Fashion Brands & Watchmaking - What Holds Them Back?

Fashion led designs usually copying some one else, and who in their right mind would want to look at their wrist and see Gucci or Ralph Loren or Boss 🤣

Polo has had some nice watches.

Gucci is making that move.

So are a lot of other brands…LV, etc.

They have seen the success of Hermes, etc.

So what I would say is watch out, the brands with the $$$ and clout will likely start pumping out real watches vs the watches they’ve been selling (cheap quartz with their logo slapped on it)

They have the same problem as any business going wide of their core competency; they're simply not known for it. For those fashion brands that have been putting their logo on cheaply made, disposable watches for some time, the problem is even worse. They're known to not make good watches. This will take time and effort to overcome.

As we've seen, Louis Vuitton is becoming quite serious in the watch space. As are Hermès (part owner in Vaucher which is related to none other than Parmigiani Fleurier) and Ralph Lauren. Maybe even Chanel (part owner in Kenissi who, of course, makes movements for Tudor and others). It would be foolish to discount these companies' ability to carve out some room for themselves in the high-end watch space, over time.

Montblanc is a good example of a brand that had a ton of equity in a different luxury vertical and put it to good use in watches. They made an excellent move in acquiring Minerva to essentially purchase legitimacy.

My guess is that Louis Vuitton and Hermès have the best chance at, over the next several decades, approximating Cartier's model and massive success in watchmaking.

I would not buy a car made by Rolex, nor vitamins emblazoned with Gucci. Companies need to stick to what they are known for. I like Nike trainers but I would not buy a formal suit made by Nike!

When I see mention of fashion brand watches, I recall names such as Michael Korrs, Emporio Armani, Kate Spade, Versace/ Versus 80s Gucci but there is a second cohort of watches produced by Cartier, Hermes, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, and high horology offerings from Ralph Lauren a brilliant designer/ innovator who used vintage watches in his 80s ads and if memory serves me correctly sold curated collections of vintage watches in some of his boutiques where the watch culture was relevant, not at all surprised when an expensive RL line of timepieces was launched.

There has always been a deep connection between fashion and legitimate timepieces. I watched Miami Vice mostly to admire the Ebel watches when the boring kids wore Rolex. After marriage, my fashionable wife introduced me to glossy magazines such as Vogue which I read because there were great ads for watches that were slow to appear in men’s publications including GQ, I might be wrong but GQ was relatively late to the watch party. Women have forever been more courageous in their style choices, I still recall meeting a lady executive visiting from Italy to investigate Toronto retail opportunities sporting an early steel Cosmograph watch that she picked up from a Toronto Rolex seller because it was fun and cheap. Perhaps the mocked fashion brand watches require the skillful direction of women to become more than bad jokes.

All it takes is time and money. Hermes and Louis Vuitton are on that track atm. Chanel has done interesting things with their j12. These companies have a massive cashflow and are able to properly invest in setting up a quality watchmaking business for a relative small risk. If that falls in their current business plans for the future remains to be seen. But they are absolutely able to set this up and become a "respected" name in the watchworld.

Fashion watch : sub 500 inexpensive and cheaply made watch, fully made in China (with perhaps an imported movement so they don’t need to say ‘made in China’)

The designer name on it has no watchmaking legitimacy

as @TOwguy stated - LV, Hermes and Chanel (to name a few) aren’t fashion watches by my definition, but pretty high end watch makers. No confusion for me.

Also Miami Vice was epitome of style in its heyday - loved that show 😂

Fashion quartz watches have their place as a “gateway” drug into higher horology for some. At least they were for me. I collected Swatches back in the day. Then Fossil. Then I got my first Swiss - Tissot. And now I have a Grand Seiko on my wrist. And bought a Nomos. and so it goes…

Agree that some of the high fashion houses will consider quality mechanical given the success of Hermes. There is a lack of fine mechanicals sized for women enthusiasts. I think that’s why Cartier dominates with women’s watches, imo…

lol did you wear the gangster style suits? There is a Tokyo Vice that I haven’t had a chance to view.

I wanted to be Sonny Crockett, but didn’t go as far as the white suit with rolled up sleeves.

Mostly wanted the Ferrari and girls.

One style element I did pick up: the windsurfer in the opening credits who arches back to dunk the back of his head looked cool. So, I learned to do that trick pretty quick and always made sure to do it when coming towards a beach 😂😉.

Has movado become a "fashion watch" ?

Must be a decent sight! Lol. Takes a lot courage to wear a white suit, I miss the 80s or just being 30 years younger.

They care only for the quick cash grab, even their clothes are made in sweat shops. Hermes is also one of the few that started to take take watchmaking seriously.

Oooh, I could give a lecture on this topic. I’ll do my best to refrain 😄

The TL;DR, though is: it’s expensive to truly compete in a market you have no expertise in, and what are the brand’s aspirations and ability to invest? That’ll determine the path they go with watches (or any other category, for that matter).

In general (and yes, gross oversimplification): There three types of fashion brands.

One group are the ones that are investing in making watches - like Louis Vuitton, Hermes, or Chanel.

Then there are the fashion brands that license their brand to watch makers - e.g., Tory Burch, Armani Exchange, and Michael Kors all license their brand to Fossil Group, and Fossil makes and markets the watches.

