Movado Group – A Younger Consumer with Appetite for
Luxury – 19 April 2021
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Specialist:
Title:
Moderator: Nyree Hinton (NH), Third Bridge Sector Analyst
Jon Step (JS)
Former EVP & President, Licensed Brands at Movado Group Inc
Agenda:
1. Foot traffic volatility, spend across luxury, sport and casual watches
2. Wholesale vs digital channel dynamics
3. Innovation opportunities across new consumer preferences
4. M&A prospects
5. Profitability outlook
Contents
Q: Could you give an overview of the luxury and casual watches industry? How have the key drivers evolved
3
over the last five years? Who are the market’s top competitors?
Q: Could you outline 2-3 pre-coronavirus trends and how they have changed since the pandemic, including
3
Apple’s entry into the watch industry?
Q: Could you give an overview of Movado’s core business lines? How has the company enhanced its product
4
offerings?
Q: How has coronavirus impacted Movado’s business? What coronavirus-related challenges has it
4
experienced?
Q: Are any of Movado’s categories more resilient to consumer discretionary spending shifts?
5
Q: You mentioned Movado leveraging international markets in categories when a particular area has a
problem. What are the differences between ex-US consumers and markets vs US consumers and markets? Do
5
they like different types of watches?
Q: How would Movado test consumer appetite for different brands or watches in markets where the company
5
is not yet as popular as it is in the US?
Q: How would you assess Movado’s performance in the new environment geared towards e-commerce? You
said that the company prepared well, but was there anything unexpected in the transition to more online-
centric shopping such as supply chain issues or marketing? Were there any unexpected challenges that it
6
wasn’t well-prepared for from its years of digitisation?
Q: Buying a watch online is a lot different from going inside a Movado store. How does that play into the
company going fully or mostly digital? Are there concerns around consumers not being able to visit stores and
6
receiving one-on-one attention from an associate?
Q: Can you compare price points across online and in-store channels? Is there more promotional activity in
7
online vs in-store?
Q: Could you elaborate on how retailers such as Macy’s have managed their inventories throughout pandemic-
7
related uncertainty?
Q: How much does Movado depend on large retail chains to sell its products?
8
Q: You referenced marketplace diversification, which started before coronavirus and has been the downfall of
many retail department stores and malls. How has that affected Movado? Does the company simply have to
reallocate inventory to other channels, as you suggested? Do you think the downfall of retail-facing department
8
stores will have a material impact?
Q: How might Movado’s international strategy be affected by a shift to less wholesale exposure? You
mentioned that it’s easier to expand in licenced brands vs Movado. Could you elaborate on the dynamics
around Movado wanting to be more direct to the consumer? How does that play into its international exposure?
8
Q: Could you give an overview of the dynamics for Movado’s licenced branded businesses in the US vs ex-US?
9
Q: What criteria does Movado use to determine which brands to licence or add to its portfolio?
10
Q: What do consumers want in a brand? How do you think this changes across watch categories? What does
10
Movado believe the consumer wants?
Q: How would you describe Movado’s competitive landscape? What advantages does the company have over
large-scale traditional brands? How does it maintain those advantages when licencing brands that it also
10
competes against?
Q: Could you elaborate on the explosive growth of smartwatches from large companies such as Apple? How
11
has it taken market share and what has Movado done to keep up in these unique categories?
Q: What is your outlook for Movado’s appetite to acquire more brands? Which category seems like an
11
attractive area to expand into?
Movado Group – A Younger Consumer with Appetite for
Luxury
Transcription begins at 00:00:01 of the recorded material
NH: Welcome to Third Bridge Forum’s Interview Movado Group – A Younger Consumer with Appetite for
Luxury. I am Nyree Hinton and I will be facilitating today’s Interview with Mr Jon Step, former EVP and
President of Licensed Brands at Movado Group Inc.
Jon, before we get started with today’s Interview, please state I agree or I disagree to the following statement:
You understand the definition of material non-public information and agree not to disclose any such
information, or any other information which is confidential, during this Interview.
JS: I do.
NH: Thank you, Jon. Could you start with an introduction to your background?
