Sekonda - The Moodie Report

October/November 2006 BRAND SHOWCASE • Sekonda
Sekonda enters the travel
sector with impeccable timing
We’ve all heard of travel retail’s Trinity – the triumvirate of retailer, landlord and
supplier. Now, thanks to UK watchmaker Sekonda, we’re heralding the introduction of
the three Ps – product, price and profit. By Mary Jane Pittilla.
Sekonda is a watch brand phenomenon with
an amazing history. First, as a division of
Time Products (UK) Ltd, it is British,
not the usual Swiss. Second, despite its
status as the UK’s biggest-selling watch
brand (more than 1.5 million units a
year), it remains a privately owned
concern, under the expert guidance
of Chairman Marcus Margulies,
whose father left Germany for the
UK in 1931. In addition to the
affordable Sekonda marque, whose
core products retail from just £20 up
to £80, Margulies also presides over
what’s been dubbed “the world’s best
watch store”. The famous Marcus boutique,
based in London’s up-market
New Bond Street, carries watches with
£55,000 price tags – and that’s not including
archived watches in the basement, some selling
for millions of pounds.
Back to Sekonda’s fascinating rise to watch
superstardom. In the 1960s Time Products
started importing inexpensive Russianmade
watches and selling them under the
Sekonda brand name. These mechanical
watches became an instant hit with the
British public. (The writer of this article
began her watch-spotting career over
three decades ago with just such a Sekonda
model, boasting a dark blue hexagonal
face with Roman numerals on the dial,
which must surely have been a collector’s
item had her mother not recently thrown
it out inadvertently – thanks Mum.)
Margulies followed this initial success over
the next decade with myriad Sekonda models
in different shapes and sizes which struck a
chord with the British watch-owning public –
largely thanks to their affordability, built-tolast
solidity and eminently readable dials. They
were nice and simple.
Time passed, as they say in the watch world.
The quartz fad of the 1970s and 1980s was
followed by a partial schism (or cataclysm,
depending on where you were positioned
in the market) in the UK watch sector.
Suddenly, during the status-hungry late
1980s and 1990s, fashion companies such
as DKNY/Donna Karan New York, Guess and
Gucci began selling watches under their platinumplated,
billion-dollar brand names. These
modish watch brands,
just like their seasonal
clothing, took off
massively. Sekonda –
still selling hundreds
of thousands of units of its classic
product – realised it was time to swing
Sekonda’s self-select merchandising stands are clearly
branded for consumers. This picture shows one of
World Duty Free’s tailored stands
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BRAND SHOWCASE • Sekonda October/November 2006
Sekonda fact file
Headquarters: Time Products (UK) Ltd, Leicester, UK
Founded: 1931 by Alexander Margulies, father of
current Chairman Marcus Margulies
Owner: Marcus Margulies, who also owns the
upscale Marcus watch boutique in London’s New
Bond Street
Product specialism: Watches – traditional, contemporary
and fashion markets
Brands: Sekonda watches retailing at £20-80;
Seksy fashion watches for women retailing at
£40–75; ONE fashion watches for men £40–75;
Xpose outdoor watches retailing at £20 (RRP);
children’s watches £10–15.
Brand tagline: Beware of Expensive Imitations
Why buy? “Product, price, profit, quality and service”
Sekonda says. All watches (over 350 styles)
come with full after-sales service and a two-year
guarantee. Range changes twice a year; customised
packaging; brand recognition. The Sekonda brand
sells more than 1.5 million units a year in the UK
and abroad; it has 6.5% of the British watch market
by volume for the year ending March 2006
(source: GfK data)
Key travel retail accounts: World Duty Free (all
four London Heathrow terminals), Alpha in the UK
and at Rome airports; Aelia in the UK and airports
in France; 34 cruise ships and passenger ferries
such as P&O Ferries, SeaFrance and Brittany Ferries,
plus Eurotunnel; The Nuance Group; airlines
including Aer Lingus, bmi, British Airways, easyJet,
Emirates, Monarch, Ryanair, Thomsonfly and Virgin;
Dubai Duty Free (currently on trial); Harding Bros
cruise ships (currently on trial)
Best-performing travel retail point of sale: London
Heathrow T3 (World Duty Free)
Suitable for: High traffic areas and specialist
watch areas
Core customer group: Diverse range targeted at all
ages, but core market is aged 35+
Sales mix by brand: 80% Sekonda brand; 20%
fashion watches (of which Seksy accounts for
around 15% and ONE for 3–4%)
Website: sekonda.co.uk (new site to be launched in
October 2006)
into action and get seriously sexy and stylish for a new
era of watch customer in the Noughties: women who
want fast, disposable fashion. And that’s how Sekonda’s
Seksy brand was born, some three years ago.
