Is the clock really ticking on wristwatches? Some reports show sales dropping in recent years, especially among teenagers and young adults who are content to get the time from cell phones. But industry observers say cell phones are hardly killing the business.
Instead, watchmakers are evolving to meet the challenge, and they also cite the appeal of expensive timepieces as status symbols -- and not just as timekeepers -- as driving sales. Fossil, for one, has embraced cell phone technology, incorporating elements of it into the wristwatch. Last fall, the company released its Caller ID watch.
The time piece, which retails at $250, links to a Sony Ericsson phone through Bluetooth wireless technology. The phones allow users not only to check out who's calling them with a flick of the wrist, but to silence the phone's ring by pressing a watch button -- all without having to dig into their pocket, purse or briefcase first. ''From our standpoint, wristwatches were an opportunity to tie a person closer to their phone, to simplify how they interact and engage with that device,'' said Bill Geiser, vice president of watch Technology for Fossil, Inc.
''There's tremendous synergy between watches and phones, and this is just the first manifestation of that synergy.'' The Caller ID watch is an example of the ways watches have naturally evolved with technology, said Joe Thompson, editor-in-chief of WatchTime, a bimonthly magazine written primarily for watch enthusiasts and collectors. ''The watch product today has become a wrist instrument,'' he said.
Watches now can monitor your heart rate, trace the distance of a run or measure the altitude of a mountain during a hike, he pointed out. The line of ''wristop computers'' from Finnish watchmaker Suunto, for example, include high-tech features for divers, skiers, hikers and other sports enthusiasts. The watches can analyze a golfer's swing and keep score during a game, and allow someone trying to lose weight to plug in personal data for zone fitness training.
''Watches have long had other functions than time telling, so this is not some last ditch effort by watch manufacturers to save a dying product,'' said Thompson, who has been following the industry for three decades. The presence of his and as handful of other special-interest magazines devoted to watches illustrates a healthy interest in the product, he said. He said several media reports have been touting a recent survey by the product research firm Packaged Facts, which reported that U.
S. watch sales slipped nearly 5 percent between 2001 and 2005 to $7.6 billion.
Thompson questioned the figures the survey reported, saying the watch industry is notorious for keeping poor data, mainly because most of the watch companies are privately owned. Plus, the market is extremely varied. ''You can buy one for six bucks; you can buy one for 600,000 bucks.
So you've got an enormous market and it is segmented. And I can tell you that the market over $5,000 is booming, absolutely booming.'' Rachel Branch, North American public relations director for TAG Heuer, couldn't agree more.
She said the company saw U.S. sales increase 36 percent last year over 2005, when it doubled sales from the previous year.
''Nobody buys a TAG Heuer just to tell time,'' she said. ''It's an accessory, it's a reflection of your personal style, your status.'' The growth in luxury watches has been fueled in part by interest in the mechanical watch, whose death had been predicted in the late 1970s when electronic watches came on the market.
Today, mechanical watches represent two-thirds of the value of total Swiss watch exports, Thompson said. Most of these pieces are at least $1,000. Thompson did give credence to one report suggesting that fewer teens are wearing watches, probably because they can get the time from their cell phone.
He attributed that to a lack of income. When faced with a choice between a lower-end watch or a cell phone -- or an iPod or a laptop -- most youth would go for the electronic device. ''My suspicion is that the 17-year-olds who aren't wearing watches today, check them out at 27, and then at 37,'' he said.
''Not only will they be wearing a watch, they will have five or six of them.'' ___ Eun Kyung Kim is a freelancer based in the Washington, D.C.
area.
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