JS: I spent 35 years in the consumer goods industry. Started out my career at Elizabeth Arden managing
different aspects in the cosmetics industry. I then moved to Movado Group. I spent 24 years at Movado Group,
primarily in that time, developing and growing the licensed brand division of the company, and at the end of
my time at MGI, I had responsibility for overview and management of the MVMT watch business.
[00:01:34]
Q: Could you give an overview of the luxury and casual watches industry? How have the key drivers evolved
over the last five years? Who are the market’s top competitors?
JS: There are a number of different categories within the watch business, and I’ll try to speak to a number of
them, but overall, the watch category, and this is pre-COVID, was actually pretty healthy. On the luxury end,
several of the biggest companies continued to grow quite successfully. Certainly the brands like Rolex and
Patek Philippe have had continued great success, but they are certainly the pinnacle of that category. The mid-
tier where, especially in North America, Movado is the biggest business, the mid-tier was a bit more
challenged as people went high and low, but Movado did a very strong job of maintaining their market share,
even while the category was showing a little bit of decline, and again, that was on a pre-COVID situation. The
fashion category was actually suffering probably the most and within that, the licensed brand area of several
companies, especially of Fossil Group, had been hurt quite significantly. The Movado Group portfolio of
fashion brands continued to grow and continued to take market share in that more difficult time. The category
that grew the fastest was the tech business, and so you had brands like Apple that entered the category and
took a significant share of the overall watch business. Apple is now reportedly the largest watch company in
the world. You had other tech companies like Samsung and Fitbit that also did a significant business in the
watch category and took the place of some of the fashion brands that lost both revenue and market share.
[00:04:12]
Q: Could you outline 2-3 pre-coronavirus trends and how they have changed since the pandemic, including
Apple’s entry into the watch industry?
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JS: That’s certainly the piece that has had the biggest impact, is the whole smartwatch element of the
business, and the smartwatch business is both the pure-player tech brands, but there are also a number of
fashion brands or mid-tier brands that have gotten into that tech business and for some brands, it’s become
significant as a percentage of their business. Two other things that you see happening that significantly change
the business. One is Amazon obviously continues to grow and become a much more important player in the
space, and that means two things. It’s an opening for less-known brands to have a place to retail. Big barriers
to entry if you want to get into department store watch departments or independent jeweller watch
departments. Much easier to get on Amazon and start to build a business, so that was something that you saw
happening and certainly has happened even faster post-COVID. As well as just buying online, a number of
retailers had 20%, 30%, 40% of their watch business being done online, so that’s a very different dynamic than
the dynamic of people going to more traditional channels, department stores, chain jewellers and independent
jewellers. I think those are probably the biggest macrotrends in the business. There are always some fashion
trends, whether it be colour or materials, but I think those other ones are the macrotrends that you saw going
on in the industry.
[00:06:40]
Q: Could you give an overview of Movado’s core business lines? How has the company enhanced its product
offerings?
JS: Movado is a pretty nimble company. They definitely have given the breadth of their portfolio, the number
of brands they have, the different approaches, they’re good at identifying opportunities, and going and taking
advantage of that, and that has allowed them to continue to grow share in a significant way. The fact that they
continue to add new licences, the fact that they continue within the Movado brand to be dynamic in terms of
adding new lines to the collection, being sensitive to price points, they added a smartwatch, which was a nice
component to the Movado brand collection, they’ve done a really nice job of maintaining share, growing share,
building their international business. Just a number of elements of how they’ve approached the market and
approached their own brands and businesses has allowed them to be quite successful in the category.
[00:08:28]
Q: How has coronavirus impacted Movado’s business? What coronavirus-related challenges has it
experienced?
JS: For sure, their biggest challenge is Movado has always historically been primarily a wholesaler. if you look
at their business, they have very large wholesale businesses globally, and globally is a really important part of
the Movado business because especially the licensed brand portfolio was very successful, Europe, South
America, a growing business in Asia, developing businesses in China. The first thing that COVID did was close
a lot of stores, so just that losing a number of wholesale accounts and the ability of consumers to go into those
accounts was certainly the biggest challenge. They overcame that in a number of different ways and it’s
interesting. Everyone’s been talking about digitising your business, embracing the online business, and
Movado was quite ahead of the game in terms of that and really, five years ago, started really focusing the
company on direct-to-consumer, buying brands like MVMT, buying brands like Olivia Burton and building the
e-commerce team internally. They brought in a very successful digital leader and had started the digital
transformation of the company in a very serious way well before COVID, so in a sense, the opportunity was,
drive more business through their own channels, specifically Movado.com, MVMT.com, so they were quite
prepared for this shift. Also have good businesses with the marketplaces around the world, whether an
Amazon or the big companies in India and China that participate in the large platforms, so they were well-
prepared in that respect and were able to overcome a lot of the challenges associated with the wholesale
business being primarily shut down with brick-and-mortar stores being closed during COVID.
