Curious as to how many fewer watches were imported from Switzerland to the USA in 2009? 37.9% less. That’s a lot of percent.

Now, most people would have thought that a lot of Swiss Watchmakers would have gone out of business because of this, but surprisingly, most of the bigger ones are still going strong. This either means that most of that drop was from smaller retailers, or these Watchmaking giants have HUGE mark-ups on their product!

At any rate, it is an enourmous blow to the Swiss Watch Industry and Watch Sales in the USA for sure. Makes me wonder how much retailers were lying to me when I walked into watch stores during the recession and when I asked “How’s Business?” every single one told me “Its Great! Like there is no recession! Amazing isn’t it?”. Kind of turns me off the salesmen there since they flat out lie to us.

Any way.. interesting states. Some countries, mainly ones in Europe, only had small decreases such as France, Italy and Germany, all hovering around 13-14%.

Hopefully 2010 will be a good year.