Swarovski’s UK managing director says that its 2015 watch collection is hitting all the right notes with retailers and press.
The current range sells at similar prices to rampaging Michael Kors watches, and is being heavily promoted alongside Swarovski jewellery in its current Miranda Kerr advertising.
But the product’s design and quality are the key to raising Swarovski’s stock in the watch world where it has previously struggled to gain traction.
"The difference with this collection is that now we’ve got it right. The feedback we’ve had, everybody’s telling us ‘yes, that’s your place in the market.’ So that’s really given us confidence," Hayley Quinn, Swarovski’s UK managing director tells WatchPro in an exclusive interview.
Today’s collection was created following an extensive study on where the watches would fit in the market, and what Swarovski could bring to add value.
“Before creating the collection, we asked ‘how do we differentiate ourselves in the market?’" she says.
Quinn admits that previous attempts to crack the watch market hadn’t hit the mark because watches always played second fiddle to jewellery. "Watches weren’t a priority for us before. We wanted to get our toe in the water because selling watches is different to selling jewellery," she recalls.
2015 will be different, she predicts. "For us, for the brand as a whole, we got really positive feedback at Basel, certainly from a UK perspective. The feedback we got from the press and from partners, both new and prospective, is that we absolutely nailed it. Really commercial, really on trend; the right mix of products."
