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What we have seen in 2020 with our ecommerce is that it is easier for us to build awareness and sales that way. I am a firm believer in brick and mortar retail and I hope there will continue to be jewelers and watch stores, but they are going to have to evolve and bring new experiences

In other words, e-commerce has undoubtedly become one of the biggest disruptors and challenges for traditional retailers, but giving up physical locations does not seem to be the right answer either. Ironically, even Amazon (estimated to be responsible for about 44 percent of all U.S. e-commerce sales last year, according to a study from One Click Retail) cannot survive online alone.

Tourneau CEO Ira Melnitsky’s approach: “We believe the future of traditional retail is still very strong and will be complemented very well by our digital and e-commerce initiatives. One will support the other and vice versa.”

This sentiment is shared by most of the watch groups

Revenue is usually split 60 percent to the store and 40 percent to you, although everything is negotiable. If your product is a "hot" item or helps drive extra traffic to that retailer, you can start at 60/40 then maybe move to a 50/50 or even 40/60 split.

The average American now spends almost 24 hours a week online, according to data from USC Annenberg published in January 2018. Which means that, even with digital undoubtedly representing one of the most realistic opportunities for growth, the watch industry will still need offline retail for the remaining 144 hours of the week. Consumers are not always online, and they will also appreciate an independent partner. In addition, complicated mechanical watches will always have to be explained, to a certain degree, in person, and not every watch brand can (or wants to) sell watches directly to the consumer. This opens up possibilities for a new generation of retailers who no longer see their role reduced to the transaction of goods and services alone

The three-year luxury-watch slump in the United States is over.  Swiss luxury-watch sales in the U.S., Switzerland's second largest export market, jumped substantially in the first half of 2018 versus the same period in 2017, according to three indicators, two for wholesale sales, the other for retail sales. The retail data came from the NDP Group, the market research company whose widely respected watch retail tracking service collects point-of-sale data from thousands of stores in the United States. "We're reporting that U.S. sales for watches above $1,000 are up 13.5% in value year-to-date," Reg Brack, NPD's watches and luxury industry analyst, told HODINKEE. Swiss watches dominate the market above $1,000.

The Swatch Group boasted that it had "the best first semester sales in the history of the group," CHF 4.27 billion, a 14.7% increase over the same period in 2017. The company reported a 66.5% jump in net income to CHF 468 million.

The main drivers of this year's boomlet, according to the FH, were Asian markets, mechanical watches, and relatively affordable steel watches.