“It was a shock to the system,” said Mike France, a co-founder and the chief executive of the British watchmaker Christopher Ward. He was recalling the industry’s reaction to President Trump’s Aug. 1 announcement of a 39 percent tariff on Swiss imports, including watches.
The Swiss authorities announced Friday that they had reached an agreement to reduce the tariff to 15 percent. The reduction was the latest in a series of up-and-down trade moves by the Trump administration, which first announced new tariffs for U.S. trading partners in April.
In the weeks before Friday’s announcement, watchmakers had been taking steps to mitigate the impact on their sales in the United States, which has been the largest Swiss watch export market for the past several years. According to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, almost 17 percent of all 2024 watch exports went to the United States; the next largest market was China, with almost 8 percent.
Some watchmakers shipped additional stock to the United States during the spring and early summer months, when the tariff was 10 percent during trade talks. But that was not an option for Christopher Ward because it sells direct to consumers online and in its by-appointment showrooms, where it only keeps samples.
So it decided to restructure part of its business, a move that enabled the brand, as Mr. France said at the time, to “roll back the prices” for U.S. customers to what they had been before the 39 percent tariff became effective Aug. 7.
“We’re pleased to see the positive news on tariff reductions,” Mr. France said Friday. “It’s an encouraging development not just for Christopher Ward, but for the entire Swiss watch industry. We’ll be reviewing what this means specifically for our business in the coming days and weeks, but any move that eases pressure is warmly welcomed.”
Christopher Ward, which is the largest British watchmaker in terms of revenue, has its headquarters in Maidenhead, a town west of London. But its watches carry the Swiss Made label (an official designation that indicates, among other things, at least 60 percent of a watch’s production costs were incurred in Switzerland). The brand’s watches — it produced about 40,000 during the fiscal year that ended March 31 — are assembled and tested at its atelier in Biel, Switzerland.
Before the August tariff announcement, a U.S. customer would order a watch and the brand would ship it directly from Britain. The customer would be responsible for any import duties.
Since the first week of September, however, the watchmaker’s U.S. entity, CW Inc., has been the importer of record. And the brand has been shipping watches in bulk to a distributor in Cincinnati, which dispatches them to customers. “We were able to adjust the transfer price downwards so that the level of duty that was charged wasn’t at the full retail price, which it had been previously, but on a cost-plus price,” Mr. France said.
So, according to the brand, a customer in Albany, N.Y., who buys a C1 Bel Canto Classic watch with an azzurro dial and leather strap now pays $5,227.20, a price that includes the 8 percent state and county sales tax. That same watch, it said before the announcement Friday, would have cost $6,462.28 with the 39 percent tariff; $5,274 when the tariff was 10 percent; and $4,563 before the introduction of the tariffs.
U.S. Presence
Even before the tariff announcements, Mr. France said, the brand had been considering some changes to its business operation to reflect growth in the U.S. market. The United States produced about 45 percent of the brand’s sales of 45.4 million pounds ($59.3 million) during its 2024-25 financial year, a trend that had been accelerating in recent years.
In early December the brand is scheduled to open a new showroom in Manhattan, joining the ones it opened in September in Falls Church, Va., a suburb of Washington, and in 2024 in Frisco, Texas, a suburb of Dallas.
Mr. France said that growth would depend on the overall financial climate, but he would be disappointed if “in five years’ time, we didn’t have 25 stores” in the United States.
But the restructuring did come at some cost to the business, he noted. In addition to the continuing expense of the restructuring, which he said would cost about $2 million a year, Mr. France said the company was accepting a lower margin, which he declined to specify, on everything it sold in the United States.
The brand also incurred what Mr. France described as a “seven-figure” expense because it chose to absorb the additional tariff payments on watches that U.S. customers had preordered in the spring and early summer, when the tariff was 10 percent, but were not delivered until after the 39 percent tariff took effect.
Since Christopher Ward announced its new plan, Mr. France said sales had rebounded and now were “not far off” pre-tariff levels, but he added that consumer concern and confusion about tariffs had prompted some people to defer purchase decisions.
Absorbing the Tariff
Christopher Ward is not the only brand that has adapted to the tariffs.
The British brand Fears decided to “sacrifice margin to maintain momentum in the U.S.,” according to Daniel Varney, the brand’s head of commercial, covering the cost of tariffs for both its direct customers and its retail partners there. The tariffs on Fears watches vary, as the brand uses components from different countries, including Swiss movements, and assembles them by hand in Britain. Before the tariff reduction announcement last week, Mr. Varney had said that the total tariff on a shipment to the United States ranged from 25 to 30 percent, on average.
The United States is Fears’s largest market. And, “having enough margin to do wholesale,” he said, “meant that it was possibly a little easier for us to absorb than brands that operate solely D.T.C. [direct to consumer] with a lower margin.”
He said the company also introduced a more cost effective shipping process in May: It now sends quantities of orders together via a shipping broker, which then dispatches pieces to customers when the shipment reaches the United States. The move, he said, was “not a silver bullet and takes it down to zero, but it does help soften that blow.”
Mr. Varney said that absorbing the tariffs was “not something any brand can do indefinitely.” However, Fears’s U.S. sales were up 37 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2025, he said, crediting an increase in the brand’s U.S. points of sale and the release of three new models in its Brunswick and Redcliff collections in late August.
That growth, he added, has “probably offset the hit of the tariffs.”
Looking Ahead
Some watchmakers chose to raise their prices in the United States. For example, Patek Philippe introduced a 15 percent increase on Sept. 15.
And some brands said the tariffs had encouraged them to explore new markets. Manuel Emch, chief executive of the Swiss brand Louis Erard, said he had noticed what he called “an acceleration of the demand” from destinations where Americans might be shopping while on vacation. The brand is in talks with multibrand retailers about expanding its presence in Mexico, and entering the market in Canada and the Caribbean.
Despite the recent challenges, Mr. France of Christopher Ward said that he still had confidence in the brand’s future in America.
“It’s such a dynamic market,” he said.
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