The average price of an Omega watch, he noted, had tripled over the past 20 years, in part because improvements to materials, resistance and accuracy improved values. (He also said Omega’s volumes are on track to exceed 600,000 units this year, which would be an increase of about 20 percent year-over-year.)
Swiss watch companies rarely disclose their average selling prices, but according to an estimate published in Morgan Stanley’s annual watch report for 2022, Omega’s average price was 6,571 Swiss francs, pre-tax. (According to the report, Longines is the only Swiss watch company to rank in the top 10 in sales in the industry, but whose average price of 1,088 Swiss francs is not in the top price category of the federation.)
Premiumization, as Morgan Stanley called it in the report and which companies have been talking about for months, has encouraged some mid-range brands, such as TAG Heuer, to increase their average prices rather than their volumes in pursuit of growth.
“In 2018, our average price was 2,200,” said Frédéric Arnault, CEO of TAG Heuer. “We recently went above 3,000 Swiss francs.”
Mr Arnault said the brand’s output was increasing, but more important was the changing profile of the customers. “Ten years ago, the main focus was on the customer who had one watch in their lifetime, maybe two, and one of the two had to be a TAG Heuer,” he said. “And yes, it is true that there is less of this customer, but the collector customer base has grown tremendously over the past 10 years. There are a lot more people collecting watches and now this takes up a much larger share of our customers.”