A boom in online luxury goods sales is finally convincing high-end watchmakers, long skeptical that customers would pay thousands to buy intricate timepieces on the Web, to step up their investments in e-commerce.
Courting younger shoppers, brands large and small are joining an online push sweeping the luxury goods world, where Web sales are already major growth drivers for fashion labels.
“We didn’t realize the speed at which millennials would take to buying cars or watches online,” said Jean-Claude Biver, head of LVMH’s watch business, in an interview at the Baselworld watch trade fair.
LVMH’s Tag Heuer, a label long associated with motor racing, is looking to fully build out its own Web sites over the next 18 months, Biver added.
Tag already operates online stores in five nations, including the US, and has a partnership in China with JD.com Inc (京東), the company said.
LVMH sister brands Hublot and Zenith are yet to follow suit.
Many watchmakers have flirted with Web sales, though often through one-off collaborations with e-commerce retailers.
Tech-savvy shoppers in Asia have partly inspired a drive to do more — China overtook the US last year as the leading source of traffic to luxury watch Web sites, consultancy DLG said.
Watchmakers have reasons to take control of their online image, as Web sites run by unofficial resellers proliferate.
“We want to reassure people, while taking into account that today clients also might like to buy their watch at home in the evening while they drink a glass of wine,”said Jerome Biard, chief executive of Corum, which is owned by China’s Citychamp Watch & Jewellery Group Ltd (冠城鐘錶珠寶集團).
The Swiss brand’s first e-commerce Web site would be fully operational in about two months, Biard said.
Web sales are expected to make up a quarter of all global luxury goods sales by 2025, up from about 9 percent last year, consultancy Bain & Co forecasts.
There are notable holdouts — France’s Chanel shuns e-commerce for its coveted clothing, quilted handbags and watches.
Watchmaker Rolex, owned by a private foundation, is not known to have any plans to build its own online shop.
However, others are stumping up serious cash, betting on online growth.
Richemont, owner of Cartier and Baume & Mercier, is offering up to 2.8 billion euros (US$3.4 billion) for full control of multibrand site Yoox Net-a-Porter.
“There is no taboo with buying online anymore,” said Anish Bhatt, a watch enthusiast with 1.7 million followers on Instagram who works with brands such as Rolex, Richard Mille and Chopard on social media campaigns.
Watchmakers were long hobbled by the perception sales could only happen in a certain environment, with “shop assistants wearing silk gloves while you sipped champagne,” Bhatt added.
Independent Swiss watchmaker Oris, Breitling, now owned by private equity firm CVC, and RJ, formerly known as Romain Jerome, have also confirmed plans to expand online operations.
However, the push still comes with caveats and limitations.
“There are watch adjustments that [still] require customers to pass through a store,” said Jean-Christophe Babin, chief executive of LVMH’s Italian jeweler and watchmaker Bulgari.
Bulgari already sells through its sites in the US, China, Japan and the UK, and is rolling out e-commerce to all of Europe by the end of the year.
It aims to launch in Australia early next year.
Bulgari sees 30,000 to 40,000 euros as the ceiling for the kind of watches it would sell online, Babin added.
Yet even those boundaries might shift one day.
Mr Porter, a men’s style site run by Yoox Net-A-Porter, this week launched the sale of its most expensive item yet, a US$480,000 watch made of sapphire by French label Bell & Ross.
Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips should spur growth for the semiconductor industry over the next few years, the CEO of a major supplier to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said, dismissing concerns that investors had misjudged the pace and extent of spending on AI. While the global chip market has grown about 8 percent annually over the past 20 years, AI semiconductors should grow at a much higher rate going forward, Scientech Corp (辛耘) chief executive officer Hsu Ming-chi (許明琪) told Bloomberg Television. “This booming of the AI industry has just begun,” Hsu said. “For the most prominent
Former Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) yesterday warned against the tendency to label stakeholders as either “pro-China” or “pro-US,” calling such rigid thinking a “trap” that could impede policy discussions. Liu, an adviser to the Cabinet’s Economic Development Committee, made the comments in his keynote speech at the committee’s first advisers’ meeting. Speaking in front of Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰), National Development Council (NDC) Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) and other officials, Liu urged the public to be wary of falling into the “trap” of categorizing people involved in discussions into either the “pro-China” or “pro-US” camp. Liu,
Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) yesterday said Taiwan’s government plans to set up a business service company in Kyushu, Japan, to help Taiwanese companies operating there. “The company will follow the one-stop service model similar to the science parks we have in Taiwan,” Kuo said. “As each prefecture is providing different conditions, we will establish a new company providing services and helping Taiwanese companies swiftly settle in Japan.” Kuo did not specify the exact location of the planned company but said it would not be in Kumamoto, the Kyushu prefecture in which Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC, 台積電) has a
China has threatened severe economic retaliation against Japan if Tokyo further restricts sales and servicing of chipmaking equipment to Chinese firms, complicating US-led efforts to cut the world’s second-largest economy off from advanced technology. Senior Chinese officials have repeatedly outlined that position in recent meetings with their Japanese counterparts, people familiar with the matter said. Toyota Motor Corp privately told officials in Tokyo that one specific fear in Japan is that Beijing could react to new semiconductor controls by cutting the country’s access to critical minerals essential for automotive production, the people said, declining to be named discussing private affairs. Toyota is among
RSS