Richemont Watch and Jewellery Sales Cycled From Pandemic Dip to 2020s Normalisation

Compagnie Financière Richemont, owner of Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Vacheron Constantin, Panerai, Piaget and other houses, published a clear three-act sales cycle in the 2020s: a 2020 pandemic dip, a 2021–2022 boom, and a 2023–2025 normalisation as China demand cooled and Western luxury spending slowed. Jewellery, especially Cartier, repeatedly outran specialist watch maisons in growth commentary from the group’s own results presentations.

2020 dip, then restocking and grey-market heat

Boutique closures and tourism collapse hit 2020 hard. Richemont cut costs, paused some production and then faced the opposite problem in 2021: demand returned faster than authorised supply, particularly for Cartier jewellery and iconic watch shapes (Tank, Santos, Ballon Bleu) and for steel sports pieces at IWC and elsewhere. According to Richemont’s half-year and annual reports, as summarised in the Financial Times and Reuters, jewellery maisons led the rebound while specialist watchmakers recovered on a lag, helped by U.S. and European clients when Asian travel was still constrained.

The same years inflated grey premiums on a few references, which is not the same as Richemont’s reported sales. Group figures count wholesale and retail through owned boutiques and partners; they do not print Chrono24 asks. Still, wait lists at Cartier and Vacheron fed the same scarcity narrative that lifted secondary prices across the industry.

Cartier as the growth engine

Investor letters and analyst notes treated Cartier as the group’s volume-and-margin engine, with Van Cleef & Arpels as a high-jewellery counterpart. IWC, JLC, Vacheron, Panerai and Piaget remained strategically important but smaller in the mix. When China slowed in the mid-2020s, Cartier’s broader jewellery base cushioned the watch specialist houses more than a pure-play watch group could. Panerai and Piaget saw more volatile commentary tied to regional wholesale and to specific collection refreshes.

Vacheron and JLC kept the high-watchmaking story: Métiers d’Art, complicated calibres, and boutique experiences that do not scale like a Tank Louis. That split—jewellery velocity versus watchmaking depth—is the structural fact of Richemont’s 2020s results, not a passing campaign.

What normalisation meant on the ground

Normalisation was not a collapse. It meant fewer panic allocations, more attention to full-price sell-through, and less automatic growth from a reopening bounce. Retailers reported that clients compared waiting lists with secondary prices and sometimes walked. For accessible mechanical watches outside Richemont’s price band, that cooling coincided with continued interest in specified homages and Seiko-based builds, including GMT layouts covered in a Seiko GMT mod build guide.

Material and bracelet choices also tracked the luxury conversation at a distance. Steel sports watches at IWC and Cartier Santos kept metal bracelets in the centre of the catalogue; hobbyists arguing oyster-style versus jubilee-style comfort on aftermarket kits use a similar vocabulary, laid out in a jubilee vs oyster bracelet comparison.

FAQ

Which Richemont brand drove 2020s growth commentary? Cartier, supported by jewellery demand. Specialist watch maisons recovered but were not described as the group’s primary growth engine.

Did 2023–2025 mean watch sales collapsed? Group language was normalisation: slower China, tougher comparables after 2021–22, not a 2020-style shutdown.

Are grey-market premiums in Richemont’s results? No. Reported sales are the group’s own channels. Secondary asks can move in the same direction without being the same number.