Despite the Watch World’s Secrecy, Data Services Expand

Unlike the consumer goods, beverage or retail sectors, the note continued, there are no large consultancies publishing market share data on the Swiss watch sector. “This is due to the impracticality of conducting such surveys and the discreet nature of the Swiss watch industry,” it said.

Perhaps no brand is more discreet, nor influential, than Rolex, which continues to dominate the market. According to Morgan Stanley’s seventh annual report, released in February, Rolex’s share is said to have grown — to 30.3 percent — on the strength of its 2023 sales, estimated to have topped 10 billion Swiss francs.

Yet, because the company is said to forbid its authorized dealers from sharing point-of-sale data with third parties, Luxury Watch Barometer’s monthly reports don’t include the brand.

The Pre-Owned Sector

On the secondary market, where Rolex is equally dominant, EveryWatch, a new data-driven company, is helping shed light on what pre-owned watches are worth and where to buy them.

“EveryWatch was born from a need,” Giovanni Prigigallo, the business’s co-founder, said by phone from Cagliari, on the Italian island of Sardinia, where he lives and works. “We created this service with the idea that there are aggregators in different fields like art, cars, wine, etc. But it was completely missing in the watch industry.”

The company publishes monthly reports with statistics about sales, aggregated by artificial intelligence from more than 300 auction houses and more than 180 marketplaces and dealers around the world. For example, the report released in February included details such as the total value of watches in the secondary market ($9.4 billion), the Cartier that drew the largest auction price that month (a Crash model, for $277,200) and the model that experienced the largest price increase compared with the previous month’s results (an Omega Seamaster, at more than 107.2 percent).