Face It: Digital Watches Flunk as Fashion Statement

Digital watches can help balance a checkbook and measure a pulse. They will dial a telephone number or tell how far a person has walked. And, oh yes, they tell time, too.

So why are digital watches, which have recently shown signs of life after a long decline, still shunned by many watchmakers, retailers and consumers? Well, for one thing, digitals are considered ugly ducklings in an industry dominated by stylish fashion watches.

At newly created watch departments in Bullock’s department stores, digital watches are no where to be seen. “Their looks are outdated,” said Andrea Williams, the department store chain’s watch buyer. Although the chain used to carry digitals, she said, “It’s a kind of a watch you will now find in drug and discount stores. It’s not in keeping with our image as an upscale department store.”

It was not always so. With their numbers flashing and alarms beeping, digital watches looked like they would plow under traditional time pieces--those with hour and minute hands. Many wondered if children would ever learn to tell time using traditional watches and clocks.

Then in 1982, a worldwide glut of digital watches caused sales to collapse. Digital watches--priced at $2,000 when first introduced--were being sold for $3 each. “The problem with the digital was there was tremendous overproduction,” said Joseph Thompson, editor-in-chief of Modern Jeweler magazine. Japanese and other Asian digital watch makers began dumping their watches at such steep discounts that they were, and still are, given away as promotional items. “You will get a digital watch just for showing up” at a baseball game, Thompson said.

Furthermore, the digital watch makers were caught off guard by the Swiss-made Swatch watch that triggered a fashion craze in the industry. As consumers sought high-fashion analog watches, the digital giveaways and low prices “cheapened the value of the digital watch in the eye of the consumer,” Thompson said. Also, many consumers found their old analog watches easier to read at a glance.

Since then, however, the digital watches have won back customers with increasingly sophisticated gadgetry. The first digital owners in the early 1970s had to press a button on the side of the watch to read the time. A press of a button can now get everything from a jogger’s lap time to room temperature. “They are like little machines on your wrist,” said Judy Reichel, a watch designer for Timex Group.

Gary Hand, Casio national sales manager, said “the main reason (to buy) a digital product is that it has bells and whistles. The byproduct is that it tells time.”

Sales of Casio digital watches--70% of which are purchased by men--have have been running 30% ahead of last year, said Hand. “And everyone had said it was a dead industry,” Hand said.

The digital watch is highly suited for the technology that will allow wristwatches to be used as electronic pagers and even like the two-way wrist radio used by comic strip hero Dick Tracy, experts say. That technology is expected to be commercially available in the next decade.