“Following the data in both the primary and secondary [ie, new and ‘pre-owned’] market, all the signs point to a slowdown – most acutely felt in Europe, but also America and also in Asia, which has never really recovered since the lockdown,” says Mr Rob Corder, MD of WatchPro, the watch industry media platform. “What that means is that the big ‘waiting-list watches’, the [Audemars Piguet] Royal Oak, the Vacheron Constantin Overseas, almost anything in the Rolex catalogue… that was having such a distortion on the market, with flippers buying watches to resell for multiples. That’s all gone now. So, it means brands will become more conservative, in terms of [being less likely to come up with weird and wonderful] complications and materials and they’ll stick to the ‘bestsellers’, the ones they know are going to work. I think consumers can expect better value for money because of it.”

“Citizen, Seiko and Orient in particular are making fantastic automatics,” Corder says. “They’re fighting for the people who don’t have four figures to spend on a Swiss-made watch. And they’ve got some really nice product.

“Is there still a stigma around owning a watch that’s not Swiss? Well, a Rolex customer will always be a Rolex customer. But the younger you are, the less you’re going to be impacted by that kind of thing [ie, legacy watch brands]. And, right now, everyone is after the younger customer.”

“I said last year was going to be the year of the independent,” says Mr George Bamford, founder of Bamford Watch Department. “But I think 2024 really will be. I think brands will be jumping onto more collabs. It takes them to a different demographic.

“I can see Seconde/Seconde/ [watch world ‘prankster’, whose ingenious designs have recently found him being accepted by some ‘proper’ watch companies for collaborations] doing a lot more with bigger brands. Those brands are like, ‘Wow, what a selling power. What a creative genius’. He’s an amazing talent. He’s like the Banksy of the watch world.

“Plus, I think customers are wanting something ‘more’ from their watches. Something where they can look down at their wrist and go, ‘Yeah, that makes me smile’.”

“There’s still a lot of excitement around microbands,” agrees Mr Davide Cerrato, the new CEO of Bremont and a veteran of Tudor and Panerai. “And new players coming is always very good for the market.”

“There are too many independents, too many collaborations,” says Mr Oliver R Müller, a watch industry consultant. “People are getting bored. Too many times the same recipe is being applied. Every month you have the ‘new Mozart’ who has just finished watchmaking school, and they appear on the scene being dubbed the new François-Paul Journe. To be honest with you, when I look at what is being done by ‘the new Mozarts of watchmaking’, it’s always the same watch. Where is the creative?

“The innovation actually comes from the big guys: from Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Richard Mille – they are moving forward. And collaborations – collaborations are interesting if it’s an opposite – an institutional brand collaborating with a crazy brand. Rimowa collaborating with skateboarding brand Palace, for example. Karl Lagerfeld collaborating with H&M. That was cool.

“The original collaboration with Swatch and Omega [the MoonSwatch] is interesting – totally opposite DNAs. [Avant-garde watch designer] Alain Silberstein… don’t get me wrong, I like the guy – but he now has done 10 collaborations. After some time, you go, ‘What is the point?’”

The last few years have seen an anything-goes approach to dial colours – pistachio green at Breitling; acid green at Zenith; psychedelic rainbows at Bell & Ross. Cerrato suggests we are about to enter a more sober period. “One colour that is coming through quite strongly is chocolate brown,” he says. “And another one is the salmon dial trend, which is a very nice, very classical colour. Classical blue, green, bronze or gold. Those never go out of fashion. There are also more and more luminous materials – fully luminous cases, fully luminous dials – playing with light in original ways. That’s something we’ll be doing a lot at Bremont.”

“Neo-vintage” will continue to be a thing. That is to say watches that came out in the 1980s and 1990s, which are now deemed – readers over 40 may wish to look away – vintage. That counts for current brands raiding the achieves and releasing “overlooked classics”, such as Breitling’s Chronomat and Gordon Gekko’s favourite watch, the Cartier Santos – as well as a pre-owned market more used to dealing with 1950s and 1960s Omega and Rolexes.

“It’s defining a huge amount of what we’re doing and what we’re exploring,” says Mr Christy Davis, founder of Subdial Watches, the pre-owned watch platform. “The 1980s and 1990s were such an exciting time-period. Post-quartz crisis, as the luxury market was finding its feet. The amount and depth of stories is amazing. It’s bringing in a younger customer, which is just great for the industry.”

If 2023 saw a boom in celebrities wearing itsy-bitsy dress watches – Mr Pharrell Williams with his Cartier Crash, Tyler, the Creator with his Cartier Pebble, Mr Lenny Kravitz’s Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso – there is now a move towards even more “jewellery-adjacent” models.

“There’s been an ongoing push for a while towards ‘modest luxury’,” Davis says. “Smaller, neo-vintage pieces that are very special, but aren’t known by a huge amount of people. That might be Piaget with its stone dials. Or Cartier with its [Tank] Asymétrique or its [Tank] Chinoise.”

“Everyone thinks Piaget will come out with a version of their classic Polo watch, the 1980s all-gold watch, next year,” Wind says. “I would expect that. And Cartier continues to be on fire. Pretty much every kind of watch they introduce in a limited edition sells out.”