The Seksy name, conjured up by a brand consultancy
working with Sekonda, succinctly sums up the image
Sekonda is aiming to portray for this women’s fashion
watch brand. Now, as well as giving consumers dependable,
good-quality merchandise under the top-selling
Sekonda brand for relatively little money, Seksy represents
a fast-moving, desirable product that changes with
the fashion times and is also eminently affordable. And
believe me, as a long-time fashion watcher, these times
are changing super-fast. You only have to look at what
retailers like TopShop and Mango are doing. They’re
catering to the appetite of eager female shoppers who
want the latest must-have items they’ve spotted in the
leading weekly fashion/celebrity magazines such as Heat,
OK and Closer.
And it’s not just women who have an appetite for hunting
down trends and fads – it’s men, teenagers and children
too. Sekonda also serves these market segments.
Men are treated to the ONE range of big, chunky
watches with their no-nonsense quartz digital appeal,
which was introduced in December 2005. Consumers
aged from teens upwards are catered to with the rugged,
outdoorsy Xpose collection; plus there’s a small but
perfectly formed collection of children’s watches. However,
the firm’s products are aimed at all ages, right
across the watch-wearing spectrum. Brand Director
Trevor James says: “We go from A to Z – we hit all markets.
We are an impulse buy.” (As a testament to this
trend, this writer favours oversized men’s watches, but
Left to right: Sekonda’s Owner and Chairman
Marcus Margulies, Sales Manager Gary Taylor
and Brand Director Trevor James
252 The Moodie Report

October/November 2006 BRAND SHOWCASE • Sekonda
Liz Woodland’s timely move
In summer 2006 Sekonda
took the major step of
hiring the services of travel
retail dynamo Liz Woodland,
who is advising the
UK watchmaker on areas
such as brand development,
training and presentation.
Woodland is one of
the industry’s leading
retailers, and her CV makes
fascinating reading.
After years of experience in travel retail (page 254)
she created her independent UK retail advisory
business Consulting For Retail in 2001. Soon after
Woodland took on an assignment with Swiss travel
retailer Weitnauer in late 2002. Her sterling work
ultimately led to an invitation to join Weitnauer’s
Executive Committee as Chief Procurement Officer,
making her a key figure as the company was
renamed Dufry and was acquired by a group led by
Advent International.
In December 2005 she established a UK base near
London, from where she divides her time with a
home in France. “I’m passionate about retail and
passionate about travel retail,” she says.
One of her key areas of interest is store development.
Elements include matching customer profiles
with the brands that those customers are interested
in. “Today there is a new customer shopping
with us – a much more frequent traveller, much
more savvy, and wanting change, including change
in products,” she comments. “I’d like to work to
bring constant newness into travel retail stores.”
Another area of interest is brand development:
“Working with brands to develop visualisation in
stores and to assist their brands to grow in travel
retail outside the UK.”
“They [Sekonda] have one of the keys to today’s
travel retail consumer – they have a huge range of
products within the £20–50 arena,” says Woodland.
“They display and present ranges well, and
they offer great quality and value product. That’s
why they are the number-one UK brand in terms of
high street unit sales.
“While they haven’t always had the right arena
elsewhere within Europe, wherever they have been
introduced they have done well. And I’m very
excited about assisting them in their development.”
Advertising visuals
for the Seksy fashion
watch brand are
designed to be
exactly that – sexy
and stylish. Each
season’s star
watches get a name,
just like all the iconic
fashion handbags
these days. The
watch featured here
is the Eclipse model
has her eye on a cute-looking Sekonda butterfly fashion
watch. Something to wear just for fun.)
Sekonda in travel retail
At Sekonda, knowledge is everything. The whole company,
headquartered in the city of Leicester in the Midlands,
exudes vast experience and expertise – whether it
be in watchmaking (which now takes place in China,
although a handful of veteran watchmakers are still
employed in-house), product testing or customer service.
