The headline number in Deloitte's new study of Swiss watchmaking is not an export value or a sentiment score. It is a count of watches. Switzerland shipped about 14.6 million wristwatches in 2025, down 43 percent from 2016, while the value of those exports rose 34 percent over the same decade (Deloitte). The industry is making far fewer watches and charging far more for each one, and the firms that supply its parts have started to plan as though that is permanent rather than a passing dip.
Deloitte's 2026 report, Spotlight on the Supplier Universe, published on 30 September, turns the firm's long-running Swiss Watch Industry Study toward the component makers and subcontractors who sit upstream of the brands (Deloitte). It is a narrower survey than the headline studies — 42 supplier executives, alongside more than 6,500 consumers — and that sample size is worth keeping in mind. But the suppliers are where a volume decline shows up first, because they are paid by the part.
Fewer watches, higher prices
The volume-value split is the whole story in one line, and it cuts unevenly through the supply base. Seventy-nine percent of the suppliers surveyed see the long-term fall in export volumes as either a major structural risk or a pressure that forces them further up the value chain; WatchPro, reading the report, splits that into 43 percent who call it a serious structural threat and 36 percent who think innovation and higher-value positioning can offset it (WatchPro). Either way, almost no one in the sample expects the old unit numbers to return.
The strain lands at the bottom of the market. Suppliers were markedly more negative about entry-level and mid-range watches than about luxury, where demand is less price-sensitive and steadier (Deloitte, WatchPro). WatchPro's reading puts a figure on the divergence: a high-volume movement maker such as Chopard's Fleurier Ebauches reportedly running at about two-thirds capacity while Chopard's own manufacture is booked four to five years out (WatchPro).
Adjusting without gutting
What is notable is how the suppliers are responding. The defensive cutting that defined 2025 has eased: 50 percent of respondents cut permanent staff in 2026, down from 57 percent a year earlier (Deloitte). Sentiment turned with it — the share of executives negative about the Swiss economy fell sharply year on year (WatchPro). Resilience readings are high: 66 percent rate their ability to absorb supply-side shocks as high or very high, and 54 percent say the same for demand-side shocks (Deloitte).
They are adjusting by moving rather than retreating. Deloitte describes independent suppliers regrouping — consolidating, shifting from single components toward sub-assemblies and broader services, and diversifying into adjacent fields such as medtech and jewellery (Deloitte). Around 40 percent plan to use artificial intelligence, notably in production planning and process optimisation.
The ecosystem is still the moat
For all the pressure, the suppliers still rate highly the thing that is hardest to copy. Sixty-seven percent say Switzerland's watchmaking ecosystem — the density of specialist firms within a short drive of one another — significantly strengthens their performance, and 26 percent credit the Swiss Made label directly (Deloitte). On the demand side, 58 percent of consumers said they strongly or somewhat prefer Swiss-made watches, even though country of origin ranks below price-to-value as a purchase driver in most markets.
The caution is the obvious one. This is a supplier's-eye view from a 42-executive sample, not the full industry study, and it reads the slowdown rather than forecasts its end. The swing factor is demand, which Deloitte's own respondents named as the most-cited risk for the next twelve months — and which no amount of supply-side resilience can manufacture. What the study does establish is that the people who make the parts have stopped waiting for volume to return and started building for a Switzerland that exports fewer, dearer watches. Watchmaking employed 64,807 people in 2025, roughly one percent of the Swiss workforce, and employment is still up 14 percent on 2016 even as unit output fell by nearly half (Deloitte). The industry has already remade itself once this decade. The supplier study is a map of it doing so again.
Sources: Deloitte, Swiss Watch Industry Insights 2026: Spotlight on the Supplier Universe; WatchPro, "Deloitte Study Shows Swiss Adjusting To Permanently Lower Sales Volumes" (6 October 2026).
