Life Delights

We have received news that in Thailand the volume of Swiss made watches is down by up to 25% year-on-year for the first five months of 2009. Watches including the Chronotech watches which were priced at over £500 Sterling, fell by 25% of the volume imported previously, whilst the watches which were priced between 100 and £500 were subjected to an 18% drop, in addition watches which were priced at less than £100 sunk by 10%.

The local distributor of the Seiko watches, Seiko Thailand, and third that in a market worth over £60 million annually there would always the both winners and losers who were selling watches. In addition and not was given to the current economic climate, and suggestions were made that this may have had a slight impact on the volume of imported watches into the country.

These sales figures for the year 2008 were at least 10% below the original sales target; however this year the company has seen an improvement in April and June, following an average growth of 5% in each quarter. That had seen an average growth figure of 0% over that period.

Even though there was some political violence in Thailand during April of this year the sales growth for that period of time has been attributed to the large distribution network that the company have which covers the entire country. This reduces the business risk even when things like political violence take hold within the country.

The expectation following this increase in demand, is that sales will increase by 10% year-on-year, when the final figures are produced in March 2010. It was noted that some watch categories including sport watches had seen demand continue to remain strong, primarily because the target group of customers was largely diversified.

It is believed that up to 80% of the new products which are launched into the Thai market this year will in fact be from the sport watch category.