The post-pandemic era has sent the high-end watch market into a slump that analysts say could last a decade

• After a COVID-era surge, the luxury watch market is mired in a hangover that could last years.
• High-end watch prices have tumbled from their latest peak, with most brands seeing a dip.
• Analysts say the pandemic watch boom was a once-in-a-lifetime event that's unlikely to be repeated.

The luxury watch market is coming off a wild sugar high.

After what looked like an unstoppable rally in watch prices at the tail end of the pandemic, the market for high-end timepieces has cooled. The corner of the luxury consumer space could also be sluggish for years, with low single-digit growth that pales in comparison to the pandemic era, industry analysts told Business Insider.

That relative decline has been triggered by a few factors. While people have less time and money on their hands, less flashy, more austere fashion trends rooted in "Quiet Luxury" are also having an impact, watch industry insiders said.

Secondhand prices in the luxury watch market have dropped sharply from their highs during the pandemic. The WatchCharts Overall Market Index, a gauge of secondhand luxury watch prices, is down 33% from its peak just after the pandemic, though it is up about 5% over the past year.

High-end watches were the worst-performing luxury category last year, according to Claudia D'Arpizio, a partner at consulting firm Bain & Company.

While a few dominant brands are seeing some growth — kingmakers like Rolex, Patek Philippe, and Audemars Piguet — virtually all high-end watchmakers in the business are struggling or stagnating at the moment, she said, even those with a "great heritage" name.

"The rest are all facing difficult times," she said, speculating that the watch market could continue to normalize and remain broadly weak for several years until the global economy enters a fresh growth cycle.

"Probably we are near the bottom, but it's really difficult to say," she said.

Revenue growth in the broader online jewelry and watch business has collapsed from its 2020 peak. Growth is also expected to remain near zero through the end of the decade, even lower than the average growth rate in the years leading up to the pandemic, according to an estimate from IBISWorld.

Oliver Müller, a longtime consultant in the luxury watch business and the founder of LuxeConsult, said he believed 2021 and 2022 were likely the best-ever years for the watch market, with the industry unlikely to achieve a similar growth rate in the foreseeable future.

He attributed the post-COVID bubble to a unique cocktail of circumstances that pushed newcomers into the watch market — mainly, people having extra time on their hands to get into new hobbies, and the fact that crypto markets and meme stocks were delivering big gains in very little time for many traders.

"The crypto boys, as they call them, all of a sudden discovered that there was something called watches on which they could flip a lot of money," he said, referring to the practice of traders buying high-end watches to quickly resell them at a profit on the secondhand market.

"I don't think we will get back anytime soon to those crazy high prices that we have seen," he said.

Andrew Morgan, another watch consultant, said he believed the market reached its zenith in 2022.

"I think to get to those prices, again, we're talking decades," he said, speculating that the market would only see "shallow" growth from here on out.

Quiet(er) status symbols

The pandemic-era watch vibe was marked by "flashy" styles and special edition models that flew off the shelves, D'Arpizio said. The buying spree was largely driven by ultrawealthy clients who were sitting on big gains on their investments and were willing to splurge.

Many speculators in the market at the time also seemed to be interested in integrated or stainless steel sports watches, styles that tend to be associated with "over wealth."

"Luxury watches got swept up as part of this whole affluent luxury, Instagram lifestyle," Morgan said.

A few things changed.

• Crypto markets crashed. Bitcoin entered a brutal bear market in 2022, a decline that hurt crypto investors who were also in the business of flipping luxury watches, Müller said.
• US consumer slowdown. A combination of return-to-work, people having less time on their hands, a spike in the cost of living, and new developments like tariffs has consumers less willing to shell out on wristwatches, Bain's D'Arpizio said.
• China's slowing economy. China, one of the world's largest luxury consumers, sank into a property crisis and recorded its worst GDP growth rate in about half a century in 2022.

For luxury watches, it seems to have kicked off a new era: one defined less by excess and more by refinement, D'Arpizio and Morgan said.

Though there are exceptions, the worst-performing models on the market tend to be integrated and stainless-steel sports watches, Morgan said. While models from leading brands are still reaping a "mild" return on the secondary market, models from most other brands face a "significant depreciation" the minute they're sold, he said.

"Some of those really spiky hype watches have calmed down, and are continuing to calm down," Morgan said of watches that contributed to the pandemic spike. "Collectors of classy reserve time pieces will still purchase those, but the reasoning for purchasing them has become more about a personal self-reflecting sense of achievement, rather than a publicly broadcast sense of self-achievement, if that makes sense."

It's difficult to equate "quiet luxury" with the watch market, since watches are by definition a status symbol, D'Arpizio. But she agrees a more "conservative" style has proliferated, with most consumers now focusing on classic pieces from timeless brands — something that can be worn again and again.

"These SKUs are superstars and very recognizable, so they are not really quiet, but for sure the model stays, and the value stays," she said of the more understated vibe among shoppers. "They don't want to make a mistake, so they choose the safe side."