Swiss news and archive

Swiss watchmakers call time on 2 years of crisis

Luxury Swiss watchmakers, gathering this week at the industry's premier annual show in Geneva, hope 2017 will finally mark the end of two crisis-hit years of falling sales. Many top-flight brands, used to running their ateliers at full throttle, have resorted to laying off workers in the face of crumbling demand. "2016 has been difficult,"...

Business

Sufficiently Swiss: at least 60 percent for watches

Switzerland adopted on Friday regulations requiring that locally-made parts account for at least 60 percent by value in order for watches to bear the coveted and lucrative "Swiss Made" label. The government said in a statement that the change, to go into effect on January 1, expands the criteria for judging whether a watch is sufficiently Swiss...

Business

Hit by strong franc, Swatch profits tick lower

Swatch on Wednesday posted a 21-percent-drop in its annual net profit, as the world's biggest watch group was slammed by a strong Swiss franc and a struggling timepiece sector. Last year, the Swiss watchmaker saw its net profit plummet to 1.1 billion Swiss francs (1.08 billion dollars, 990 million euros), dropping by more than a fifth from 2014,...

Fashion

Tag Heuer changes tune and is now exploring smartwatches

Barely a few months after dismissing Apple's smartwatch, the new chief executive of luxury Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer conceded Tuesday that such a hi-tech gadget might after all have a place in his firm's line-up. "Initially, we were all a bit reticent," Jean-Claude Biver told reporters in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the Swiss city at the centre of the...