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Are watchmakers an endangered species in the USA?
Economy

Are watchmakers an endangered species in the USA?

Tuesday, 16 September 2008
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Christophe Roulet
Editor-in-chief, HH Journal

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With exports worth CHF 1,412 million between January and July this year, the USA ranks second in world distribution for the Swiss watch industry, just behind Hong Kong at CHF 1,570 million and well ahead of Japan with CHF 667 million.

Yet despite this highly enviable position, and America’s love affair with Swiss timepieces, watchmaking as a profession isn’t pulling in the crowds. At end 2007, there were between 7,000 and 8,000 watchmakers in the USA, half of whom were aged over 61. Based on these figures, the American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute has calculated that the country needs at least an additional 2,000 specialists to prevent major backlogs in after-sales service. The situation is no rosier in terms of training, where the number of courses has fallen from 43 in the late 1970s to just 11 today.

The problem hasn’t escaped the attention of the major watch groups, who were quick to respond. Rolex opened the Lititz Watch Technicum school in Pennsylvania in the early 2000s. In 2005, the Swatch Group founded the Nicolas G. Hayek Watchmaking School, minutes from New York City. For several years now, these two giants in the sector have also financed training at other American schools, in Oklahoma for Swatch, alternating with Audemars Piguet, Breitling and Richemont, and in the States of Minnesota and Washington for Rolex. These five curricula, the only ones in the country to have WOSTEP certification, train around 40 watchmakers a year. This figure doubles when including the other six courses on offer. In other words, the second largest destination for Swiss watch exports in the world – a market of 300 million people – tops up its labour pool with just 80 qualified professionals a year. This is dramatically fewer than the number required to replace watchmakers as they retire.

Knowing that the 11 programmes don’t always make their full student intake, watchmaking is clearly an unloved profession in the United States, and one which the Bureau of Labor “relegates” on a par with slot-machine repairers. With young people in Switzerland only now beginning to show the first signs of interest in the watchmaking professions, one can imagine the enormous efforts still to be made elsewhere, in particular in the branch’s main strategic markets.

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