Times article on Watches & London post Brexit

[Itsguy]

An article in The Times suggest that London will see considerable growth mono-brand watch boutiques due to the devaluation of the pound after the Brexit vote. Obviously anyone from outside the UK now gets a considerable discount by buying here, making it a popular destination for watch shopping. So while we won't actually get any discount ourselves, and buying from the rest of Europe now costs considerably more, we will at least be able to look at the watches we can't afford in the window!

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/wa...32220923537f96

[Wallasey Runner]

The watch manufactures will level the playing field at some point. This happened with a few of the big Australian wine growers a few years back when the UK price was so low that people in Australia were buying from UK wine merchants and shipping it back home.

The likes of Penfolds twigged to this and announced that they were substantially increasing the price of its premium wines in the UK to balance out with prices being charged elsewhere and to stop this buying back from the Aussies.

As such, a 2003 or 2004 bottle of Grange that was about £150 was suddenly £450 by the 2008 vintage and it still sold out very quickly.

[Iconoclast]

Short but sweet. Thanks for the read!

I should get into watch investing.........

[Itsguy]

The watch manufactures will level the playing field at some point. This happened with a few of the big Australian wine growers a few years back when the UK price was so low that people in Australia were buying from UK wine merchants and shipping it back home.

The likes of Penfolds twigged to this and announced that they were substantially increasing the price of its premium wines in the UK to balance out with prices being charged elsewhere and to stop this buying back from the Aussies.

As such, a 2003 or 2004 bottle of Grange that was about £150 was suddenly £450 by the 2008 vintage and it still sold out very quickly.

If that's the case then hefty price rises in sterling would be more likely that more boutiques. Though since watches had previously been rather expensive in London compared to much of the continent (looking at vintage purchases in Italy and Spain for instance), perhaps this has actually levelled the playing field a bit - so it's a case of a popular tourist destination with wealthy visitors, that's no longer so overpriced. If that were the case, more boutiques would make sense, and it will cost the brands less to run them.

[walkerwek1958]

I wouldn`t take much heed of this!

The currency drop is likely to prove temporary; making the investment in single brand boutiques on such tenuous grounds would be too risky in my view.

Paul

[HectorHughMunro]

If passporting for financial services is sorted out, this exchange rate issue might be reversed quite quickly.

It's pointless getting too concerned about this.

[Gav]

Isn't this a short term thing. That although the exchange rate means it's less expensive to buy watches in the UK it becomes more expensive for the dealers to buy the watches