Signals

Denmark — Danish design brand D Line is offering a new refurbishment service for its architectural hardware and sanitary ware, extending the lifespan of its products to a minimum of 100 years.

D Line products already come with a 20-year guarantee, but the brand’s new Re-handle service will enable 250 of its items to be refurbished up to four times. Customers can send their original products to the brand’s factory where the refurbishment process takes eight weeks. D Line recommends to its customers to Re-handle their products every 20th year.

The refurbished products are returned with a comprehensive breakdown of their carbon footprint – highlighting their eco-friendliness compared to new manufactured items.

In our recent report on repairable tech, we observed a significant shift in consumer values. For environmental and financial reasons, people seek new ways to fix their goods rather than replace them. They also increasingly see repairability as integral to good design.

Global – Research from Morgan Stanley shows that sales of smartwatches, including Apple’s top-selling version, have plateaued and no longer pose a significant threat to the high-end ranges of the Swiss watch industry.

Smartwatches are still selling in greater volumes than the Swiss watch market by a large margin – Apple sells more during one quarter than the Swiss industry does in a year – but the volumes are beginning to fall for the first time since the launch of the Apple Watch. Smartwatch unit sales were down 17% year on year in the fourth quarter of 2022, and Apple units fell by 16%.

The Swiss watch industry enjoyed its best year in 2022 by value, driven by a resurgence in demand for timeless pieces, especially in the US, with exports growing by 11.8%. In Next-generation Watch Market, we previously looked at how the luxury watch sector is transforming to woo a new generation of digital native young collectors who might have a smartwatch but still crave the gravitas of a high-end watchmaking.