Have Luxury Watches Become Too Expensive?

Omega and Longines have pushed watch prices too high, too fast. That’s the view of Marc Hayek, president and chief executive of Blancpain.

The criticism is likely to sting: Blancpain, Omega and Longines are all part of Swatch Group, of which Hayek’s family is the controlling shareholder. Hayek sits on the board chaired by his mother Nayla, while the group’s outspoken chief executive is his uncle Nick Hayek Jr.

Hayek spoke to The Business of Fashion at a preview of Blancpain’s new watch set to be unveiled Monday, which is slated to cost 1.7 million Swiss francs ($2.1 million).

“Every brand went up and started grabbing the next segment, increasing [prices] and going out of their segment,” said the 54-year-old Hayek, who has been running Blancpain since 2002 and also serves as president of the group’s prestige watch division, which includes the historic dial name Breguet. “If you look at where Omega was, it was not where Blancpain is.”

Hayek’s comments echo prevailing sentiment in the luxury fashion industry, which has struggled to convince customers its flagship handbags are still worth it after years of steep price hikes.

Many watchmakers have pushed prices skyward in recent years in a bid to reaffirm their luxurious positioning, as demand for more accessible models collapsed amid competition from smartphones and smartwatches.

The Swatch Group, which also counts Harry Winston and Tissot among its sixteen brands, is under pressure from investors. It’s scheduled to be removed from the Swiss Leader Index next month after failing to recover its share price, which has halved in value over the past two and a half years, a period that has seen the luxury watch industry in decline following a post-pandemic boom.

Hayek said the group was guilty of short-term thinking, but was now acting to resolve the problem. “Watches are becoming too expensive and that’s a danger, because you lose what your clients want. That’s short-term maximising,” he said. “When you look at our new products, [you will see] the average price is stabilising and decreasing. So we are countering that as a group.”

According to Hayek, Blancpain’s volumes have fluctuated between 20,000 and 30,000 watches a year since the turn of the decade, in line with market variations. He said Blancpain’s prices had remained stable during that time. “We didn’t really move up, because I believe we should stay in our segment.”

He said Blancpain had experienced a “double-digit” drop in revenues last year and that recovery will be even more difficult if its flagship watches have to compete with offerings from other brands in the Swatch Group stable, as well as with other companies. “If you don’t have a difference between a brand that is doing 500,000 pieces and a brand that does 30,000 pieces, or 5,000 pieces, then it doesn’t work anymore,” he said.

Blancpain was founded in 1735 and is believed to be the world’s oldest watch company still in business. It was acquired by what would become the Swatch Group in the early 1990s. In the 2000s, it revived the Fifty Fathoms, a dive watch design made famous by Jacques Cousteau in the 1950s, and then in the 2010s grew rapidly in China where its understated gold dress watches helped the brand grow.

But over the past decade, its star has dimmed while high-end competitor brands such as Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantin have accelerated. It’s a point not lost on Hayek, who said his brand had been “un-voluntarily discreet” in its marketing.

“We were less active in communication than we wanted to be, but that was not 100 percent our strategy,” he said, without expanding on why. “People haven’t been listening.” He said he hoped the seven-figure Grande Double Sonnerie, which chimes a tune composed by Kiss drummer Eric Singer, would encourage watch buyers to “give Blancpain a little more ear.”

Hayek said Blancpain’s problems had also been driven by its exposure to China. “We got slapped,” he said. Chinese consumption of luxury watches has cratered since the pandemic as the country’s economy softened. According to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, export values to the country have fallen from 3 billion Swiss francs in 2021 to 2 billion last year. Over the same period, exports to the US have ballooned from 3 billion to 4.4 billion Swiss francs, so that the US export market is now double the size of China and by far the world’s largest market for exports of Swiss watches.

But Blancpain has not been able to pivot. “We have to fix China before we can increase our business in the US where we are running far behind,” said Hayek. China remains Blancpain’s number one market, he added, noting that of its 51 boutiques, 16 are in the country.

Around half the company’s revenues were driven by its DTC business, he said; the other by a network of around 220 further points of sale globally. He also said he hoped to open direct-to-consumer boutiques in Miami, Las Vegas and Los Angeles, but that plans were on hold.

Swatch Group’s revenues tumbled last year, down 14.6 percent to 6.74 billion Swiss francs, but it does not report on the performance of its individual brands. According to a Morgan Stanley report, last year Blancpain recorded estimated revenues of 320 million Swiss francs, a figure Hayek said was “pessimistic”. He added that this year would be “more or less flat” and that he was looking to increase Blancpain’s annual production to 35,000 watches.

For now, Blancpain will have to drum up interest without involvement in the luxury watch industry’s key annual events. Swatch Group withdrew from the Baselworld watch fair in 2018 and unlike most of its competitors – including Rolex, Patek Philippe and brands in the Richemont and LVMH stables – has not yet taken part in any of the new generation of major industry events, including Watches and Wonders in April, Geneva Watch Days in September and Dubai Watch Week, which concluded its 2025 edition on Sunday.

It has also been a noticeable absentee from the annual Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève, the industry’s leading awards ceremony, although at this year’s event earlier this month, Blancpain’s sister brand Breguet did participate, claiming the top prize.

But Hayek said the group was talking to the heads of Rolex and Patek Philippe and wanted to do an event that would be a “gathering with journalists, influencers and clients,” but that the group’s plans had been “running behind other priorities.” He said he didn’t have a date in mind but that he had “to get my friends back in the boat.”

Blancpain was one of three Swatch Group brands that briefly exhibited at Geneva Watch Days last year, but Hayek said he had decided not to return because it didn’t offer “independence” and had become a “quasi second fair in Geneva.” The organisers of Dubai Watch Week told the Financial Times this month that they had not heard from Swatch Group. “There are other political problems there,” said Hayek, adding he could not go into details.

Hayek said the Grande Double Sonnerie was the most complex watch Blancpain had ever produced and that it broke new ground in watchmaking with a device that gives the wearer the option to select between two tunes to sound the time. “We’re dying if we start repeating [ideas],” he said. The watch has over 1,000 components and takes one watchmaker 12 months to assemble. Hayek said the company could deliver just two of the watches per year. “The goal was to create the best watch we could,” he said.

Hayek said he hoped his new watch would stimulate interest in his brand. “We’re not trying to do something that everybody likes,” he said. “But I am trying to get us back to a level where people take a second look.”

Editors' Note: This article was modified on 24 November at 8:45a.m. BST. A previous version incorrectly described the relationships between Swatch's shareholding family. Nayla Hayek is Marc Hayek's mother; Nick Hayek Jr. is his uncle.