Jeff Cohen
President, Citizen
Watch America
a black strap with a white dial, while the limited edition has a black stripe with
an orange dial and there’s also one with a vintage parchment-colored dial. The
two limited additions will have special packaging.
The commercial versions will be approximately $850-$895. The move-
ments for these watches are quartz and hand-assembled.
The Tsuno Racer Chronograph is one that appeared frequently on collector
social media sites. So our product development team saw this, and we
decided to bring it back. The original is from the early 1970s, which is why the
two limited editions are limited to 1,972 each.
Our Promaster collection, which now includes this model, is doing very
well. The Promaster diver from last year sold out in most cases. It was very
well priced, and very well engineered. Perfectly on trend too. The entire air,
land and sea category within Promaster is what you’re going to see this year at
Baselworld. We are a very high-tech brand and are still male-centric in terms
of sales, though we are introducing some beautiful ladies’ products for Basel
this year.
What are today’s watch market challenges?
The challenges I see in the watch market in the United States have more to do
with the retailers than the consumers. We see this as more of an opportunity.
Some of the smaller brands are going away, the party is not growing, but we
can get a bigger portion of that pie. We leverage our best practices to continue
to drive sales through innovation and advertising. We are consistent with our
messaging and our product development.
The challenges are actually forcing us to do things faster. We make sure we
are more nimble and are reacting faster to technical changes. This includes
everything from infrastructure to how we handle the front of the house.
The landscape is changing, and it happens in the United States first. The
United States is over-retailed, and we are seeing a dramatic shift to digital and
online. And we are prepared for that. We feel we are much further advanced
than other watch companies in our category. We are in a very good place to
position ourselves for the future.
iW Interview:
JEFF COHEN, PRESIDENT,
CITIZEN WATCH AMERICA
What does the launch of the Eco-Drive Satellite Wave
GPS F990 signify for Citizen?
How are you reaching your consumers?
Watches are about building a wardrobe, and we want to give people the expe-
rience in many different facets. That is the beauty of our brand. We operate
across a broad spectrum not only in price but also in style. And connectivity.
We can tap into the different markets and we talk to America in many different
ways. We make sure we are speaking to the different sets of consumers. Our
pathways to the consumer are more segmented than they have been in the
past. We are trying to wrap up a relationship with the consumer that I d on’t
believe has been done to this extent in this industry previously.
Are you satisfied with your retail channels?
The new piece is very special. It helps commemorate our 100th anniversary.
Remember that we launched the first version in 2012, and this is a commem-
orative edition. It has the green color scheme of the original, but this new
version adds the latest GPS functions.
This is about innovation and it’s just one facet of our 100th anniversary. It
will have only one production run this year and that is it. We only get to do
this every hundred years. The mix of our retail sales is strong. It’s a nice mix of buying online and brick-
and-mortar sales. And we have been told that people who want to buy from
the brand are even up at crazy hours of the night trying to decide from among
which watches. If consumers want to that type of engagement with the watch
brand, we are going to give it to them. Our limited editions we’ll be available
both online and at our top retail stores.
Are there other 2018 debuts you’d like to highlight? We have no plans to add additional stores. We feel that our Times Square
location is in the most exciting retail space in North America. We have a
tremendous number of people walking by our store and we use the store as a
laboratory for our retail partners and to the ultimate consumer.
We of course also have the Tsuno Racer Chrono, which is a bullhead style
chronograph. We are bringing in four models, two limited editions and two
commercial versions. The commercial version is on a bracelet with a blue dial,
58 | INTERNATIONAL WATCH | SPRING 2018
What about adding more Citizen stores?