Watches Tell Status as Much as the Time : Industry Clocks Record Demand After Jumping on the Fashion Bandwagon
Judy Reichel hunts for new ideas in high-style magazines such as Elle, Vogue and Interview. A Parisian fashion forecasting firm supplies her with reports about coming color and style trends. And she traveled to California to find out what’s in with young surfers.
Reichel is not in the business of designing clothes. She designs watches; Timex watches to be precise. The company that used to praise the durability of its watches--”Takes a licking but keeps on ticking”--now touts fashionable timepieces as “Sexy, scintillating watches for a style that’s explosive.” And for good reason.
“Timex had a place in the market with an affordable, quality product,” Reichel said. “Then everybody had a lower-priced product that was reliable.” So, Timex has turned to fashion to hold its own.
Welcome to the world of watchmaking in the 1980s. It is an industry--dominated by Swiss and Asian firms--in which watches have become regarded and sold as fashion accessories instead of timepieces. With a watch on nearly every wrist, watchmakers have managed to boost sales by jumping on the fashion bandwagon--changing long-held design, sales and advertising methods.
Watches have become symbols of social status--a shiny Rolex for the up-and-coming--and a way to stand out from the crowd--a brightly colored Swatch for a trendy teen-ager. Watches may be more accurate than ever before, but telling time has become a secondary function.
“We have Swatch styles where you can’t even read the time,” said Jacques Irniger, president of the U.S. subsidiary of SMH, the Swiss firm that produces Swatch, Omega and Tissot.
Swatch watches and similar products spurred the fashion movement in the industry. “Swatches pretty much changed the way a consumer looked at a watch,” said Joseph Thompson, editor-in-chief of Modern Jeweler magazine. “It’s a fashion accessory that happened to tell the time.”
In the coming holiday shopping season, which accounts for nearly 40% of annual store watch sales, watchmakers will argue that one watch simply will not do.
“People are now purchasing a wardrobe of watches,” said Robert J. Stevens, advertising manager at Seiko Time Corp. “Women have a pocketbook to go with every outfit, why not a watch?”
The move to fashion has paid off. In 1986, consumers purchased $2.3 billion worth of watches--a 20% increase since 1984, National Jeweler magazine says. About 80 million watches are sold annually in the United States, more than in any nation.
“There is more demand for them more than ever before,” said Art Colvin, watch buyer at May Co. of California department stores, which has seen watch sales increase 100% during the past three years. Watches account for 25% of May’s jewelry sales versus 10% in past years.
In the pursuit of fashion, watchmakers have segmented the market and expanded their lines. This year, classic designs with Roman numerals and mother-of-pearl dials have gained ground on the colorful plastic watches popularized by Swatch.
Oversized watches, high-gloss gold and silver cases, metal-link wrist bands and watches with phases of the moon will be popular this holiday season, retailers say.
To sell an increasing array of watches, watchmakers have boosted ad budgets. In 1986, companies spent $93.1 million--up 50% from 1984--to advertise products, according to National Leading Advertisers.
Watch advertising itself has changed. Watch ads are more apt to associate the product with a customer’s life style--or desired life style--instead of the traditional selling points of durability and engineering.
Concord watches claim to be “watchmakers to the gentry.” Ads for Piaget--touted as “the world’s most expensive watches”--features attractive young couples holding glasses of champagne.
“You have to make people emotionally involved with the product,” said SMH’s Irniger.
Swiss watchmakers like Irniger have benefited the most from the shift to fashion. The Swiss, banking on the fashion trend, have rebounded after being nearly driven to bankruptcy in the early 1980s by the popularity of less expensive but technologically superior quartz watches produced by the Japanese and other Asian companies.
Although the declining value of the dollar would normally make Swiss and Japanese watches more expensive in the United States, stiff competition has forced the watchmakers to limit price hikes. “I’m sure it’s cutting into their profits to some extent,” said Emilio G. Collado III, executive director of the American Watch Assn.
Because of the dollar’s decline, Hattori Seiko, the Japanese watchmaking giant that produces Seiko, Pulsar and Lorus, reported a 41% drop in pretax profit for 1987. Pretax profits also fell 52% at Citizen Watch Co. and 67% at Casio Computer.
The move to fashion itself has posed problems for watchmakers, who find they must update lines constantly--as opposed to once a year. The Swatch watch line, which is redesigned every three months, represents the more extreme example. Holding up a multicolored Swatch, Irniger said: “See, this is a fad. Today, people like red, orange and black. Tomorrow . . . “
The fashion trend has made life more hectic for watch retailers as well. At Feldmar Watch & Clock Center in West Los Angeles, sales manager Sol Meller said the store has had to boost the number of watch brands it carries to 25 from one in recent years to satisfy demand.
“It was a very simple business--styles used to change annually,” Meller said. “Now it has become very complicated, very competitive. Things are changing continually.”
