TREND FORMULATION

“Every year, what we see at the Salon International De La Haute Horlogerie (SIHH) in January is often an indicator of the trends that unfold in Basel, when the doors to Baselworld open in March. The products unveiled at the world’s largest watch and jewellery show establish the official trends of the year. And what we see at Baselworld is largely what is seen in watch stores and catalogues worldwide during the rest of the year.”

- Ethos Watch Boutique.

In fashion, trends are not forecasted. They are created.

In the watch space, you hear a lot about fashion and the big trends that are headed the industry’s way. Companies subscribe to several trend forecasting services like WGSN, Trendhunter, etc. They also turn to Landor and Euromonitor for consumer and market insights. While these methods may be fine to do design for the watch space in a conventional sense, the subject gets a lot muddier if you had to speak of designing something that would work in India. A second challenge comes from being a mass brand. A Forbes interview with Enrico Margariteli, formerly the head of design at USbased Fossil watches, explores what it means to design watches for a mass company. While luxury companies work to establish their iconic model and then derive variations from it, mass companies often have a tough time because every three months their products are put under the microscope by millions of consumers that decide whether to buy or not.

Several years ago, Design researchers at Titan studied what women wore on their wrists, and were able to make a strong case for wristwatches that would blend effortlessly into the wrist real estate space within the constraints of Indian clothing. This was the birth of Titan Raga. Today, despite trends that shape the look and feel of products, Raga still bends to it’s own will. We will discuss this more in successive chapters.

Figure 47. ABlogtoWatch 2017 Big Bang Magic Gold Figure 48. MB&F 2014 HM6 Space Pirate