PPB June 2016

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McCormick, central territory
account manager. “They love that
you don’t have to charge it and
that it automatically syncs with
the app, and it’s so easy to read.”
In addition to selling Misfit
trackers, Fossil plans to incorpo-
rate Misfit’s technology into its
other watch lines, with more
than 100 wearable products
debuting in 2016. For corporate
markets, this means more choices
for distributors to offer their
clients in the consumer loyalty,
incentive and recognition and
corporate gifting markets.
According to Durham, the
biggest challenge for Fossil is
training distributors to represent
the many Fossil brands.
“How do we take this whole
building and encapsulate it into a
two-minute spiel that the distrib-
utor can communicate to their
client? There’s so much going on
here. Several of our accounts are
extended to more than 20 of our
brands. It’s a challenge,” Durham
says. For promotional products,
Fossil narrows its offerings for
simplicity. For a recent Fortune
500 company health screening
initiative, for example, “we asked
questions, like demographics,
how many, what price point, etc.,
and then our artist put together
comps on three watch options
with their company logo, and the
distributor presented them,”
McCormick says.
The corporate markets team
is excited about the prospect of
enhancing its already popular
brands with the latest in con-
nected technology. “To have the
Michael Kors brand [watch] and
have the Intel Innovation® tech-
nology inside it that tracks your
steps and your sleep—there’s
nothing like that. And no one
can do [fashion-first technology]
better than us. It’s going to be
huge,” McCormick adds.
Julie Richie is associate editor
for PPB.
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“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 really hard to do.”