Watches on the Seine or the property fever of Paris watchmakers

While it is in Switzerland that fine watches are made, it is in Paris that a fine image is created. Everyone wants to open their flagship store there: competition that is all the more fierce because French customers are becoming fewer.

Grégory Pons*

The saying goes that impossible is not French: the French in any case excel in paradoxes. The field of watchmaking is no exception to this national passion. France succeeds in being the developed country with the lowest consumption of watches but without doubt the one with the highest consumption of the watchmaking press. Only four or five watches are recorded for each French person and just … 80 euros is the average price for the 24 million watches sold in France each year. Dreadful figures for a country that publishes no fewer than around thirty special editions devoted to watches in addition to the six specialist magazines that work this territory!

A rush to Paris

The world capital of fashion and luxury, Paris concentrates some of the finest watch boutiques in the world. Dubail (place Vendome), Chronopassion (rue Saint-Honoré) or Arije (the Champs-Elysées district) are well patronised by major international collectors with a well-defined division of the territory. Customers from the Middle East patronise only Carla Chalouhi’s boutique (Arije). Lovers of rare models and limited series swear by Laurent Picciotto (Chronopassion) alone. Pierre Dubail and his son, Patrice, have an address book that is world-famous for purchasers of valuable watches and exclusive models.

Close to these flagships of watchmaking luxury can be seen an increasing number of brand boutiques that have come to steep their international image in Parisian chic. French customers are so discreet in these that they are scarcely noticed, but wealthy foreign enthusiasts appear to be delighted to find their favourite shop windows in the French capital. Pedigrees are established with a Paris address: a good number in the right street is a guarantee of legitimacy in the luxury world of top watchmaking.

Property fever

The property schedule for this watchmaking season is extremely full. A new Omega boutique is to be inaugurated on the Champs-Elysées, which is already home to citadels flying the Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Montblanc or Mauboussin flags. After the Rue de la Paix, this will be Omega’s second major establishment in the French capital. In the Rue de la Paix, as it happens, the manufacturer Gérald Genta-Daniel Roth is going to take over the former Corum boutique.

On the south side of the Place Vendome, we are expecting the opening of a major Breguet gallery, combined with a 500 square metre museum on the first floor. To the North-West the former Breguet boutique has just been sold to Léon Hatot. On the eastern side, Roger Dubuis is just waiting for the final official authorisations to put down its carpet and right opposite, Pierre Dubail has announced the opening of a Rolex boutique. The most beautiful square in the world that is reputed to have invented luxury has decidedly woken up: in the last few months three of its finest town houses have been renovated (Boucheron, Van Cleef & Arpels and Chaumet). Slightly further away in the Rue Saint-Honoré, Audemars Piguet will be installing its sign just a few metres from the Hublot boutique established by Laurent Picciotto. On the Left Bank, a second Rolex boutique is opening in the Rue de Rennes, on the initiative of Jean Lassaussois (Les Montres). The Franck Muller group is known to be on the look-out for a site for its Watchland multi-brand concept…

Elsewhere, there is a desert

This splendid flourishing of boutiques for the brands is an obvious irritation to the traditional pillars of the watchmaking trade, which face a decrease in the number of local customers. Are prestigious Paris watchmakers becoming Potemkin style scenery, like the false Russian villages Potemkin built to persuade the Empress Catherine II that her subjects were prosperous?

The Rue Royale is no longer what it used to be for Wempe, Heurgon or Royal Quartz (one of the Paris temples for prestige watches, but not reflected in its name). While the Avenue Montaigne has specialised in fashion names, the Champs-Elysées district is having trouble establishing a watchmaking identity. How can it survive the Rue de la Paix, where you now have to slalom between the flagship boutiques of the major brands? Can there be an after-life for Saint-Germain-des-Prés, even though Les Montres or Antoine de Macédo are trying to preserve its honour?

Elsewhere, there is a desert. An oasis of luxury watchmaking is at the Printemps du Luxe, where the first floor offers a dense route around the finest Paris addresses that is much appreciated by wealthy Japanese in a hurry. There are a few isolated spots close to the Opera, Ternes or Passy. The Eastern half of the capital is terra incognita for the prestigious brands. A sweep from North to South is just as worrying: apart from a thin band in the middle (the royal axis between the Louvre, Concorde and the Etoile), there is a desolate tundra in which the evil winds of discount and base copies whistle.

A market in gestation

Does this geographical lack of enthusiasm explain a sales graph that is depressingly linear for watches sold in the French market? It is up to the management gurus to decide. However, we should note this additional item of information: while 1 % or 2 % of growth have been clearly noted in official statistics (by value rather than volume), this is due to the luxury watchmaking market alone, and this is 95 % fuelled by the purchases of non-residents.

It would be the final paradox to have Paris watchmakers that exist only in trompe-l’œil: although watch brands subsidise supplements distributed in several million copies and finance Internet portals capable of delivering targeted information to several million visitors each month, there is scarcely a ripple in the market. Paris remains a missionary land for luxury watchmakers. Is this due to wrong marketing targeting, changes in society or a profound distaste for fine watches? Questions have to be asked about the booster shots that have become essential… ■

* Business Montres & Joaillerie

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