CaratThe flat month that felt like a win: inside May's Swiss export numbers
CHF 2.11 billion, up 0.4 percent — barely growth, and the industry exhaled anyway. The map underneath tells the real story: America and France carrying, China falling, the middle hollowing out.
After April's seventeen-percent collapse, the Swiss watch industry would have taken zero. It got slightly better than that: May exports of CHF 2.11 billion ($2.63 billion), up 0.4 percent year on year, per the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry. Year to date the industry is still down 3.1 percent at CHF 10.44 billion. Nobody in Biel or Geneva is celebrating — but nobody is revising forecasts downward either, and in 2026 that passes for relief.
The geography is doing all the work. The United States grew twelve percent to $375.7 million, reconfirmed as the industry's indispensable market. France exploded fifty-seven percent to $237.6 million — less a Parisian buying spree than logistics, as the country consolidates its role as a European distribution hub since late 2025. The United Kingdom added twenty-five percent. Then the other column: Japan down 3.5, and mainland China down twenty-one percent, extending a slide that has now outlasted every 'green shoots' narrative attached to it.
The price-band data is the strategic map. Watches at CHF 200–500 export prices grew twenty-four percent; pieces above CHF 3,000 rose 3.7 percent. The middle — CHF 500 to 3,000 — fell seventeen percent. The barbell that reshaped jewelry retail has arrived on the wrist: value at one end, luxury at the other, and a no-man's-land in between where mid-tier brands live.
Precious-metal watches declined seven percent to CHF 744 million even as steel held — a gold-price story as much as a demand story. When the case metal alone reprices by a third, maisons either eat margin, raise retails into a soft market, or pivot collections toward steel and titanium. All three are happening.
The desk's view: May bought the industry time, not direction. The China correction looks structural, the American consumer is now carrying uncomfortable weight, and the hollow middle is where the casualties will come from. Watch the July numbers — the Iran-conflict base effects wash out, and the underlying trend shows itself.