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| Fossil with a future |
   
Posted Date: 24/10/2011
By Robert Stockdill
Fashion accessories brand Fossil describes its customers as “young, urban, intelligent” and aged between 25 and 45.
They’re people who like fashion, are educated, enjoy shopping, nature and their community. They live in urban areas and interact with neighbours and friends.
Fossil is banking on that demographic to underpin a doubling of its global store network by 2013.
Wolfgang Thoeren, VP retail for Europe, told participants of the Westfield World Retail Study Tour in London earlier this year that despite a relatively low current store count of 360, monobranded Fossil stores all over the world are making the brand more well known in its US home.
Australia and Asia are playing a big part in that brand awareness, with the company actively beefing up its store network in both continents. By the end of 2013, Fossil hopes to have 700 company owned stores trading worldwide - that means opening more than two a week for the next 24 months.
Despite its broad name awareness Fossil was only founded back in 1984 and listed nine years later. Originally a wholesaler - 80 per cent of its sales are wholesale even today - its focus has in the last five years switched to retailing on an international scale, when it opened its first store outside the US, in Europe.
Largely through its wholesale business, Fossil already has a presence in 100 countries.
Its challenge, says Thoeren, is to grow the retail business without cannabilising sales in its wholesale arm.
So far the strategy is working, with worldwide sales growing 30 per cent last year. Based on current performance, Fossil expects to hit US$3 billion in annual sales by the end of 2012. No mean feat, given it took 20 years to reach $1 billion and another six before it hit $2 billion last year.
While many women know the Fossil brand for its leather handbags and accessories, watches comprise the lion’s share of the business - equivalent to 45 per cent of total sales. Leather makes up 33 per cent and jewellery 17 per cent, with sunglasses, shoes and other goods the final five per cent.
By region, Asia, of which Australia is a part, accounts for just 17 per cent of sales, behind the US (44 per cent) and Europe (37 per cent).
“We have a very high brand awareness,” says Thoeren. “We want to create that all over the world.”
* This feature originally appeared in Inside Retail Magazine in June. To read features in the magazine when it's hot off the press, visit RetailBooks.com.au
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