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[00:11:22]
Q: Are any of Movado’s categories more resilient to consumer discretionary spending shifts?
JS: Movado is primarily a watch company. As I mentioned, there are a number of different categories that
Movado has. There’s also a jewellery business. It’s not a big business, but it is growing and it is developing, and
that jewellery business exists both within Movado brand where they sell jewellery on a Movado.com site, and a
number of the licensed brands also include, the contracts include jewellery, so jewellery is a nice add-on
category. There’s great adjacency. You can merchandise the product together. The consumer doesn’t have any
issue thinking of a watch brand in the jewellery category, and that’s been a bit of a growth opportunity. Again,
great adjacency to watches, but also, having the breadth of brands and those brands having different platforms
on a global basis also allows Movado Group to take advantage of one region vs another, and take advantage of
certain brands and certain regions, and that’s been a very important part of the portfolio aspect of Movado and
helps them. When there’s a problem in a particular area, they can focus on another area because they have this
very broad portfolio of brands, so not a lot of categories. Jewellery tends to be a little less expensive than
watches, so that does give you an opportunity where if people have a little less discretionary spending money,
they’re okay. On the other hand, as the stimulus comes about, Movado is well-positioned to take advantage of
the stimulus money. There are certainly times when you could see that stimulus cheques hit people’s pockets
and you could see some nice jumps in businesses based on improved discretionary income, and I think
Movado will be well-positioned as the economy rebounds and stores start to open because they’re in such a
good financial position.
[00:13:58]
Q: You mentioned Movado leveraging international markets in categories when a particular area has a
problem. What are the differences between ex-US consumers and markets vs US consumers and markets? Do
they like different types of watches?
JS: I don’t know that in relation to the Movado brand, but in terms of the licensed brand portfolio, the biggest
differences that you would see, in less-developed countries, you have less ability to sell the high end of the
range and you might see differences in size. For example, the UK market tends to sell smaller watches than the
US market. The US market tend to buy bigger watches. These are pretty subtle differences. Not something
that’s drastic, and you see certain brands that have much more success in particular types of markets, so a
brand like Hugo Boss was incredibly successful in the UK. We’re dependent on the strength of the parent
brand to determine which markets have the greatest opportunity, so a brand like Coach has phenomenal
opportunities in China where the parent brand, Coach leather goods, has a very large position. A brand like
Hugo Boss doesn’t have as big a position in China, whereas counterpoint in the UK, Hugo Boss brand is very
popular, the watch business was very strong, and Coach is virtually unknown in the market, so you see those
kinds of differences. Certainly, some markets will be more trendy. The US tends to be a leader in the trend
business and then you have a market like Germany that tends to be less trendy, so they’ll want a little bit more
traditional-type product, whereas the US department store channel, for example, wants the newest thing, but
they’re also trying to get their consumers to come back on a very regular basis, and so you have to be a bit
more fashion-forward in that market.
[00:16:45]
Q: How would Movado test consumer appetite for different brands or watches in markets where the company
is not yet as popular as it is in the US?
