![]() Industry dysfunction on the other hand is more to blame, and nowhere is the inability to manage a foreign market more obvious than in America for Switzerland’s great horological maisons. Omega watch boutique in Hong Kong Image credit: aBlogtoWatch While smartwatches are certainly taking a bite out of traditional watches retailing for a few hundred dollars or less, there hasn’t been much evidence to suggest that several thousand dollar-plus luxury watch sales are at all affected by smartwatches. Using paid social media marketing to send carefully tested messages along with high investments in pay-to-have-them-say internet celebrities, these grass roots efforts have beaten the Swiss watch industry at its own game – lifestyle marketing. ![]() Between Daniel Wellington, MVMT, and Filippo Loreti, inexpensive “fashion” watches mostly under $200 in price have outperformed comparatively superior timepieces from legacy brands in both Switzerland and Japan. One of the most interesting ironies I mention to those who claim the woes of the watch industry are “smart” by design, is that some of the biggest selling wristwatches over the last few years have been quite dumb by comparison. Never having updated their distribution schemes to fully take into consideration globalization and the internet, and hungrily injecting large (and often unsold) volumes of ritzy timepieces to developing markets within mostly the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) have in large part been more direct factors that contributed to the current depressed state of the watch industry. But rather, the luxury watch industry has been experiencing deep systemic business structure and strategy problems for up to 15 years. With that said, I have written extensively that the pains of the luxury Swiss watch industry are not due to the market presence of smartwatches. It should come as no surprise that technologically modern connected wearable computers will resound better with mainstream audiences as compared to collectible mechanical timepieces or luxury status symbols. ![]() Tim Cook recently commented that Apple now sells more Apple Watches than the entire Swiss watch industry combined.
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