Partially offsetting the above headwinds, global e-commerce sales were up 8%, led by growth in traditional watches and jewelry. The consistent strength of our e-commerce platform is a direct result of the investments we’ve made to bolster our capabilities across talent and technology in recent years. Finally, SG&A expenses in Q3 declined by 3% as we captured benefits from actions under our Transform and Grow plan. Working capital levels were down approximately $100 million or 24% as we reduced inventories and continued to focus on our overall merchandise assortment. Next, I’ll walk through some regional results to highlight key drivers of performance. First, in the Americas, net sales were down 18% in constant currency, slightly below expectations.
Sales into the wholesale channel were down 23%, consistent with our Q2 trend. In our traditional watch category, the underlying sell-in was down 15%, which lagged a 6% decline in the underlying sell-out as reported by our major wholesale accounts. Across our larger retailers in the region, inventories at the end of the quarter were down 23% versus last year. In the region’s direct-to-consumer channels, comparable retail sales declined 6%, driven by declines in owned retail stores, offset by gains in e-commerce. We ended the quarter with 143 stores this year, down 7% versus last year. In Europe, total sales declined 30% versus last year in constant currency and were below our expectations, primarily due to declines in the wholesale channel, which were down 36% and lagged underlying sell-out trends in traditional watches.
Although inventory levels as reported by our key accounts continued to decline versus prior-year levels, retailers are signaling caution on consumer spending heading into Q4 with increased attention to geopolitical risk factors in the region. In our direct-to-consumer channels, comparable retail sales grew in Q3 with double-digit gains in e-commerce more than offsetting a moderate decline in retail store comps. We ended the quarter with 87 stores this year, down 22% versus last year. Turning to Asia, sales were down 14% in constant currency versus the prior-year quarter. As we have previously communicated, we have two primary focus areas in the region over the long-term: reigniting sales in China and continuing to drive sales growth in India.
Net sales in India grew by 6%, and we remain pleased with our progress in the market where we capitalized on distribution growth for traditional watches and leveraged our FOSSIL brand relaunch initiatives. Sales in Mainland China, however, declined 30%, which included $7 million of the $10 million timing impact that I previously mentioned. Excluding the timing impact, net sales were down 4% in constant currency, a slight improvement in trend from Q2 levels Early reads on Q4 indicate that consumer spending in discretionary categories is softening driven largely by economic fundamentals in the market. While we remain confident about the long-term trajectory for our brands in China, we anticipate that a softening economic outlook will create near-term headwinds in the category.
From a brand lens, as Kosta mentioned, the FOSSIL brand relaunch was kicked off in the quarter and the brand’s traditional watch assortment has performed better than other owned and licensed brands. Globally, Fossil’s traditional watch category was down 1% in the quarter on a comp basis. We are encouraged by progress in the brand jewelry category, which has continued to comp well in our direct-to-consumer channels with improved AURs. Looking at our largest licensed brands, Kors was down versus last year, driven by the outsized sales declines in our wholesale channel in the Americas and Europe contrasted with year-to-date growth in Asia. Armani’s declines are largely attributable to the softer trends that we’ve seen in China. Moving down the P&L, third-quarter gross margin was 47%, down 330 basis points versus last year, with improvement in our core product margins more than offset by three key factors.
First, Q3 had a 200 basis point impact from the timing of minimum product royalties owed, which benefited Q1 of 2023. Second, we had 130 basis point year-over-year impact from the settlement of foreign currency contracts used to hedge inventory purchases. Third, we are lapping a 160 basis point benefit in Q3 of last year relates to the completion of performance obligations under a licensing agreement related to our smart watch technology. Importantly, and partially offsetting the above headwinds, our core product margins were up 120 basis points as we saw the benefit of inventory management and assortment architecture initiatives drive better realized AURs. This underlying benefit is something we will continue to focus on as part of our broader transformation plan.
