Historically, this market was focused on collectors looking for rare pieces at auction, but now it is turning towards online sales that verify the authenticity of an item and manage to capture the interest of the brands themselves.
“Today there is a global awareness that we must consume in a more responsible way”, estimated Fabienne Lupo, former president of the Haute Horlogerie Foundation, which organized a second-hand luxury show in Geneva in November that brought together online auction giants such as eBay, the Watchbox watch sales platform and Swiss brands such as Zenith .
According to Lupo, the enthusiasm is explained by the choices when it comes to consuming made by the “Millennials”, those born between 1980 and the late 1990s, and their successors generation Z (born between 1997 and 2010) who “care a lot about the future of the planet and they no longer want to buy new things.
Added to this is the search for “vintage” (old) objects and “that are not found everywhere” and the “digitization that accelerated with the pandemic,” he explained to AFP.
On the internet, certified pre-owned watch platforms are multiplying and continue to attract new entrants.
In December, The Rolex brand took the step, launching a second-hand program with the Swiss company Bucherer, which is in charge of authenticating the pieces, to sell them in six countries, with the aim of reaching the United States.
Watchmakers have long been “concerned with the aftermarket,” said Jon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux. “But they realized that there is actually a halo effect,” that high prices in the secondary market “reinforce the value of their brand in the primary market,” he told AFP.
Source: Ambito
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