Fossil History

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The Company Description of Its Time

Fossil is filed as a design, development, marketing and distribution company that specializes in consumer products predicated on fashion and value. Its principal offerings include an extensive line of fashion watches sold under the company's proprietary and licensed brands, plus complementary lines of small leather goods, belts, handbags, sunglasses, jewelry and apparel, sold in department stores and specialty retail stores in over 90 countries, and through the company's e-commerce website at fossil.com. Founded in 1984, Fossil was the first American brand to bring value and style to the watch category, transforming the concept of timekeeping from the merely functional to chic and stylish must-haves for the wrist. Since then, the filing says, Fossil has always been in the avant-garde, whether in terms of technology, the choice of materials or design.

Vintage Authentic, the Tins, and Three Businesses

The brand's identity gets the historical record's most quoted passage: the heart and soul of the FOSSIL brand - its people, products and culture - is about a unique kind of inspired creativity, representing the concept of accessible cool, anchored in vintage authentic style mixed with a creative spirit and a sense of humor, under the tagline 'What Vintage Are You?' Fossil's in-house designers constantly study emerging lifestyle and fashion trends, while for licensed brands Fossil works with the respective licensor's design team. The famous packaging is a business in itself: after more than seventeen years of transforming the very concept of packaging with its signature watch tins, Fossil announced in June 2006 'Tinspiration', a design contest inviting designers across the United States to develop artwork for the brand's watch tin packaging - over 250 submissions, a winner announced in November, winning designs produced on a limited edition run of tins in the summer of 2007 - and published a coffee-table book anthology of hundreds of its tin designs. The tins, the filing notes, are nearly as popular as the watches they hold and are regularly collected and traded at flea markets, antique shops, and on eBay. The one photograph, a Fossil watch and bag, is carried in the gallery on the history page.

The three business segments close the filing. Domestically, Fossil sells through department store doors including Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Nordstrom, Federated Department Stores and Dillard's, as well as JCPenney, Kohl's and Sears; private label products through mass-market stores such as Wal-Mart, Target and Kmart; and 113 Company-owned stores in the United States - 53 retail stores in premier sites and 60 outlet stores in major outlet malls - plus fossil.com and abacuswatches.com. Internationally, products are sold in over 90 countries through Company-owned foreign sales subsidiaries and approximately 60 independent distributors, across Asia Pacific, Europe, South and Central America, the Caribbean, Canada, Mexico and the Middle East, on cruise ships and in 23 international Company-owned stores. The Swiss business began in 2001 with the acquisition of three companies in Bienne, Switzerland, giving Fossil the design, sourcing and production capabilities for Swiss made designs; its Swiss Division, Montres Antima SA, handles the design, manufacturing, distribution and merchandising of Burberry timepieces, and the infrastructure supports key licensing relationships including the Burberry license.

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