Here’s why Fossil helped make CES one of the best shows for smartwatches, and how it will be missed at CES 2024 should it not bring as many styles as before.
The annual CES show in Las Vegas is often filled with new wearables, but ever since I started to attend, one company, in particular, always delivered the goods: Fossil. There was a genuine passion for the product, the way Fossil leveraged the styles of its varied partner brands and a deep understanding of the watches that made it so valuable to CES and the world of Wear OS.
You’ll notice I’m talking in the past tense, and that’s because the brand has not been as prolific as it once was, which is a real shame. Here’s why it’s sorely missed — and why it’ll always be a CES highlight for me.Brand power
Fossil is likely best known for its own-branded “Gen” smartwatches, with CES 2023 being host to the Fossil Gen 6 Wellness Edition smartwatch. But these models were never the ones that got me most excited, nor the ones I looked forward to seeing the most. What you may not know is that Fossil has many varied brand partnerships where it designs and produces watches (smart and otherwise) for big names like Skagen, Diesel, Armani, Micheal Kors, and Kate Spade.
CES has often been the launchpad for its designer brand smartwatches, and they were always special. In 2018, Fossil debuted the Kate Spade Scallop smartwatch at CES, and I still recall the wonderful phrase used by Fossil’s chief marketing officer when I interviewed her at the time. She said tech brands’ usual approach to women’s products was to “shrink it and pink it,” but this was not Kate Spade’s or Fossil’s approach at all.
The result was a smartwatch that followed Kate Spade’s design aesthetic, including clever and fun animated watch faces, which it then continued on for the sequel too. Fossil also worked with Tory Burch in the same way.
