Watches in Canada

2020 IMPACT

Watches, a discretionary item already starting to struggle in 2019, experiences significant drop in demand during the lockdown in Canada

Like jewellery, watches remains for the most part, a discretionary item in Canada, and therefore with many consumers prioritising their expenditure during the lockdown imposed from March 2020, and focusing on more basic needs, demand for watches across the category has significantly fallen. In addition, with many local consumers working and socialising from home, they are more likely to rely on digital devices such as laptops for time-keeping.

Highly fragmented competitive environment for watches in 2019 led by Timex which offers wide product portfolio

Watches in Canada remained a fairly fragmented competitive environment in 2019, led by Timex Group Canada Inc (quartz analogue watches) and Swatch Group (Canada) Ltd (mid mechanical watches), the only two players to hold double-digit value share. Timex benefits from the broad distribution for its range of mid and basic watches, including online sales through Timex.

Closure of store-based specialist retailers during lockdown impacts demand through dominant distribution channel, resulting in share gain for e-commerce in 2020

With restricted access to store-based specialist retailers during lockdown measures implemented by the Canadian government in response to COVID-19, sales of watches through the dominant distribution channel of leisure and personal goods specialist retailers experienced double-digit declines in value sales terms in Q2 2020, in addition to loss of value share to the dynamic e-commerce. Prestigious boutiques located in upmarket Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre particularly suffered as the latter was closed during March in line with lockdown measures and did not reopen its doors until 22 June.

Files are delivered directly into your account within a few minutes of purchase.