JS: For a brand like Movado, the parent brand, you’re going to be a little bit more careful in terms of markets
that you go into because you don’t really want to go into a market where there’s limited awareness. It’s very
expensive to build awareness in a more developed market, so Movado is going to be a little bit more careful,
but that doesn’t mean that their international expansion is limited. Movado is going to more say, “What are
Private and confidential 5
the priority markets for us?” China, clearly a priority market for almost any brand, so that was a market where
Movado said, “We’re going to go and make investments into the marketplace, into the organisation and start
to see if we can build out that business.” The beauty of these platforms, these marketplaces is you can go on a
marketplace. Not that it’s easy, but it’s a little simpler than trying to get into retail stores, etc, so using the
marketplaces is a good strategy. For the licensed brand portfolio, it’s a little bit easier to find distributors, find
local partners and make less investment, but again, the strategy always was, “Let’s follow the parent brand, so
if Tommy Hilfiger is a really popular brand in Germany, let’s go there first and let’s take advantage of the
awareness of that brand.” That was really the primary motivator of, “What markets do we go to?” We really
looked at not only the potential of markets, so India and China are going to be the future, there are very large
populations, very large growing middle classes, so that makes it enticing, but mostly just look at what’s the
status of the brand in that market, and working very closely with the licensor to understand their position and
their strength. Then use that to help us get into markets and test the strength and positivity. Much easier in a
licensed category because you don’t have to do the brand building. You support the brand building along with
the parent brand.
[00:19:33]
Q: How would you assess Movado’s performance in the new environment geared towards e-commerce? You
said that the company prepared well, but was there anything unexpected in the transition to more online-
centric shopping such as supply chain issues or marketing? Were there any unexpected challenges that it
wasn’t well-prepared for from its years of digitisation?
JS: The digitalisation is really a number of different things, so channel of distribution, marketing approaches
and then how the customer shops. These are all significantly different. Again, I think Movado Group was way
ahead in terms of understanding the marketing approach and certainly the purchase of MVMT was really
valuable to Movado Group because that was a pure digital player and had some really smart people who were
able to provide some insight, but I really can’t think of any way that Movado Group was surprised. Certainly
COVID caught everyone by surprise, but in terms of Movado Group’s transition to digital marketing, having
effective websites, working closely with the key platform players around the world, partnering with the
retailers that were also building out, I can’t really think of anything that was unexpected. The team was well-
prepared and well on the way to making a digital transformation which had been going on for a number of
years, so I can’t really think of anything that they weren’t ready for. Doesn’t mean execution’s perfect, but
there wasn’t something that came up that the team said, “Oh my God, we haven’t thought of that.” Supply
chain, very well-developed. Really strong procurement team with an office in Hong Kong and an office in
China and offices in Switzerland, so I really can’t think of anything that caught them by surprise.
[00:22:30]
Q: Buying a watch online is a lot different from going inside a Movado store. How does that play into the
company going fully or mostly digital? Are there concerns around consumers not being able to visit stores and
receiving one-on-one attention from an associate?
JS: There are certainly challenges. It’s interesting. The watch category is certainly a category where the
consumer is comfortable buying it online. Even before COVID, like I said, there were a number of retailers
who were doing north of 30% of their watch business online, so the customer is pretty comfortable. My
suspicion is the higher up in price point you go, the more you want to touch and feel the watch. The category
has certainly some showrooming going on where someone will go into a store, try it on and then maybe buy it
online. Like any category, there’s a significant amount of returns because, as you said, if you don’t touch it in
person and then you have it delivered to you, and you try it on and you say, “It’s too big,” “It’s too small,”
whatever the attribute that you’re not happy with, so there is the return aspect and returns are expensive for a
D2C business. I think that’s a challenge for anyone in the direct-to-consumer e-commerce, is managing return.
I think everyone is managing that aspect, trying to control cost, but it’s a category people seem to be
comfortable with. Another big aspect of the watch business is it’s a heavily gifted product. November-
Private and confidential 6
December are huge months, so there’s always an aspect of you buy a watch and you give it as a gift, and if the
gift receiver isn’t completely happy, then you’re making a return. That sort of says things are the same because
if 30%, 40%, 50% of the business is gifting, you had the same issue, even if you went to the store, you bought
the product, you gave it to the recipient and if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted, they might want to exchange
it or return it. It’s an interesting aspect of the category, the fact that people are so comfortable buying it
digitally and so much of the business is gift-giving. It’s an interesting aspect of the buy online vs buy in-store.
[00:25:51]
Q: Can you compare price points across online and in-store channels? Is there more promotional activity in
online vs in-store?
