Marketplace Europe explores the Watches and Wonders trade fair

In the latest episode of Marketplace Europe, Anna Stewart visits the Watches and Wonders trade fair in Geneva, where the luxury watch sector shows off its style, sustainability, and star power. Stewart speaks to Hollywood icon and Chopard’s Global Ambassador Julia Roberts about sustainability and finds out how watchmakers are looking to court new and younger customers in the future.

“If I’m going to work with a company, I want to work with a company who is looking to the future. Chopard is pioneering this idea of sustainability in a really clever way,” says Roberts.

Chopard pledged in 2018 to only use “ethical gold” sourced from verified mines or certified as responsibly produced and has now extended this pledge to use recycled steel in its watches by the end of 2023. Co-President Karl-Friedrich Scheufele describes the importance of this sustainable model, “We are in the business of making people feel good. And part of that I think is the sustainability of the products we propose.”

However, according to the Head of Markets at WWF Switzerland, Damien Oettli, “Compared to other sectors, I think the watches industry is still lagging quite behind.”

Roberts agrees that the luxury sector should do more to promote sustainability, “If you have the resources that most of these kinds of companies do then really, it’s your responsibility, I think.”

Luxury watch sales have boomed since Covid-19 restrictions were lifted. Enticed by a thriving secondary market, millennial and Gen Z buyers are jumping into the luxury world. The co-founder of Watchbox, Danny Goyberg, explains the recent shake-up in the sector, “The secondary market has really exploded since the pandemic. What happened was people that were at home with not a lot to do were able to start to learn on an exponential level. Now you have kids that are in their twenties and thirties that are very much involved, and more collectors on the higher end that are really collecting watches are also much younger than they used to be.”

Whilst brands such as Hublot have signed up young stars such as Chinese rapper Lay Zhang as brand ambassadors to play into this new market demographic, others such as Hermes have stayed focused on their heritage. “At Hermes, we are not a marketing driven company. We never focus or plan any new model or any addition to the line focusing on special age group or a special group,” says chairman Guillaume de Seynes.

In a dynamic market, the CEO of Mont Blanc, Nicolas Baretzki, says that flexibility is key. “My philosophy is I have to think how [the clients] want to purchase. I’m not the one to say you should go there for this or that. Maybe one day you want to come to the boutique because you heard about the new innovation that you want to test, or maybe you want to go to a multi-brand retailer because you want to see a different choice. It’s the customer who decides, not me.”