Many personnel have been with the company for years.
One department visited by The Moodie Report collectively
had over 100 years of service – and that section consisted
of only four staff.
This highly knowledgeable team of passionate people is
also evident in the fast-expanding travel retail department,
headed by James. He has worked with travel retailers
for over 20 years and, in true watch company fashion,
knows exactly how they tick. Several years ago he visited
a certain leading travel retailer to discover they were
selling his Sekonda watches under a glass counter along
with the fashion and upper-end brands. He realised this
type of merchandising was not going to favour an inexpensive
brand such as Sekonda, so he devised the highly
successful tailored self-select stand concept that is now
used to display the brand in many travel retail points of
sale. That same retailer went from selling 3,000 watches
a year to 40,000 within two to three years, according to
James, who is a very happy man indeed.
Also in the sales hot seats are Sales Manager Gary Taylor
and Sales Promotion Manager Martin Lovatt. Among the
other travel retail team members are Commercial Manager
Helen Campbell, who moved from a grocery background
to Sekonda – and must be very glad she did, judging by
the rapid-fire pace of today’s watch market; and Jenny
Wise provides essential back-up for the travel retail team.
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BRAND SHOWCASE • Sekonda October/November 2006
In addition there are two merchandisers – ‘brand
ambassadors’ as they are referred to within the
company – who travel to the company’s key airport
accounts. Their job is to ensure the
product is merchandised correctly on the
shop floor and is quickly replenished in
the quiet periods – between key flights
coming through London Heathrow’s
four terminals, for example. Sekonda
even offers incentives to its sales staff to
ensure good brand awareness and communication
at all times. If the salespeople
impress with their efficiency,
attention to detail and service, they can
win prizes.
Asked about the challenges faced by Sekonda,
James is quick to respond: “Fashion watches.”
Now, having met the challenge of creating
the aptly named Seksy watch brand and the
trendy ONE collection for men, Sekonda now
Quality and service are the watchwords
On a recent tour around Sekonda
HQ, the theme of quality and
service was recurrent. Take for
example Paresh Gokani, the
dynamic Logistics Manager of
Time Products (UK), which owns
the Sekonda brand. His dedicated
team ensures each timepiece
comes up to scratch – literally, as
each and every watch is checked
cosmetically for faults (no mean
feat for a company producing
some two million watches a year).
Gokani presides over the million
or so watches that flow through
the Leicester HQ in any one year
– that’s £30 million worth of
inventory.
Over his 26-year career at the
company Gokani has amassed
huge knowledge of supply and
demand. Of World Duty Free, the
firm’s largest travel retail account,
he says: “World Duty Free are very
professional in their supply chain
management. We supply exactly
what they ask for, because we
know we lose sales if the watch
they want isn’t there NOW.”
Product labelling is also key to
the company, which can produce
tailor-made bar codes for each
retailer, detailing such information
as the product code, price
and price saving – a crucially
important factor for travel-value
retailers.
As a key member of the quality
control team, Technical Adviser
Mike North is charged with testing.
He tests to destruction some
30 watches taken at random out
of every 1,000 delivered to the
Leicester factory from China.
North is set to take a well-earned
retirement after 32 years with
Sekonda. In fact, it’s his second
retirement, as he bowed out once
before but missed his work so
much he returned to Sekonda.
Forecasting sales patterns is the
complex domain of Narendra
Adatia, another veteran of 32
years with the company. The
company will sell some
has the difficult task of developing the brands
per se, so they remain fresh and desirable to
the fickle consumer, and also of growing the
brands in the luxury-skewed travel retail
channel.
Enter Liz Woodland, an experienced
travel retailer who has worked with
top names such as Dufry, DFS,
Allders International and Alpha. In
summer 2006 Sekonda took on the
services of her Consulting For Retail
business, which is advising the UK
watchmaker on areas such as international
launches and aspects of presentation.
Not only is Woodland passionate
about travel retail, she is passionate about
the travel retail consumer who, she believes,
wants the opportunity to purchase lower-end
merchandise as well as luxury items while
travelling.