JS: For Movado, the primary online business is Movado.com and the strategy has been maintain price on
Movado.com almost 100%. I think there are times that they’ve done maybe, “Give us your e-mail and we’ve
give you 10% discount,” but I think for Movado, having the Movado.com site is actually significantly gross-
margin enhancing because they get to sell directly to the consumer, so there’s more margin in that. There’s
obviously some more costs, but it also allows you to control price pretty significantly, which is great. Movado
at the department store is not a heavily discounted business. Again, it’s a strong brand. It’s the market leader
in the US in the price point. I think their statistics say, watches USD 500-1,500, Movado brand has somewhere
around a 35-40% share, so it’s a powerful brand. It has a lot of influence over its retail partners given its
strength, so there’s not a whole lot of discounting to begin with. I think in the category in general, where you
can have a challenge on pricing is more on an Amazon where you have a little less control over price because if
Amazon is managing your business, they want to match third-party sellers. I think that’s the part of the
business where it’s more difficult to control price and Movado brand, last I knew, was not officially sold on
Amazon because, again, they just weren’t super comfortable with how they managed price. In the other piece
of the business, again, not huge discounting. More if you had older product that you were trying to cycle
through, that’s where you’d have more of a discount approach. With a Macy’s or a department store, you
would generally match their cadence for markdowns, but Movado was pretty good at managing inventory,
pretty good at managing the supply chain, and so didn’t have huge discounting issues.
[00:28:45]
Q: Could you elaborate on how retailers such as Macy’s have managed their inventories throughout pandemic-
related uncertainty?
JS: Macy’s is certainly a first-class retailer when it comes to buying and managing inventory, and it’s very top
of mind for them and I would actually say over the last several years, Macy’s has done a really nice job of
continuing to match inventory to sales. They have good commercial rigour when it comes to managing their
levels, and I haven’t been in the business for a little bit now, but I’m sure that Macy’s is highly focused on
keeping their inventory in line and doing a really good job of evaluating what the sales look like. Obviously, a
lot more of their business has gone online and I think the challenge for any retailer as your e-commerce
business becomes such a big percentage is, how do you manage your inventory in-store? You need to look like
you’re in business, but you need to have more inventory available for shipping, for e-commerce. I know Macy’s
had a number of programmes that they put in place that you could order online and pick up in-store. I think
all of those tactics that retailers have put in place, help you manage your inventory in-store, but also keeping
the customer happy because some customers want to pick up in-store and Macy’s had done a nice job, again,
even pre-COVID, of building into their store the ability to order online and pick up in-store. Again, I think the
whole return thing is a challenge for every retailer because returns are expensive and how do you manage
them? I think that’s probably the biggest challenge, along with managing the in-store inventory vs the e-
commerce inventory, but all of these retailers, that’s their bread and butter. If they don’t manage their
inventory, they get choked and you have to sell it off at a lower price, and then it’s your gross margin, so most
of Movado Group’s partners are really good at that and I think did a really good job of managing it in the
pandemic.
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[00:31:27]
Q: How much does Movado depend on large retail chains to sell its products?
JS: If you look at Movado Group in general, again, you’ve got great diversity of marketplaces, so every major
market, the licensed brand portfolio is in and has a significant presence, so that gives you the opportunity to
not be dependent on more markets, and then Movado brand especially, they have a very diverse distribution,
so you’ve got chain jewellers, which is a very large channel. That’s the Zales, the Sterling Group and other
players in that category. Then you’ve got the department store group, which is a reasonable percentage, but
not overly dependent on, and then you’ve got independent jewellers which, again, it’s a very large channel.
Lots of stores. Many of them still very successful, and then you’ve got your own e-commerce channel. Then
you’ve got your factory store, so they’ve got a lot of different channels, a powerful position in all of those
channels. I don’t know specifics in terms of who the largest customer is and what percentage it represents, but
given the geographic distribution, given the number of different channels of distribution, as well as their own
channels, they’re really not overly dependent on any one channel or any one retailer, so they’re pretty well-set
in that respect.
[00:33:07]
Q: You referenced marketplace diversification, which started before coronavirus and has been the downfall of
many retail department stores and malls. How has that affected Movado? Does the company simply have to
reallocate inventory to other channels, as you suggested? Do you think the downfall of retail-facing
department stores will have a material impact?
