"The Watch that Saved Christmas!"

Or - "How the Grinch overslept and the Swiss watch industry lived to see another day."

Shamelessly borrowed from the world-wide infoweb

So the books are closed on December, and it would appear that the results indicate that a sort of "participation trophy" is in order for the industry, as to quote the FH:
At  -4.6%, exports reported one of the shallowest falls for the year...

Courtesy of the FH

Which, I guess, is a bit like your teenage son informing you that his girlfriend is only "a little bit pregnant".  Going from a hemorrhage to simply a steady blood loss is not exactly cause for celebration.

But just as little Billy and Susy deserve a trophy for showing up to 75% of their soccer games, I suppose we should be cheered that although there was still a drop and the graph line still keeps receding ever southward, at least the losses this past month were not as bad as the trend. 

"So you see, it's still a loss, just not as bad as before!"

Now the constant reminder that I have to give is this - these are export numbers.  They are NOT SALES.  They do not take into consideration watches that might have been RETURNED to Switzerland by subsidiary offices. 

And lastly, as most of us know, these numbers are probably going to climb in the coming months not due to demand, sales or any other "normal" indicator.  They will increase as the newest version of Swissness goes into place, and all of the watches that will not meet the standard for the implementation have been provided "exit visas",  In other words, brands need to ship AS MANY WATCHES AS POSSIBLE out of the country. 

Meaning?

Ashford, Touch of Modern, Overstock.com, Joma Shop and Mass Drop (among others) will be riding a near tsunami of product at blow-out prices.

We may be near the bottom, but there is about to be an even bigger drop.