6–700,000 watches in total in
the September to December high
season, but holds only 1,000,000
in stock at the beginning of that
period. Adatia’s job is to predict
which watches will sell, and when
the sales spikes might be, based
on information gleaned from the
sales and marketing teams. As if
this task were not gargantuan
enough, another aspect of his job
is to negotiate cost prices in
order to achieve the RRPs that
are desired by Brand Director
Trevor James. This means talking
constantly to suppliers and
having a real feel for the market.
Sekonda has its own in-house
team of product designers, headed
by Product Manager Gus Webbe.
He is the ‘coolhunter’ who spots
trends he sees around him in the
street or on the Internet, and
considers customer requests and
field sales staff observations. He
then acts on them – fast. The lead
time for a new watch is around
three months.
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October/November 2006 BRAND SHOWCASE • Sekonda
Consumers often have a ‘wardrobe’ of two or three
watches for different occasions, such as dress or sport, and
often choose to buy watches as a gift, or as an impulse
purchase for themselves. This is where Sekonda’s ‘known
quality and value statement’ comes in, says Woodland (see
panel, page 265).
The brand’s travel retail accounts are currently mainly
UK-based, including World Duty Free, its biggest
account. But James is adamant: “We can sell anywhere.”
As evidence, he points to the phenomenal success of
the brand at London Heathrow Terminal Three, where
the majority of passengers are not British – they come, in
fact, from a mind-boggling 135 countries.
But a big push is now being made to follow the British
wherever they travel around the globe. This summer a
strategic Sekonda launch took place in Europe, and
negotiations are under way for system-wide listings with
major operators in the region. In addition South Africa’s
Tourvest, as well as Qantas and The Nuance Group in
Sydney, are being targeted. The Middle East is also a
focus, as the region is growing so fast; Dubai Duty Free
is trialling the brand there. ■
Celebrity strategy goes live on air
Sekonda is turning its attention to television advertising
and celebrity endorsement in a bid to capture
the new, fashion-savvy ‘Noughties’ audience. This
year the brand is sponsoring British TV channel
ITV2’s so-called Celebrity programmes.
The three-month deal spans reality TV shows such
as Jordan & Peter – Boom or Bust, Jack Osbourne
– Adrenaline Junkie 2 and Calum, Fran and Dangerous
Danan. Sekonda promotes the fashion brands
Seksy and ONE in eye-catching advertising visuals.
The TV spots use the themes from the brand’s press
advertising, which appears in celebrity titles such
as Heat, OK, Now and Closer, as well as men’s
magazines Nuts and Zoo.
The ads invite viewers to text a code to find their
nearest Sekonda store. Sekonda Commercial Manager
Helen Campbell reports initial huge success of
this interactive activity as some 366 texts were
received following one show advertising the Seksy
brand. The norm is 300.
Overall, the firm spends some £1.5 million annually
on advertising, mostly on reinforcing the Seksy
brand.
What the retailers say about Sekonda
“At all times I have found the service from the
brand to be professional, friendly and very reliable.
More importantly, the brand has always performed
very well. From a very small floor space, the watches
offer a very wide number of styles, suitable and
attractive to people of all ages, appealing to the
conservative and the fashion conscious, with value
immediately apparent to any customer. The ranges
constantly update to take new trends into account;
however the successful lines are never sacrificed.
Innovation is a key focus at Sekonda and the introduction
of the Seksy and ONE ranges have ensured
they are able to move with the market, without
compromising on the mother brand’s values and
success. Put together the brand, the product and
the service from all at Sekonda and you have the
ideal partner for anyone serious about watches” –
Neil Towns, P&O Ferries
“We have been following the resurgence in awareness
of the brand following the launch of the Seksy
and ONE ranges, and were impressed with their
success to date. The planned trial will take place on
two ships with a passenger demographic that is
relevant to Sekonda’s target market” – Brian Smith,
Harding Bros
“We are looking for a partnership with our suppliers
and this needs a very close contact, an open
dialogue and information flow from both sides. To
succeed it needs a shared vision and a clear commitment
of the parties involved. After our first
meeting we felt we were part of the Sekonda
family and sharing a win-win situation. Sekonda is
offering not just a brand but a concept – a concept
which is variable and can be extended to each
market or pax profile. We also have to keep in mind
that the watch business in duty free depends not
only on famous brand names, but on attractive
design and a good value-for-money concept.” –
Hans-Peter Flury, Dufry
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