JS: Certainly, and the smart department stores certainly closed stores, and that’s an important part of how the
department stores are going to successfully manage in this environment. You’ve got to close your less-
productive doors. There’s inventory in those doors. Where does that inventory go? That’s certainly a challenge
for a company that is wholesaler, and that’s not something that you overnight say, “This is gone.” You have to
work through it. I think it’s more of a short-term issue than a long-term issue because if a retailer has 100
doors, generally, the top 20 or 30 are representing a huge chunk and we always used to manage, “What’s the
number that represents 80% of our revenue?” so the old 80/20, and that 80% was where we were focusing our
time, energy and inventory. Of that 20%, retailers today are probably closing at least half of those, so there is
some inventory. It’s got to be managed, but that’s more of a short-term vs a long-term issue, and as we see
COVID being managed pretty effectively, I think the consumer’s going to want to go back stores. They’re going
to want to go back into retail, and so I think smart retailers will continue to evaluate what stores they’re in and
will continue to get rid of the least effective ones, but I don’t think, from an inventory perspective for Movado,
that’s going to be an issue.
[00:35:43]
Q: How might Movado’s international strategy be affected by a shift to less wholesale exposure? You
mentioned that it’s easier to expand in licenced brands vs Movado. Could you elaborate on the dynamics
around Movado wanting to be more direct to the consumer? How does that play into its international
exposure?
JS: The international business has been a core, core strategy at Movado for a long time and in the licensed
brand arena, it certainly is easier to build a very large international business, and in the licensed brand group,
we were very successful at that in really every region, in every key country and across multiple channels.
Movado Group over the last five years grew significant market shares in the international market, primarily on
the back of the licensed brand business, but the beauty is, as we built the licensed brand business, we were
Private and confidential 8
then able to help the Movado brand enter key markets, and again, I mentioned it earlier but I’ll expound on it
a bit, China is the biggest international market when it comes to potential. There are so many consumers, the
middle class is growing very quickly and China is easy in that, not that it’s easy, it’s very complex, but you have
these very large platforms where you can reach and the consumers all shop on these digital platforms, so
Movado had some very nice success and is developing very nicely in China. They do have retail stores in malls
that are also nicely successful, and so there, you have a real nice mix of e-commerce vs retail, and so that’s
been a really nice strategy and I think it continues to offer the Movado brand opportunities to grow.
There are other markets where the licensed brand portfolio was very powerful, so take Germany as an
example. Germany is a big market. We had a very strong position there, and as Movado said, “What are the
other international markets that we want to go to?” we had a really good team on the ground in Germany
managing your business, we had our own subsidiary and we were able to leverage that organisation to help
Movado start to come into the market. Again, we’re building a brand, so it’s not as easy as following a brand
that’s built a business like we have in the licensed, but the fact that we have our own people on the ground, we
have subsidiaries in all of the key markets, it lets us have our own people evaluate the marketplace, figure out
the distribution. We have our e-commerce that we can open a shop in those markets if we want to, and so we
can get a balance of our own e-commerce, wholesale and retail because we became very adept at building kiosk
and building out our own retail footprint. That was really the cornerstone to building the international
business, primarily first with licensed brands and then allowing Movado brand to follow where we had
strengths and success.
[00:39:50]
Q: Could you give an overview of the dynamics for Movado’s licenced branded businesses in the US vs ex-US?
JS: Domestically, first of all, Movado is the biggest brand in the portfolio and the name on the door, so it’s
always a priority. In the US, the Movado brand is so powerful, as I said. At least 40% market share USD 500-
1,500. It’s a very unique position. It’s an extremely well-known brand. It has an extremely good reputation. As
you mentioned, you love the product. The difference between Movado brand and licensed brand is, again, we
own it, so we have 100% control and 100% responsibility for building the brand and managing the brand. In a
licensed brand, everything that you do requires permission from the licensor and just as importantly, as a
watch licence, you’re not the number one priority for a licensor. For Coach, for example, their priority is their
leather goods business, as it should be. It’s 98% of their business. As a licensee, your job is to fit their strategy,
follow their design and use their marketing strength, whereas when you own a brand, you’re responsible for all
aspects of that brand from design, all the way through to PR, and the Movado team does a phenomenal job of
managing all of those elements. You also have control of all of your distribution, so if you want, you can
feature Movado.com any way you want to and you can really drive that business through whatever marketing
tactics you want to drive it, so there’s a real big difference. In the US, Movado brand is much, much bigger
than any other parts of the business, whereas internationally, the licensed brand portfolio is bigger than the
Movado business. Again, it’s a really nice mix in that Movado brand gives you huge power in the US and
significantly leverage with the retailers, whereas internationally, the licensed brand portfolio gives you that
same ability to have other brands piggyback on that strength, so it’s a real nice mix within the portfolio
domestic vs international.
