You may have noticed that there is a women-heavy slant to our recent Chrono24 publications.
Accounting for just under 25% of our marketplace users, women are far short of a majority, but there is certainly solid interest there. This is evident not only in the content we’ve published recently, but also in the pure data. We want to shed some light not only on the preferences of female watch fans on Chrono24, but also raise awareness about the diversity of the collecting and enthusiast community and inspire women out there who are interested in watches but don’t know where to start.
If you have yet to forward some of our articles and reports to your friends, sisters, mothers, or other women in your life, it’s high time you do so. As with most things in life (in this case, your love of watches), the joy you get from something increases many times over when shared.
In this short but informative article, we want to summarize the key findings from our latest data report.
1. Women’s market share at Cartier is more than three times as high as that of men.
Market share between female and male users was also analyzed for other top brands. Luxury and jewelry brands like Chanel, Cartier, Chopard, and Bulgari were shown to be the most sought-after by women. In contrast, brands such as Zenith and Tudor have a stronger foothold in our male demographic.
As a small aside (and since it’s hard to ignore the brand with the crown), almost every third watch purchased by women on Chrono24 is a Rolex, and more than half of all female dollars spent is on watches from the brand.
2. Women are almost twice as likely as men to buy a quartz watch.
More than half of the women’s watches listed on our marketplace are powered by quartz calibers, so in a sense, it’s no wonder that women buy more quartz than men.
Interestingly, actual sales data shows that despite the vast majority of watches offered being quartz, women are significantly more likely to buy watches with automatic movements.
This raises the question of whether women simply prefer mechanical watches, or if other factors like case size have a greater influence on their decisions.
3. Women are more than twice as likely as men to buy a watch with a precious metal case.
The latter half of the 20th century saw stainless steel emerge as the dominant case material in luxury watches. While this still applies today among all buyers on Chrono24, a closer look at the data reveals that precious metal cases are still twice as popular among women as they are among men.
In addition to material preferences, interesting information about preferred case shapes also came to light. Women are more open to purchasing "non-traditional" case shapes than men, i.e., rectangular, square, etc.
4. Over the past five years, the likelihood of women buying a watch with a case diameter larger than 40 mm has increased by 25 percent.
If you google the terms "women's watches" or "watches for women," you'll find that most results have rather modest case sizes. And while many women certainly do like smaller watches (I personally love my 34-mm Seiko Presage), the data shows that larger watches, i.e., 40 mm and up, have been growing in popularity among women over the past five years.
Does this suggest a trend reversal? It's certainly consistent with the convergence of watch tastes between men and women that we continue to see across the board.
