Fossil Focuses on Digital Transformation Spending for Business Growth

Table of Contents

  • About Fossil
  • Fossils Digital transformation journey
  • Growth of their Ecommerce
  • Digital growth strategy
  • Fossil Performance
  • Benefits

About Fossil

Founded by Tom Kartsotis in 1984, Fossil Group is an American fashion designer and manufacturer headquartered in Richardson, Texas. The brands of Fossil include Fossil, Relic, Michele Watch, Skagen Denmark, Misfit, WSI and Zodiac Watches.

Fossil also produces authorized accessories for brands such as BMW, Puma, Emporio Armani, Michael Kors, DKNY, Diesel, Kate Spade New York, Tory Burch, Chaps and Armani Exchange.

Fossil Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Greg McKelvey said: “An important difference in our specific business model is the profitability of our e-commerce channels, which can increase profits”.

  • In 2019, Fossil Group’s net sales were approximately US$2.22 billion
  • According to data from EMarketer, US e-commerce sales will reach 794.5 billion US dollars this year, an increase of more than 30%
  • In 2019, 37% of Fossil Group’s overall net sales came from the United States

Fossil Digital Transformation Journey

The Fossil group’s watch and accessories business is changing, and consumer shopping patterns are also changing. Product innovation of watches has expanded the overall category, but has led to a shift from traditional watches to connected products.

  • Fossil has accelerated its investment in digital capabilities as part of its second strategic focus
  • Fossil has established a strong ecommerce platform and strong fulfillment capabilities, including Buy-Online-pickup-in-store(BOPIS) and store delivery, and has provided good services during this period of increased online consumer demand
  • Fossil will invest in digital capabilities and marketing to get closer to consumers and respond more quickly to changing consumer shopping patterns in accordance with the New World Fossil 2.0 strategy.

Fossil is executing sophisticated digital marketing capabilities to improve the efficiency of digital marketing plans and generate a strong return on investment. Fossil Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Greg McKelvey said: “An important difference in our specific business model is the profitability of our e-commerce channels, which can increase profits.

Growth of Ecommerce

More and more customers are starting to shop on their smartphones and computers, and this situation will not change. With COVID-19, this transition has become clearer for the company, which launched a key e-commerce platform in February.

McKelvey stated that the company hopes to obtain approximately 50% of its sales from digital channels in the next few years. This will be higher than the approximately 28% in the third quarter.

At the same time, Fossil is pushing digital marketing improvements and other improvements, even if it finds more traction in Asia.

  • During the pandemic, It hasn’t been easy for fossils. Sales fell, about 20% in the third quarter, and more than tripled in the second quarter
  • Global indirect sales channel revenue fell by 19%, mainly due to the shrinkage of the wholesale sector, partially offset by the 44% increase in third-party e-commerce channels.

Digital Growth Strategy

Fossil has formulated the three pillars of its digital growth strategy. The first is the almost complete migration of e-commerce to global cloud-based platforms.

  • Fossil has achieved improvements in efficiency and customer experience. Fossil’s conversion rate has increased by 60% over the previous year, and the average order value has also increased significantly.

Fossil has cooperated with major third-party ecommerce markets such as Amazon, Tmall, JD.com, Zalando, Myntra and Flipkart.

The third pillar of Fossil’s digital strategy is to become a leader in its category, by applying advanced digital marketing and analysis capabilities to create strategies and tactics with high return on investment, thereby generating online sales, and then actively increasing marketing investment every day.

Fossil aims to emphasize the acquisition of customer data and continue to improve customer life cycle value.

Fossil Performance

Due to the online growth of their own and third-party ecommerce sites, mainland China accounted for more than 40% of sales in Asia, an increase of 55%.

Its performance in China was offset by COVID-related impacts in South Korea and India. Globally, store traffic and conversion trends are very similar to those in the previous quarter, with a decrease of about 54% in traffic and an increase in conversion rate of about 16%.

Benefits

By turning the omnichannel vision into reality, Fossil can delight customers by fostering a variety of high-quality shopping experiences that foster long-term loyalty.

Thanks to integrated inventory management and order fulfillment methods, Fossil is developing new skills throughout the business.

Fossil can now flexibly expand its order processing capabilities up and down to achieve industry-leading fulfillment capabilities cost-effectively and efficiently.

Scroll to Top