Watch Tracking Technology

Unlike other valuable items such as automobiles or even art, timepieces have a terrible record of being tracked from owner to owner. This, for the most part, is because people are failing to report on how watches change hands from owner to owner, and also because technology is not being employed as a means to simplify and facilitate this process.

Attempts have been made over the last few years to make it easier to track watches. Brands even encourage people to “register” their watch, even though they typically fail in offering anything of value in exchange for consumers to be on their mailing lists. I believe that the luxury watch industry is ripe for being introduced with technology installed into watches that helps them be tracked from owner to owner, and location to location. Such technology might also benefit from being able to locally record digital information inside of the watch itself.

Tracking technology might even have the most value before a watch ever reaches the consumer. Being able to track the movement of watches could help prevent gray market and trans-shipping activity, theft and fraud, as well as enforce timepiece authenticity. On the consumer end, tracking technology offers benefits when buying a watch new or in a pre-owned environment. This latter element is very important as luxury watches typically have a life well beyond merely the first owner. New watch buyers can use tracking technology to feel reassured they are buying an authentic product, as well as that their transaction is legitimate.

Tracking technology should be used to record times when a watch has been serviced, as well as where it was serviced and by whom. Watches with more complete records also gain a sense of provenance. Owners should be able to record special information in the watch such as documentation about buying it, letters to themselves or family about the purchase and why it occurred, or other records that will help them keep their watch collection more organized.

Such records further become part of the value of a pre-owned watch for subsequent owners. New buyers want to know the history and chain of ownership of a watch, just like an heir receiving a watch from a relative will likely want to know as much as possible about what might be a family treasure. Thus, I believe there is very large potential for the development and implementation of modern forms of tracking technology (which currently exist) as used in ownership and sales of luxury timepieces.

Boutique Advertising & Marketing Creation Services

As the watch industry increasingly embraces its old enemy – the internet – for marketing and advertising purposes, as well as sales and distribution, it must apply considerable resources to making the best use of internet advertising and marketing. For the most part, at this time the watch industry lacks appreciable levels of skills and talent necessary to produce marketing and advertising materials the quality of which would allow them to be successful in a digital environment. Even though watch brands are focusing a lot of their attention online when it comes to marketing and other communication needs, those brands don’t necessarily have the human resource competencies to do a good job.

Adding to the problem is that non-digital watch brand marketing efforts are typically not of particularly good quality when it comes to messaging performance value. Watch brands – mostly located in rural or slower-paced parts of Europe – will continue to be at a disadvantage when it comes to hiring the talent necessary to produce high-quality and effective advertising and messaging materials. In fact, I don’t think there is anything wrong with that as my expectation of watch brands is that they focus on making good watches – and not much else.

Therefore, watch brands currently do not have the internal competencies to produce high quality advertising and marketing materials, so they need to rely on the help of a cottage industry especially designed to produce effective, high-quality advertising and marketing campaigns, materials, visual, media, etc. for watch brands. Such a cottage industry of specialist advertising and marketing creative agencies for watch brands doesn’t exist. There are probably a few small ones who do limited projects here and there, but for the most part the current bar for watch brand advertising is set very low.

The watch industry, like other luxury industries, is entirely marketing-driven. The biggest, most successful brands such as Rolex, Omega, and TAG Heuer are also the brands which spend the most money on advertising. If you accept the notion that watch brands require adequate marketing to thrive, then you must accept the notion that they need to put resources and effort into producing relevant, high-quality marketing. As watch brands are unlikely to satisfy this need internally, there is currently a large unspoken need for such services. In addition to such agencies needing to open and prove their value, at the same time, watch brands needs to accept that they should not be in control of their advertising personalities, and entrust this responsibility to someone else.

Smart Fashion Watches

The era of the “dumb,” or “not smart” fashion watch is coming to an end as the era of the smart fashion watch is in the process of advancing. What is a smart fashion watch? Well, a fashion watch alone is a timepiece designed to emulate other high-end styles and simply to be a good looking, yet non-serious timepiece for mass consumption. Fashion watches rely on there being a strong high-end watch culture to feed from, and offer products at prices that non-luxury buyers can afford.

Groups like Fossil and Movado created the fashion watch industry by producing relatively inexpensive quartz watches with mass market distribution channels. Often times fashion watches are produced as part of a licensing agreement with a popular clothing or lifestyle brand. Fashion watches are successful because of their relatively affordable price and fashionable relevance. Today however, traditional fashion watches are increasingly losing relevance as more and more consumers are buying smartwatches. Thus, a solid answer to this is to create smart fashion watches.