The last category are ones that find an ODM in Japan, China, or Switzerland who’ll make a watch for the brand to sell their their existing channels.

All three (build, license, buy) have pluses and minuses.

For builders, they see that their audience also buys luxury watches, and they want to be full range luxury goods makers (or as full range as possible). For them, luxury watches as a place where it’s worth investing and competing in. If you look at what they’re doing, they’re going big - investing in watch production (Chanel owns part of Kenissi) or either building entire production facilities in house (e.g., Louis Vuitton). But in general - these guys are going big so that they can get credibility in the market with dorks like us. They know that they’ll only succeed if they can get credibility with watch dorks like us, so they’re going big and aggressive. The plus side - they’re going for the most lucrative part of the market - the $10K+ part. The downside is that it’s a really crowded market already, and if they don’t succeed, they’re looking at $10M’s of wasted investment.

Licensing is what I think most of us see. It’s great because it’s high margin revenue - there’re very few costs associated with licensing, and your operating margin can be 70-90% if you do it right (as opposed to a decent physical retail margin of 15%). Sure, the absolute revenue is lower, but you’re getting a very high percentage of the profit generated with minimal risk. If you have a licensable brand, it’s an awesome place to be.

You also get to partner with an established company that knows what it’s doing and will guarantee reach.

On the downside, you’re not going to get the best quality product dollar-for-dollar. For example, if Fossil is paying, say, a 10% licensing fee to Michael Kors, and Fossil would otherwise charge $500 for a watch, they can’t just charge $550, they need to charge somewhere in the neighborhood of $575-600 to make it worth their while. Why go through the effort of licensing a brand if you’re going to just make the same amount of money? So now you’re comparing a $500 that costs $600 watch against a non-branded $600 watch ... and at those prices, $100 can make a big difference in perceived quality.

Also - once you sign with a partner, there’s only so much you can disapprove without getting to the point where you want to cancel the contract. But it’s very hard to say “I’m going to forgo the $X that this deal is going to give me.” And for a lot of these brands, their founders have long since sold and they’re owned by a licensing house like Authentic Brands, that doesn’t really care about quality,

Lastly, there’s the outsourcing route. You hire a white label company out of Switzerland, China, Japan, or elsewhere to make stuff for you. This route has more control than licensing, but it has the downside that you have to pay for and market everything (so lower margins), and you are subject to the limitations of what the ODM’s can do.

So why choose one over the other? The make-it -yourself route can be more lucrative, but the downside risk is huge. You’re investing a ton of money (not just in facilities and employees, but in marketing), betting a lot that you can truly compete in a market that isn’t really growing. Is that the best use of resources? Even so, does the rest of your product line and current customer base support the idea of charging $5K or $10K for a watch?

Outsourcing is a far lower risk ways of entering the market. Sure, you can’t charge as much and the margins are lower, but you’re not risking your business. But it does mean you’re not doing other things that could have higher returns. And the Apple Watch has decimated the lower end of the market.

So licensing it is! Let someone else bear all the risk (other than brand risk), harvest the sweet high margin revenue.

Normally I don't care for fashion house watches but I really love the Ralph Lauren Sporting Chronograph Guilloché - especially the smaller 39mm version. They've got a JLC movement and look good if a little pricey. Not sure what the second hand value is now.

Hot take but I’d propose that most of the fashion brands are doing exactly what some micro brands are doing.

I didn't read all the comments so there might be some same reasoning as me but here I go!

First, I don't mind Fashion brand watch. I know it sounds not very genuine but hear me out. My wife actually has a few fashion brand watches (even DW!) and I just treat them as same as my other watches; wipe after use, change strap when needed, etc. When price & design strikes me, I would totally buy one.

Still, I have one moan about fashion brand watches. One of my wife's watch needed some servicing last year so I contacted the company and asked them if they can handle it. It also needed a new strap which I prefered to have the original strap. Guess what, they stopped watch repair service and out-sourced their watch related after service = I couldn't get an original strap.

Point is, fashion watch brand might withdraw their watch business with less hesitation. Sadly, even though luxary watch market is still strong, general watch market is not great, so it might happen imo

The term Fashion Watch is quickly becoming as irrelevant as Cheap Chinese Watch. Granted there are still the crappy chrome plated tin department store watches with a name brand stamped on them. At the top of their respective ranges, they make some cool watches. The problem is that at the bottom, most of them just shovel out garbage. There in tainting the view of the wider public

Luxury(prefer this to the term fashion) brands overwhelmingly market and sell to woman. Total share of all watches sold is overwhelmingly to men. These luxury brands aren’t dumb…captive market to sell their clientele something else. As another post mentioned…luxury brand watch quality has vastly improved (eg Hermes) because they’ve see what that model has done for Cartier.

I’m not a big super fan of fashion watches but there’s always a few exceptions brands out there. And others just can’t bear the price they put on. They can look cool and there’s always one or two fashion watches that will grab your attention just got to have.

Something like a RL could be interesting, I suppose. But, as a Brand, they really need to focus / promote the watch guts. The 'build' of it and the mechanism. Not just their pretty ' branded' face.