Figures showing just how sharp the post-pandemic boom in luxury watches was between 2021-2022 can be hard to get your head around.
One brand announced growth of 73 per cent.
A report published by the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry concluded that exports topped $24 billion (£19bn) in 2022, $2.6bn (£2bn) of them in November alone – an all-time record.
Post-lockdown, mid-global political turmoil and with supply chain problems currently all over the place, things aren’t looking quite so rosy in 2023 – make fewer watches, sell them at a higher price is the unofficial mantra from many brands. (Rest assured, the luxury watch companies will still be ok.)
Panerai, the Italio-Swiss brand best-known for its big diving watches, has remained bullishly on-brand throughout.
“I can tell you we finished our fiscal year in Panerai as the second consecutive record year,” CEO Jean-Marc Pontroué said recently. “We got a dive because of Covid in 2021 but 2022 and 2023 are record years. We see the traffic in our stores every day, every minute. So we don’t see any slowdown in the business at all.”
As if to reinforce that statement Panerai has just opened its largest-ever shop – and announced a pair of handsome new watches to mark the occasion.
The new outlet, located in the middle of the most upscale shopping area on New York’s Madison Avenue, is a 2,000-square-foot, two-storey building known as ‘Casa Panaeri’.
It showcases both new models and a selection of curated historical ephemera, is kitted out in Italian designer furniture, has a giant LED screen and contains every contemporary watch-retailers must-have – a fancy coffee bar.
The first of the two new watches is in its Radiomir family, the watch designed for the Royal Italian Navy divers in the 1930s. The 45mm Radiomir Tourbillon Bronzo comes in a brushed bronze case, with a green see-through dial and features a second time zone and a day/ night indicator at 3 o’clock, a small seconds at 9 o’clock and a rotating tourbillon cage at 10 o’clock. (The tourbillon complication is unusual in that it rotates every 30 seconds, unlike most that rotate once-per-minute.)
The second is a Luminor, the watch that introduced the brand’s trademark curved crown protection bridge. The 44mm Luminor BiTempo New York Edition is a limited-edition model that comes in a diamond-like carbon (DLC) case, with sandblasted titanium bezel and caseback. The matt grey dial features luminous Arabic numerals and hour markers.
Pontroué says the New York store is just the first of 35 (!) new shops opening around the world in this financial year (ie: ending March 2024), taking the brand’s total to around 220.
If other watchmakers are plotting a more cautious course through 2023, Panerai’s plan seems to be: go big, or go home.
In other words, business as usual.
Radiomir Tourbillon Bronzo, £143,400; Luminor BiTempo New York Edition, $12,000
