HIGH-END watchmakers have signalled a shift in strategy with an expanded range of more affordable products to counter the most severe downturn the industry has faced since the 2008-09 financial crisis, executives at a watch fair in Geneva said.

    The industry is having to adapt to a market with fewer Russian, Middle Eastern and Chinese buyers than a year ago, executives said, feeling the combined effects of record low oil prices and signs of economic weakness in China.

    Cartier, Richemont’s leading brand and main source of profit, is presenting a higher than usual number of models at more accessible prices at this week’s Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH), the industry’s first event of the year.

    Among them is Cartier’s new Drive model, a steel-cased men’s watch priced at a little more than 5,000 euros (US$5,430).

    Previously, Cartier would only offer new models in gold and leather, with prices starting at more than 10,000 euros, before offering them in more affordable versions.

    Sister brand Piaget, the timepieces of which generally start no lower than 10,000 euros, launched a women’s line starting at just over 7,000 euros. Richemont stablemate Montblanc, meanwhile, has invested in a wide range of lower-priced models.

    “There is a different price awareness among customers now ... and less price elasticity than there used to be,” Piaget chief executive Philippe Leopold-Metzger said at the fair.

    “Times are difficult. The market has changed and, in terms of pricing, it has become much more competitive.”

    Russian and Middle Eastern customers’ purchasing power has been dented by the slide in oil prices. In China, the luxury sector’s biggest growth engine, demand has slowed down partly because of a drop in the pace of economic growth and a government crackdown on gift-giving.

    Meanwhile, Hong Kong and the United States, two of the world’s biggest luxury markets, have been hit by a sharp drop in Chinese mainland tourist spending.

    There has been a gradual erosion in the industry’s global growth since a peak reached at the end of 2012.

    Swiss watch exports dropped 3.3 percent in the 11 months last year after two years of modest growth of close to 2 percent.

    The downturn has been less painful than in 2008 and 2009, when the Swiss watch industry lost more than 5,000 jobs, said Jean-Daniel Pasche, president of the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, though he acknowledged the danger that market conditions could worsen. (SD-Agencies)