Get 'em collecting early

While at Baselworld 2012, I had an interesting idea. It wasn’t totally unique, and I certainly didn’t come up with it originally. I did however stumble upon a solution for a huge problem with the watch industry and a great way to solve it. Something that to my knowledge isn’t really being done with any seriousness today. It has to do with getting more people to wear and want watches, and how to approach a post need-based watch economy.
Parents also stopped wearing as many watches for many of the same reasons. Disposable income went more to gadgets and other emerging electronic items that seemed more important or relevant. With casual Friday turning into casual every day, even the status requirements of wearing a fine timepiece for business purposes started to erode – especially in America. Bill Clinton famously campaigned and served in office as the US President wearing a Timex Triathlon – in order to connect better with the common person. His choice of wearing the inexpensive plastic digital sports watch was especially ironic because Clinton himself is and was a major high-end watch collector. Even politics were marginalizing the perceived excess of traditional watches now seen as fodder for the wealthy, and akin to status symbols like clothing from Hermes, Gucci, and Dolce & Gabbana. It just started seeming less and less like something to buy for a kid.

For the rest http://www.ablogtoread.com/get-em-early-a-marketing-plan-for-raising-watch-lovers/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+feedburner%2FuqnO+%28aBlogtoRead.com%29&utm_content=Yahoo%21+Mail

For me at Christmas time last year my son asked for one of my watches. It made me happy that he asked but at the same time I couldn't see spending a lot on a watch for a seven year old. He likes the watches above but he wanted one like dads. So I looked and looked and came up witha Seiko 5 not my pic but the band was easy to trim down and make work for my son.

When I first read the subject line of your post, I thought, 'Kids have lots of choices; what's Ocean trying to say?" Then I read what you had to say and realized that far too many of those 'choices' would never inspire a kid to collect as an adult. Seriously, Dora the Explorer or a Hanna Montana watch for girls; or a G.I. Joe or a gen-u-wine Navy Seals watch for your little boy - will any of these more-than-likely-made-of-cheap-plastic watches capture the imagination like a real 'wheels and cogs' watch did for me all those years ago?

My first watch was a timex mechanical - AKA wind-up - kid's watch. It had a gen-u-wine grey leather strap and a simple white dial, with no-nonsense stainless steel arabic numerals at all hour positions. I got my first 'grown-up' watch when I graduated from high school; it was an Omega quartz three-hand-with-date window and, after [CLASSIFIED] years, I still wear it. It was this watch, more than any other, that planted the seed that eventually made me a collector four years ago.

Your son is a lucky young man; he's got a dad who has begun the process of 'WIS germination' by purchasing a 'real' watch for his boy. And a beautiful Seiko sport/diver watch can do far more than a G.I. Joe 'timepiece', even on Joe's best day. And Dora and Hanna? Fuggeddaboutit!

I gave my daughter a women's Timex Iron Man on her 9th birthday. It was just as much a gift as a test of her current level of responsibility. So far she is getting a C+.

mrneddles wrote:I gave my daughter a women's Timex Iron Man on her 9th birthday. It was just as much a gift as a test of her current level of responsibility. So far she is getting a C+.

Well, I guess if she is getting a C+ then the ironman was a good choice.

fatman wrote:

mrneddles wrote:I gave my daughter a women's Timex Iron Man on her 9th birthday. It was just as much a gift as a test of her current level of responsibility. So far she is getting a C+.

Well, I guess if she is getting a C+ then the ironman was a good choice.

+1...