Sales for big watches seemed to be on the increase at one point for both fashion and luxury brands, however there has been a decline over recent years which raises the question, are oversized/large faced watches still popular?
In this article we are going to take a look at one or two brands and their analytics, we are hoping to gain a bit of an insight into the popularity of larger faced watches over the last few years especially ones that we sell.
We are going to take a look at a fashion brand first, Diesel is a very popular fashion brand known for its large watch faces and bold in your face designs. We took this brand on in 2011 and we saw a big trend in searches for this brand on Google Trends with an overall increase over the year, take a look for yourself we’ve put the graph below.
We saw a lot of interest in this brand from our own site analytics which I’ve print screened for you below, you can see the peak for the year was on the 5th December where we had 853 organic views in a day for “Diesel”.
Whilst there is always going a lot more traffic for any keyword around Christmas especially in the jewellery and watches market it still showed a good growth in its first year in our brand portfolio with a total amount of sales at 167.
2012 was even better for Diesel where we saw a big increase in sales on the year before especially those with case diameters of 40mm or more. When looking back at Google Trends we couldn’t see much in terms of search traffic volume except around Christmas as you will see from the graph below.
Whilst the trends didn’t look so good, our sales we’re definitely showing the opposite with a big increase throughout the year giving us a good upwards pointing graph which we we’re all extremely happy with.
The peak over the year was Sunday the 16th December 2012 with 1,027 page views which shows a 20% increase over the last 12 months. with impressive growth for Diesel it was looking good for the large faced watch market. Obviously we understand that not all brands will be the same as Diesel is a fashion brand with a affordable price point for most people however your company may have seen a varied results to ourselves. This would depend on search rankings for your company, brand awareness across social media marketing campaigns and any other tactics you have such as affiliate schemes etc.
We saw a total of 527 sales of Diesel watches this year in comparison to 167 which is a 15% increase on the previous year, again something we were very happy with.
2013 was another good year for large faced timepieces with a good trend jumping up and down throughout the year, it looks like it was maintaining well with a good spike increase at Christmas. Our site analytics were good too with a total of 82,859 page views which accounted for 1.79% of the total page views for our website for 2013.
2013 was a slightly different year as it saw a good peak that lasted until July however it then started to decline in the lead up until Christmas however the festive purchases came pouring in around November when we saw click through rates and conversions increase again.
It was all going rather well until the little hiccup in the Autumn / Winter of 2013 which of course raised a few questions here at First Class Watches secret underground base where we did have a few talks about the future of oversized watches and what we would need to do going forward to ensure we maintain the interest and sales of these watches.
2014 confirmed our worries with a decline in the interest on Google Trends only hitting peak interest between the Christmas rush and only from the 14-20th December.
Our sales also reflected this as in 2013 we only saw an overall sales of 477 timepieces which was a decline on the 527 of the previous year. Sadly it seemed that oversized watches were no longer receiving the interest that they once were. Whilst it is important to note that this is only the statistics for one watch brand we did take a look at other watch brands with large or oversized watch dials and saw a similar decline, some not as bad and some a little worse.
Whilst larger watches aren’t for everyone there are people that love them and look stylish wearing them. Personally I’m 5’10” and slim build so on my a large or oversized watch looks incredibly big and often extends over the sides of my arm. (as you can see in the video below of a Casio Rangeman with a case width of 57.7mm)
Mark who works in our office is a big lover of large faced watches and actually wears a Men’s Diesel Whiteout Oversized XXL Big Watch DZ1461 most days which has a case diameter of 57mm and it actually suites his wrist.
(Marks arm image here)
Some of our watch brands are moving towards larger faces such as Citizen, Seiko and Casio with big faced divers timepieces coming out in recent years which has boosted the traffic towards larger faces again but unfortunately not enough to keep the interest there.
Sports watches and exercise watches with multi-functionality such as Garmin and Suunto also have larger faces as well as thickness which is mostly down to the amount of space needed to have the features.
In conclusion I think that oversized watches can really make a bold statement when combined with a nice outfit, especially if it works with your build and body shape but be careful because it can also look a little ridiculous when its not best suited to you (I know I’d look silly, which is a shame). Our advice if you wanted to buy one would be to go to a store and try it on an definitely whatever you do ask for a second opinion if you need too.
We’re always happy to help style a watch to suite you either on the phone or in store so call us today on 01926 298 499 or alternatively send us an email to info@firstclasswatches.co.uk
