More Aggressive Marketing?

LumegaudAnar

Is it just me, or is Marc sending out more emails, texts, and general marketing materials for the Islander GMT than he has for other Islander models? It just seems that I am getting an email every day about this release, and I can't remember getting such a deluge of marketing from Marc before. 😂

#general #collecting #islander #gmt #microbrands
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MinnKonaMike
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Yeah I noticed that too.

JBird7986
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He's probably got more money sunk into these models and needs to sell them to recoup it.  Unfortunately, he positioned these poorly in a rapidly changing market.

LumegaudAnar
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JBird7986

He's probably got more money sunk into these models and needs to sell them to recoup it.  Unfortunately, he positioned these poorly in a rapidly changing market.

I have to agree. That price is substantially higher than other models while offering less value. He has a Squale GMT with the same movement for a lower price on his own site!

Edge168n
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I imagine there are a couple things going on.  

  1.  Facebook/Instagram targeting is getting less efficient because of App Tracking Transparency  on IOS), so he has to lean more heavily on email and search marketing, as well as organic marketing via Instagram posts and Youtube videos.  
  2.  Broader portfolio of brands means more emails.  He just signed LeJour and that line of beautiful divers  and chronos.  I imagine that a precondition of that deal is some sort of specific, exclusive announcement.  Same with the new Formex Reef GMT, same with the new line of blacked out Seikos and the Phoibos Leviathan.  And I doubt he'd treat his in house brand with any less care than the others.

And to be fair, would you scroll down to the bottom if he did it in one big sales digest?  I certainly wouldn't.  Easier to skim the headlines and clickthrough where necessary.

I think the general realization I have with Island Watch is that their growth has probably gotten to the point where they have different audiences for different products.  Some are Islander aficionados, some are there for the hard to find microbrands, some (like me) are there to buy aftermarket bracelets and tools. 

I'm not certain that this is him being in a bad  spot inventory wise (if he was, there  would be discounting or slowing of model introductions), so much as he probably has some marketing segmentation to do.

wilfried
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His timing is terrible. I'm sure these have been in the works for a long time, and Sellita was a low end GMT movement at the time, so he took the opportunity to make a "premium" watch with a Swiss movement, for the first time, I think. His GMT would be a value proposition. Then Seiko beat him to the punch with their budget GMTs, which are now the talk of the town, and the world will soon be awash in cheap GMTs with those movements, like the NH35 in every budget microbrand. Rather than make a splash, he got upstaged and undercut.

UtahExplorer
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wilfried

His timing is terrible. I'm sure these have been in the works for a long time, and Sellita was a low end GMT movement at the time, so he took the opportunity to make a "premium" watch with a Swiss movement, for the first time, I think. His GMT would be a value proposition. Then Seiko beat him to the punch with their budget GMTs, which are now the talk of the town, and the world will soon be awash in cheap GMTs with those movements, like the NH35 in every budget microbrand. Rather than make a splash, he got upstaged and undercut.

I agree, I'm waiting to see how the micros work with this new SII GMT.

It's really unfortunate that he was undercut.