【Seoul, South】South Korea Emerges as a Battleground for Luxury Watches: New Brands Land, Stores Undergo Renovations

South Korea is rapidly emerging as a fierce battleground for luxury watches. As domestic consumer demand for luxury timepieces increases, competition is intensifying with new brand launches and store renovations. Some brands are even boldly raising prices without hesitation, as demand remains strong.

According to the industry on the 26th, the Swiss luxury watch brand H. Moser & Cie. recently opened its first standalone boutique in Korea at the Galleria Department Store’s luxury hall in Seoul. This is the brand’s fifth standalone boutique globally and its first in Korea. This launch comes as sales in the domestic market are growing.
Galleria Department Store’s data shows that sales of luxury jewelry and watches increased by an average of 21% annually from 2019 to last year. Last year, the luxury jewelry and watch segment accounted for 15% of total sales, nearly double the 8% share in 2019. In January-February this year, sales grew over 30% compared to the same period last year, reaching 19% of total sales.

With rising consumption of luxury jewelry and watches, the industry is expanding its retail spaces. Lotte Duty Free renovated the boutique of the French high jewelry maison Boucheron at its Myeongdong flagship store. This renovation was driven by the recent increase in demand for luxury watches and jewelry. Lotte Duty Free’s sales in the luxury watch and jewelry category for Q1 this year increased by about 13% compared to Q4 last year. Consequently, the Boucheron store was relocated from the 11th to the 10th floor and expanded about fourfold to approximately 66 square meters.
Shinsegae Department Store held a ‘Luxury Watch & Jewelry Fair’ across its 13 nationwide stores from the 15th to the 25th.

Amid this atmosphere, popular luxury watch brands saw increased sales in Korea last year. Rolex Korea’s sales last year reached 342.6 billion won, a 16.5% increase from the previous year, and operating profit surged 134.8% to 10.8 billion won.
Luxury watch brands are consecutively raising product prices in the domestic market this year as well. IWC, a luxury watch brand under the Swiss Richemont Group, plans to increase prices for products sold in Korea on the 9th of next month. Prices across all products are expected to rise by an average of 7-8%. This is the second increase this year, following a previous hike about three months ago in March, when IWC raised prices by an average of 8%.
Brands under the Swatch Group, a major luxury watch group, are also raising prices one after another. Swatch Group’s high-end luxury watch brand Breguet and luxury watch brand Longines will increase prices for all products sold in Korea by about 5% starting June 1st. On the 12th, Swatch Group’s watch brands Hamilton and MIDO raised prices for domestic products by about 6-7%. Last month, luxury watch brand Omega increased prices for all products in Korea by an average of 3%. On January 1st this year, Rolex raised the domestic price of its popular Datejust Oystersteel & White Gold 36mm (Ref. 126234) from 12.92 million won to 13.73 million won, an increase of about 6.3%.

As the trend of price increases for new luxury watches continues, and with the recent popularity of ‘rational luxury purchasing’ centered on the MZ generation, demand is also heavily flowing into the pre-owned luxury market. In particular, the number of ‘smart consumers’ looking to purchase unused, essentially new products or mint-condition pre-owned luxury items at cheaper, more reasonable prices is increasing.
Some offline large-scale shopping centers are even securing large quantities of pre-owned luxury watches to hold special exhibitions. Cankas Department Store, Asia’s largest mint-condition specialty store located in Samsung-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, recently held a premium exhibition featuring Rolex luxury watches worth a total of 30 billion won. This premium exhibition is a special event focusing on popular models from Rolex, which still enjoys the highest popularity in the global luxury watch market, displaying and selling only unused new products and mint-condition items. It features models with high scarcity and price stability such as the Submariner, Daytona, Yacht-Master, GMT-Master, Datejust, Day-Date, Oyster Perpetual, and Submariner Starbucks.
Cankas Department Store is a large luxury shopping center with 100 luxury stores across B2 to 12F, making it the largest single-scale facility of its kind in Korea.