The year 2020 is only 10 weeks old and will go down in history, infamously as the year Australia ran out of toilet paper! Which prompt s the question, is the “Fear Of Missing Out” known better as FOMO real? If our recent experience is anything to go by, you bet it is!
The Pandora pandemic
In 25 years of travelling the highways and byways of Australia to call on the Australian jewellery retailers, I have seen many brands come and equally as many go, much of it sold out at cost or less to try and get the investment back before sticking apparently the next “big thing” in only to get burnt again yet, repeat the process. Now you may ask what is this crazy business behaviour? It is the Pandora effect which in jewellery parlances, created a case of FOMO which is only now after 15 years wearing off. Lets just pause it there and back up the truck and take a snap shot of the jewellery trade as it was in 2004 before the onset of the Pandora pandemic.
Australian women were on the whole conservative in their taste, matching gold earrings with a gold chain, with a gold bracelet and tying off the ensemble with a gold watch (preferably an Adina). This ensemble was repeated in silver or rose gold depending on the day of the week. There was certainly no mixing and matching. Pandora changed all that. Here was a silver product that captured the imagination of Australian women and gave Australian men, who had been digging deep for years an affordable out when rolling into the jewellery shop for a present.
Rewriting the Record Books
The rest, as they say, is history. Pandora re-wrote the record books for turnover in the local family run jewellery store (Pandora was never sold by any of the jewellery chain stores). There has never been a product like it, and in my opinion never will be again. The closest ever seen in our trade before was Swatch watches, but this was bigger, way, way bigger! The retailers who had it, were laughing and ones who didn’t wanted it! Now here is the kicker, the door is now firmly ajar for anyone who has a brand and is touting it as the next big thing. Nobody and I mean nobody wanted to miss out.
The ensuing years of brand carnage was unlike anything we had ever seen before and I would be pretty safe in saying if you wandered in to any jewellery store, there would be remnants of this brand or that brand of jewellery which has been steadily donated to the local school for their upcoming fete as is the difficulty to get rid of it.
The Australian Watch Market
Now as an Australian watch manufacturer, with a main stream brand who lives in the Australian jewellery industry these made for very interesting and very challenging times. Entering the Australian market from everywhere, there were watch brands trying to get on the band wagon. In a way forcing us to cling to our core belief, if here, in our Brisbane workshops, we made good looking watches that were reliable and backed them up with great after sale service we would win the day. Most of the these ‘flash in the pan” brands have exited the Australian market leaving behind in many cases, owners of their watches with no accessibility to parts. Sorry, not sorry.
As a local Australian brand sometimes, we are not going to be the coolest or the funkiest! We gave up on trying to be everything to everybody years ago, but if you choose to buy one of our watches you will get a commitment that began almost 50 years ago in 1971. If you spent your hard earned on an Adina watch, our local Australian family business would be here to take care of you.
Wearing a wrist watch is a statement in style of who you are. Own it.
Back to FOMO, from the overwhelming evidence of late, we can see it is real but I am reminded of a saying my Mum would say “if everybody else was jumping off a cliff would you jump too?”