NH: Are there any drawbacks of this model?
JS: The biggest drawback to licensing is at the end of a period, conceivably, you can lose a licence. You sign a
licence for a defined time period and it’s conceivable that the licensor at the end of that period can end the
licence, and so you can lose a decent piece of revenue and profit. At Movado Group, we picked partners that
we really wanted to work with and we never lost a licence because we did a great job for them. We developed
great product, we built powerful positions at retail, we partnered very, very closely with the licensors, but the
biggest drawback is that you have the potential to lose the business. The other drawback is obviously you pay a
royalty, and so you get a little lower gross margin because you pay that royalty to the licensor. On the other
hand, you don’t have to spend as much money on the marketing side because the licensor builds their brand
name and you benefit from that. I would say those are the drawbacks of the licensing business.
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[00:44:24]
Q: What criteria does Movado use to determine which brands to licence or add to its portfolio?
JS: To answer that, I’ll give you a little perspective on how Movado approaches building businesses. Movado
is a company, and again, I talked about the potential to lose a licence, so we built our organisation and we built
our business around providing phenomenal service to our retailers and to our licensors, and we got incredibly
integrated into the licensor organisation and to do that, we generally needed dedicated teams to manage the
licence. Dedicated teams are expensive, but it’s the right way to manage the business, so what that meant was,
if you’re going to have a dedicated team and you’re going to build out an organisation, you have to have a
certain size of business. Given that, our strategy was to partner with global lifestyle brands and global lifestyle
brands that their brands had significant value as a brand, so we looked for big internationally known, well-run,
well-managed companies to partner with. That was the primary criteria and we would meet with a lot of
people. We were certainly one of two or three premier licensees in the category. The first thing was, is it a
global lifestyle brand? Is it a well-managed brand? Then it would come down to what was the fit with the
management of that group? If we felt comfortable working with them, they seemed like the kind of people that
we could work with, then that was how we would choose who to partner with.
[00:46:37]
Q: What do consumers want in a brand? How do you think this changes across watch categories? What does
Movado believe the consumer wants?
JS: I think for now, consumers, I think a lot depends on their lifestyle. I think it’s interesting that now, people
haven’t been going to the office, so they probably want less formal product, and that would probably be true in
every category. I’m sure a brand like Hugo Boss is selling a lot less suits, and a lot more slacks and golf shirts,
so I really think it’s a lifestyle thing. The Coach consumer, as an example, it’s a leather good brand and it’s a
fashionable leather good brand, so that consumer, primarily female, very fashion-oriented, they’re looking for
a watch product that fits that lifestyle. If I’m selling a Lacoste watch, a very sporty brand, it’s a consumer who’s
active and playing tennis, or golf, or a much more casual lifestyle approach. For that consumer, we’re building
watches that are much sportier, much more sport-oriented, much more casually developed. The Boss brand is
an interesting one. Like I said, it was primarily a suit brand, but interestingly, we sold what we categorised as
sport luxe, which was a Rolex-y type of feel, but more utilitarian, a lot of chronograph, a lot of rubber straps.
That consumer was, again primarily male, probably 80% male brand. That’s how we think about developing
segments and products within each brand, and then you get the marketplace, and again, certain marketplaces
like more traditional watches vs more sporty watches, so you think about all those things and I think today, I
think the world is changing quickly. I think there are less barriers to entry and the most successful brands are
the ones who do a phenomenal job of storytelling their position and having product that fits into that
storytelling, and I think Movado did a very good job of that. Movado brand is a pretty broad brand. You can go
from very classic, the original Museum Dial on a black strap is a very classic watch, to a smartwatch. Movado
has a smartwatch, so you can go really across the board in the Movado brand when it comes to styling, and
again, it goes back to your lifestyle and which one of those products fits your lifestyle. That’s how I think of
that question.
[00:50:18]
Q: How would you describe Movado’s competitive landscape? What advantages does the company have over
large-scale traditional brands? How does it maintain those advantages when licencing brands that it also
competes against?
