Half of US Consumers ‘Not Interested’ in Smartwatches, Movado President Says
Though Movado Group is “well positioned to capture share” in smartwatches, company research shows about half of U.S. consumers “are not interested in smartwatches,” President Ricardo Quintero said on a Thursday earnings call. “We remain balanced in our approach to…
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this segment of the category,” he said. “We believe in the continued long-term opportunities in the non-connected watch category, driven by brand, image design and innovation.” Movado thinks “obviously that wearables and connected watches will have a place in the watch business,” said CEO Efraim Grinberg in Q&A. “But it really helps to build a new category” in smartwatches while bringing “new consumers into the arena who weren’t wearing” traditional watches, he said. “So we actually believe that millennials will go down both paths.” For example, he sees millennials buying “simple fashion watches, and that’s where we’re going with things like our ultra slim collections,” he said. “But they’ll also buy connected watches and we’ll have those offerings as well.” Movado’s research shows that top capability of smartwatches is “time-telling,” he said. It’s “gratifying to know” that consumers are using smartwatches to tell time, in addition to the “notifications and health functions” that are important to people, he said. The industry is “very early in the rollout” of smartwatches, he said. “The technology will continue to improve” in battery life and "the things that watches can do for you,” he said. “What people seem to forget is that when we all started with cellphones, they were about the size of a brick and weighed a pound or two and then progressively got smaller and better and higher quality and better design. So all of that will begin to happen in this category as well.”