[nhoj]

I saw this article linked to in another forum so I thought I'd share it here. Very current summary of the fiscal year watch sales for Seiko Citizen and Casio.

They are all still feeling a recession pinch, but Seiko is hurting bad and is now #3.

http://www.watchtime.com/2010/06/watch-sales-down-again-for-japans-big-three/

Graphs are from the article. y-axis is billion yen sold.

 

[nhoj]

Price increases + continued move up market = Seiko hurting?

I think there is a lot more to it than this.

50% loss over 2 years. Its almost like people have forgotten about Seiko. The article did not provide any regional numbers for Seiko but I'm thinking a lot of this loss is erosion of the North American market.

 

[nhoj]

You're right, Andrew that there is more to each of these companies than the watches. Also there is more to the watch business than just the sales numbers. So in some respect this article is overly simplistic, but at the same time, I think sales numbers are the easiest way to measure the perception of your product. I can't imagine anyone in Seiko sales/marketing wanting to present these numbers to their senior management, regardless of the larger picture. In my business we work hard to realize just 5-7% sales growth per year. To lose 50% over just 2 years would be very serious, especially with a 100 billion yen/1 billion USD product line.