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JS: I don’t really think about Movado competing with the licensed brand portfolio. Movado is a very well-
developed, Swiss watch brand. None of the licensed brands in the Movado portfolio are Swiss or Swiss-made.
Again, Movado has this dominant position in North America, so I don’t think they’re competing in that
respect. In terms of the channels of trade, they’re often sold in the same channel, but again, Movado has such a
powerful position in the US, I think that Movado’s competition is more some of the other better-known Swiss
brands, so Tag Heuer. That type of brand, I think, is more of Movado’s competition in the US marketplace, but
Movado has such a unique position in terms of its history, the Museum Dial, their effective marketing
approaches over the years, but I think their competition is more in the Swiss category than the licensed
category. I think brands like Tissot, Tag Heuer and the competing Swiss brands in USD 500-2,000 range vs
the licensed brands.
[00:52:32]
Q: Could you elaborate on the explosive growth of smartwatches from large companies such as Apple? How
has it taken market share and what has Movado done to keep up in these unique categories?
JS: It’s a very interesting development in the marketplace. People were doing some smartwatches before
Apple got in and it was having a hard time getting significant traction, and not that some of these other
companies don’t have decent-sized businesses, but as Apple got into the category, they just really own a
gigantic share, and it’s hard to know exactly what Apple’s share is because Apple doesn’t really share break-
out. They break out wearables, but that includes the earbuds, which is a huge business, but from what people
can extrapolate, the Apple watch business is gigantic, and clearly, the ability to connect your phone, which
everyone is married to right now, to your watch has been very, very powerful, so as Apple goes, that category
goes and Apple has been growing it quite successfully. Fitbit is an interesting company. It’s not really a watch.
It’s more of an activity tracker, but to me, it’s on your wrist, and so I think of it as a competitor to the wrist
space, and again, think about that gifting aspect. If I was going to buy somebody a Tommy Hilfiger watch and
they say, “I really want to track me steps instead,” Fitbit becomes an interesting response to that. Fitbit’s goal
is to get you to buy it, wear it every day, track it, join the community. It’s that community that’s one of the
really important aspects of them continuing to get people to use the product, and I don’t know the statistics,
but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people wear it for a period of time and then put it in the draw and don’t
wear it any more, but I think it’s a category that continues to grow. It’s an element of the business that’s going
to continue. As I said, Movado has a smartwatch in their range. It’s a beautiful product, it works well and I
think they’ll continue to have a piece of the company in that technology aspect because clearly, a lot of
consumers want it. I don’t think it’ll be a feature of their business, but I think they’re comfortable being in it,
participating in it and having an option for the Movado lover to have a smartwatch in their collection.
[00:55:51]
Q: What is your outlook for Movado’s appetite to acquire more brands? Which category seems like an
attractive area to expand into?
JS: I think acquiring brands is something that Movado has always done and is good at. I think they’re good at
integrating businesses into the model. They have very strong systems. They have very strong internal
functions, whether it’s supply chain, IT. I think they’re very well-positioned to be able to add brands to their
portfolio, and so I think it’s something that they want to do to continue to grow. They can add three types of
businesses. They can add categories, so that’s a growth opportunity. We talked about jewellery as a category
and they could conceivably add a jewellery brand to their portfolio. They can add licences, so it’s another way
to add to the business, add brands to the business. They had signed Calvin Klein and that is a wonderful
brand, and I think they’ll do well adding that to their licensed brand portfolio, and over the years, the
company’s always looked at potential Swiss brands to add as well, owned brands, and I’m sure they’re open to
that. I’m sure Movado’s financials are very strong. They always manage with a lot of cash. That was always
very important, to have a balance sheet that was very strong, so I could imagine that they are looking at that,
and they’re careful about it, but I would imagine that that will continue to be on their screen going forward as
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an opportunity for growth.
[00:58:01]
NH: Jon, I think that is a great place to conclude the Interview. Let me close by saying thank you very much
for your input. Clients, thank you for joining Third Bridge Forum’s Interview today. If anyone would like to
speak with Jon in a private call or meeting, please let your relationship manager know. Thanks again, Jon.
JS: Thanks. Bye.
Transcription ends at 00:58:17 of the recorded material
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