One of the fashion mags declared that Australians buy watches to be cool with the best but this is exclusively a fashion notion. As Australians begin lapping up the summer sun, the Bureau of Meteorology has found there was no shortage of heat rays last year, with 2005 declared the warmest in history. It hasn’t stopped there either as on New Years Day 2006 the mercury topped 46 deg C at Sydney Airport and 44 deg C in the city.
The pre-Christmas sales tempo has been warming as well and this first appeared as a plethora of high-end Swiss brands ads in the January edition of the glossy life-style oriented Sydney Magazine which beats its competitors to the streets by appearing on the newsstands in mid-December.
Within the first twelve pages appear full-page ads for Roger Dubuis, Girard-Perregaux, Jaeger-LeCoultre, TAG Heuer followed later with Georg Jensen, Hermitage Diamonds, Montblanc and Cartier on the back cover. Together with some smaller watch and jewellery ads these high-end brands together account for more than 10% of the 80 pages.
Perhaps this is a further indicator that the pressure is increasing for sales of quality products from the major brand stables and targeting the people with the money to spend. To test the theory we spoke to Christina Bush, proprietor of Facetti Jewellery located in Sydney’s exclusive north shore suburb of Mosman. With only moderate expectations, Facetti’s December sales were up a huge 30% in jewellery (watches having been temporarily dropped six months prior to discourage the regular hold-ups). Facetti’s proprietor Christina Bush says “This may have been a one-off result involving other factors but gratifying nonetheless.”
None of the retailers we spoke to was disappointed with the pre-Christmas sales period but none could match the Mosman Facetti phenomenon.
Parker Time in Hunters Hill reported a small increase in December business but more as a Christmas day cut-off to allow holiday arrangements to proceed on time. We heard the same answer from Bauman Watchmakers and Jewellers in Neutral Bay. And this may be part of the answer concerning a repositioned December as a trend rather than a failure of mass marketing.
The Australian holiday season is late December to late February and even before the Sydney harbour New Years Eve fireworks are behind us, a whole new network of events swings into action. The cruise ships start arriving and disgorging visitors for the Sydney Festival season.
For three weeks every January, Sydney comes alive to festival atmosphere and residents and visitors alike delight in an exciting and exhilarating arts extravaganza of music, dance, performing and visual arts. The Sydney Festival takes over the city with events in venues such as the Sydney Opera House, Museum of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of NSW, Royal Botanic Gardens, Queen Victoria Building, Town Hall, St James Church, Darling Harbour to name just a few.
That is followed hard upon by Summer events and the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras festival which takes place at the end of summer each year. Its still hot enough to get your gear off but it's also timed at the end of the summer tourist season. This festival kicks off in early February and reaches its climax with the parade on the first Saturday in March at 8pm.
And with the Mardi Gras comes the Pink Dollar.
Gay and lesbian households control an estimated annual disposable income of A$10bn (approximately 6.2 billion euros). As a market force, gays spend proportionately more on clothing, entertainment, grooming, financial services, drink, travel, music, jewellery, watches and cars.
So what has this to do with watches? In fact a great deal because in the weeks before Christmas the Swiss majors with luxury products to sell are already cashing in on the herd instinct to buy for the festive season and the high quality targeted promotions quite rightly kick off with the traditional Christmas celebrations.
But as the ships arrive bringing the holidaymakers, both gay and straight, then they are making sure that they are well positioned to sell their share of beautiful things to people who are right ready to buy and do it with class.
So should we be surprised that these fine brands are into the well-targeted glossies and getting their exclusive luxury products in front of us at every page-turn? It would indeed be very surprising if they did not!


Source: February - March 2006 Issue