WHERE ARE WATCHES GOING?
When you’re associated with a wristwatch company in any way, you tend to get asked about what you think about smartwatches - are they going to wipe out normal watches the way scifi movies show aliens wiping out less advanced races? That tends to be the general assumption. Without making a case for why the simple wristwatch will survive, it was necessary to end this chapter on a note that gave readers a macro view of the watch design landscape so that they may be better equipped to make their own projections about the future of this sector. This will be explained from a Titan point of view. There are three major forces that disrupt the business of a watch company like Titan from a competitive standpoint. The first is the availability of other time telling devices. If we look at what the world was like 30 years ago, then we’d find that there weren’t too many objects that told time. Thus the wristwatch became an object of great value because in this sense, it had a ‘monopoly of time’. To be able to tell time is an essential. The other features like telling the date,etc were less so. For the longest time you had chronographs and all kinds of other watches that offered more features, however, they weren’t popular among the masses and thus did
not pose a threat to the classic ‘only time’ telling watch. Thus it must be noted that more features doesn’t necessarily mean better functionality. The biggest threat posed to the wristwatch in modern times is the general availability of time - the fact that our other gadgets tell time is the biggest reason why people do not wear watches. Second, is the perceived face value of watches made by fashion companies. Watch companies like Titan spend a lot of money in developing greater manufacturing techniques to deliver a better quality of product. This can be through the movement used to power the watch or the materials and manufacturing methods used to craft it. However in modern times, where watches are often looked at as objects of fashion(rather than functionality), watches from fashion companies seem to offer more aspirational value to users. Watches made by these companies are often made using substandard movements and low quality materials, They may not hold up over the course of time but they look great in the stores and that is enough to get them a significant number of consumers. The third factor is that tech companies have started making watches as well. While this may seem like the biggest threat, it is no bigger than
the other two. The apple watch may have outsold the entire swiss watch industry in the first quarter of this year but no other smart watch company is doing nearly as well (apple has a cult following in any case, it’s not just about the product). For smartwatches to bring in users in a big way, they need to be able to offer more value than just being another phone on the wrist. Like with the chronograph example, more features don’t necessarily mean better functionality Thus, if the argument for smartwatches is based on functionality, it will need to offer wrist-based solutions that truly make life better. The battery problems also needs to be resolved and that will take some time (just like with phones). There is another factor that could stir up trouble for companies like Titan - Kickstarter watch brands. As of now there is no kickstarter brand that poses a direct threat to Titan, however, it is the idea that is important. By selling directly to the consumer, kickstarter brands are able to offer great value to the end consumer. While there is no way of guaranteeing how the watch sector will change, one can be sure that as of today it might be too early to start writing an obituary for the humble time-telling wristwatch.
Graduation Project | Titan Vision Next: Explorations in Recrafting the Watch Proposition | 67
