The new report on the state of the Swiss watch industry by Morgan Stanley and LuxeConsult delivered some unsurprising news but also leads to some surprising conclusions.
Let's start with what's unsurprising: Rolex continues to dominate the market. The company has even grown its influence, keeping well ahead of all its competitors throughout a full five-year research period. Analysts were able to draw an unambiguous conclusion about Rolex's dominance, whose market share rose from 24.9% in 2020 to 28.8% in 2021.
Now let's move on to what's surprising: the whirlwind sales growth of independent Swiss manufacture Audemars Piguet. AP rose from sixth place in the ranking of leading brands, a place it held in 2020 and 2019, up to forth in 2021. The watchmaker's ascent to CHF 1.58 billion is partially related to the estimated average retail price of AP models increasing by almost 5,000 CHF.
This allowed the manufacture to overtake the revered brand Patek Philippe in terms of sales volumes, which held third place in 2020 but dropped out of the top five in 2021. It was the other way around for the Patek Philippe, with a sales volume of CHF 1.53 billion and its estimated average retail price falling from CHF 35,194 in 2020 to CHF 29,853 in 2021.
The way Morgan Stanley estimates the average retail price involves cross-referencing data on Swiss watch exports with information about distribution for each brand and margins given to retailers. Even more significant growth was displayed by Van Cleef and Arpels Watches in 2021.
The brand jumped right from 26th to 17th place, and its turnover grew from CHF 153 million to CHF 404 million. Its average price has increased noticeably from CHF 34,837 to CHF 60,772. An important advance in the top three was made by the watch division of another company which also works with both timepieces and jewelry pieces.
We're talking about Cartier, which displaced the familiar long-time runner-up Omega to take second place with its 2.39 billion CHF, while the manufacture in Bienne managed to sell 2.2 billion worth of watches last year. The top five is rounded out by Longines with CHF 1.54 billion in net sales.
The leader has a significant lead on all the other top manufacturers who made the list. Rolex's annual output estimated at a record 1,050,000 pieces by the analysts at Morgan Stanley achieved CHF 8.05 billion in turnover.