Fossil Banks On Wearables To Reset The Sales Clock

There is a time for everything under the sun – a time to be born and a time to die. According to Wareable, the Fossil watch company is hoping it doesn’t fall on the latter side of that proverbial balance sheet after seeing a 13 percent decrease in global sales last quarter, or a loss of $88.6 million. The Q2 report sent share prices crashing by 25 percent in a single day.

The company’s wearable division, which encompasses both pure smartwatches and hybrid analog watches, underperformed, but Fossil Group is still putting its money on its techy timepieces to pull it out of this dive, according to CEO Kosta Kartsotis and CFO Dennis Secor.

“Wearables have the ability to help mitigate the ongoing softness in the traditional watch category and ultimately, we believe, turn current headwinds into tailwinds,” Kartsotis said. “We remain confident that technology in wrist wear is increasingly important for many consumers and the catalyst for stabilizing and growing our watch business overtime.”

Fossil touts its Q smartwatches as “connected accessories that are smart and look smart, too.” Indeed, with the classic vintage design of the bodies and straps, it would be easy to mistake these for, simply, a stylish luxury watch. The company endeavored to blend fashion, tech and culture’s obsession with fitness into a single snazzy product.

It looks nice, but apparently few are buying, even though there are already more than 95 incarnations of Fossil smartwatches on the market, with another 300 products to go live across 2017. These include new versions of the Fossil Q watches, as well as wearables under the Michael Kors and Armani brands.

“This next generation of wearables has increased functionality, slimmer cases, brighter screens, more brands and more robust software,” Kartsotis said. “We continue to believe we are in the best position to take advantage of the convergence of fashion and technology given our capabilities and portfolio of brands.”