The Swiss Watch Charm falls abroad, including Brexit

Exports of watches in 2016 should also fall by 10%. The director of the watchmaking Federation (FH) Jean-Daniel Pasche, in Neuchâtel, during the association's Annual Conference, said that the decline could be even higher depending on the brand.

Pasche believes that the British vote on brexit has accentuated the uncertainty and the upward pressure on the franc. In short, the slowdown observed in this area as early as the middle of 2015, is expected to continue, mainly because of the loss of momentum, completely unexpected, the American market. It is a bad surprise, he argued.

As for the British market, Pasche said that the latter has been marked so far by a certain stability, having in recent years sustained growth. "We'll see how companies will adapt in terms of prices and margins" to the new situation, he said.

Fears had been expressed by Forbes in the previous months; the prestigious journal statunintense showed that sales of luxury Swiss watches were also down because of so-called "gray market" in which new models can also be purchased at 60% less than the official price, a market that has grown also for ' excess production resulting from sales from 2009 to 2014.