Titan is celebrating its 40th anniversary and the renowned watch company recently introduced a flying Tourbillon watch, as part of its limited edition - the ‘Commemorative’ Collection, consisting of 4 watches.
In an interaction with TNIE’s Uma Kannan, Suparna Mitra, CEO- Watches & Wearables, Titan Company, said it has been a fantastic journey of four decades and that they are bringing outstanding designs and compelling stories through their watches.
Edited excerpts:
Are you seeing any shift in consumer behaviour in terms of the preference? Titan is continuing to bet on analog watches. How is the segment growing?
There has been growing interest among consumers in analog watches. Many people are thinking of watches, wearing watches. Secondly, I would say gifting is a very big part of what we do. I think post COVID, there was a flurry of gifting, including wedding gifting. There are like millions of weddings going on. So, there are some larger pieces which are helping this growth. I think a lot of it is also the kind of innovation and really outstanding designs and compelling stories that we’re bringing through our watches that consumers are responding to and saying ‘this is great and I would like one’. We grew 19% y-o-y basis in the second quarter and the analog segment has been recording strong growth.
How are you looking at the premiumisation trend?
It is a continuing trend. We have about 27% market share in analog, which includes below R1,000 where we hardly play. It also includes the very premium and luxury. For the first time, we are having a watch for about R10 lakh. We have watches in Nebula, which is a gold range up to R8-8.5 lakh, but we did not have any watches for about R10 lakh. It is an area where there is a lot of demand and interest. People are going deep into what the watch is, what is the offering? What is special about it? There are so many watch collector communities and because of social media, they get together and there is a lot of online conversation.
What about wearables and how the segment is growing?
We have a very good market share and we are building on it. The category itself has gone through some decline and correction, but we hope that it stabilises. Competition is high in the segment and there was not enough differentiation. All the brands were coming out with similar smart watches, which led to price reduction and price war, and it also led to extra supplies. So overall, it has been a situation where it got kind of commoditized, because there was no real difference, and now the correction has happened.
Smart watches have seen tremendous penetration in the last three years and right now, the premium watches are all about the 35 plus age group, simply because it is the earning group. Even in the 20 to 35 age group, we find that there’s a lot of interest in watches. It’s a very important fashion accessory. So, with fashion being so prominent, everyone wanting to be fashionable, then the watch is a very crucial accessory.
Tell us about the limited edition of the Commemorative collection.
This is related to 40 years. We have launched the commemorative limited collection of 1984 (Titan began its journey in 1984). We have The Classique Case (inspired from the two of the original bestsellers in Titan) and limited to 1000 numbered watches; the moonphase multifunction watch, which is limited to 900 numbered watches. These two are reissues of very famous and popular watches in the 1990s. We have also launched the Gold Mechanical Watch with the slim mechanical movement, and the fourth one is Flying Tourbillon Movement, the 7TH1 Calibre, this limited-edition timepiece is very special as it took a lot of R&D to put it together. It is a tribute to the company’s legacy and it is priced at R26 lakh.