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Until recently, Fossil was the
company distributors chose for
popular designer watches, purses
and jewelry, not necessarily wear-
able technology.
That changed in November
2015 when Fossil acquired inno-
vative fitness and sleep tracker
company Misfit and dove head-
first into wearable technology.
With Misfit, “we have a signifi-
cant opportunity to add technol-
ogy and connectivity across our
platform of watches and acces-
sories,” says Kosta Kartsotis,
CEO of Fossil Group. “With the
acquisition of Misfit, Fossil
Group will be uniquely posi-
tioned to lead the convergence of
style and technology and to
become the fashion gateway to
the high-growth wearable tech-
nology and connected device
markets.”
The Bureau of Labor statis-
tics reports that Millennials will
make up 46 percent of the work-
force by 2020 and 75 percent by
2025, and Fossil is hoping to
capitalize on Millennials’ prefer-
ence for connectivity as well as
great design in all aspects of
their lives. Industry research
shows that the wearable technol-
ogy market will experience
explosive growth in the next few
years, climbing from a $14 bil-
lion industry in 2015 to a $45
billion industry by 2019. Fossil
believes the wrist will be a gate-
way to this connected lifestyle.
“It won’t be long before every
watch we distribute out of our
warehouse will have some sort of
connectivity capability. We hope
to do $1 billion in wearable tech-
nology by 2020,” says Jenny
Durham, premium account man-
ager for corporate markets.
Fashion-First Focus
Fossil executives believe the
company is uniquely positioned
to approach wearable technology
from a design standpoint. “We’ve
got the fashion aspect covered
and we're bringing in technology.
Everyone else has a technology
watch that they are trying to
make fashionable, and that’s real-
ly hard to do. We’re taking these
great-selling Fossil watches and
adding in a hidden component,
so it still looks like your favorite
watch,” Durham says.
“Now that we’ve got Misfit,
we own a world-class software
and hardware engineering team,
allowing us to insert all of these
amazing capabilities inside of our
existing line of watches.
Not to mention change
it up every six weeks—
because technology is
always changing.”
Durham points to
the Misfit tracker she’s
wearing, a rose gold cir-
cular face with dots
around the outside of it
that light up for differ-
ent reasons, such as
tracking steps, when
she taps it. It’s a seam-
less, intuitive interface
that can also track sleep
and swimming laps. It
subtly vibrates to tell
you to move more.
Plus, it’s a watch. Dots
light up for the hour and minute
hands. “The best part is that you
don’t have to charge it. Instead,
there’s a six-month battery.
Misfit emails you when your bat-
tery needs replacing and they
send you a free battery that you
pop in,” says Durham.
In contrast to a lot of fitness
trackers on the market that have
complicated digital interfaces,
beep a lot and need to be
charged and connected to a com-
puter in order to sync, Misfit’s
products are cool, calming and
unobtrusive—they look like an
interesting piece of jewelry rather
than a fitness device.
Connecting To
Corporate Wellness
With companies increasing
their investments in corporate
wellness, merchandise incentives
for participants are often part of
the deal. Fossil expects Misfit
products to be popular in these
types of wellness programs. “I’m
pushing Misfit with a lot of my
corporate accounts,” says Shauna
JUNE 2016 •
PPB
• 13
FOSSIL
Products in the
Fossil Q Wearables Collection.
“It won’t be long
before every
watch we distrib-
ute out of our
warehouse will
have some sort of
connectivity capa-
bility. We hope to
do $1 billion in
wearable technol-
ogy by 2020.”