and the prices of luxury watches fluctuate wildly.
Below are a few highlights from the conversation with Tutunikov, lightly edited for length and clarity.
On watch demand going up
Tutunikov: “As of a few weeks ago, there were tariffs against Switzerland of 39%. Most luxury watches are manufactured in Switzerland, and that has essentially cut off the supply of new luxury watches coming in.
We specialize in pre-owned watches. And that has really lit a fire underneath the pre-owned market. So all the demand that people cannot fulfill in the new market now, because the supply has been cut off, has been spilling over into the pre-owned market. So it’s become a release valve for all of this pent-up demand. And we have seen prices going up, supply going down. We had 3,000 watches as of a few weeks ago. Now we’re down to about 2,700 watches in the inventory. Hopefully, we’ll get back up to our usual inventory amount of 3,000. But prices, which have been falling for a couple of years, are now steadily going up every week.”
On the difficulty of getting inventory into the U.S.
Tutunikov: “It’s almost starting to feel like summer and fall of 2020, when the manufacturers stopped manufacturing watches and the pre-owned market was just on fire. I don’t think the euphoria is quite there yet, but it’s starting. I think a few more months of tariffs being in place, and it’s going to be a scramble for inventory from everybody in the U.S. market.
Our sales over the last three or four weeks are about 25% higher than they were a few months ago. And I think a lot of that is driven by the tariffs. And anybody that was on a waitlist for a new watch and hoping to get it later this year, now they’re skeptical they’re going to get it.
And if they do get it, they don’t know what price they’re going to get it at. Because just because you join the waitlist at an authorized dealer at a certain price, that doesn’t mean when that watch arrives in six months or nine months, if they even offer it to you, it’s going to be at the same price. So if they end up lifting prices by 20% or 30% to offset the tariffs, essentially everyone is assuming they’re not going to get the allocation.”
On the future of watch prices under the new tariffs
Tutunikov: “And I think they’re going to keep going up by another 3%, 4%, 5% per month until tariffs are lifted, which is a pretty big move in prices for watches in such a short period of time.
I don’t think the president has hopes to move watch manufacturing into the U.S. The biggest export from Switzerland is pharmaceuticals. So while I’m not an expert in pharmaceutical manufacturing, I suspect the tariff negotiations are going to be more around that and not around necessarily on-shoring Swiss watch manufacturing.”
