Citizen Chronograph Watch -leaders In Timepiece Innovation

When most people hear the name Citizen they immediately think of quartz watches

. Yet when this company started back in the early 1920's, their first product was under another name and was a pocket watch. Actually, the name Citizen was determined by the then Mayor of Tokyo, who coined the name with the hope that all citizens around the world would be able to afford a Citizen product. Over the years the company has developed a reputation that makes Citizen mens watch the leaders in time innovation.

During the early days, Citizen developed a line of low to middle priced watches to compete with the US giants Bulova and Timex. Competing with another Japanese company named Seiko, the competition for the consumer interest was high, with Seiko winning the early battles. Although they were the first Japanese company to introduce a shock resistant watch, they had difficulties in taking market share from their competition.

Knowing they had excellent quality, Citizen attacked the US market with an unusual approach. Instead of just trying to sell product, they developed partnership arrangements with many of the large national jewelry store chains. This was their way to gain a small market share and to show the customer that they were in it to win it! This plan was successful in establishing them as an up and coming brand, but taking case space from the aforementioned companies was not going to be easy.

With an aggressive sales team, they attacked the local jewelry stores offering great prices and creative financing. This opened many new accounts for them and slowly their market share improved. But after great prodding from the sales team, they decided to embark on one of the most revolutionary men's watches marketing campaigns in watch history. Instead of the traditional commercials showing a variety of styles and prices, Citizen promoted the accuracy and dependability of their products by comparing them to well known landmarks. The accuracy was compared to the Atomic Clock in Colorado and their dependability was associated with Big Ben in England. No products were shown!

This idea created an amazing buzz at the retail level and people started asking for Citizen. This was their move to take over as number one, in a very crowded industry and it worked. Sales started to sky rocket during the late 1980's as they overtook Seiko as number one in the US market. Once they achieved this position, they did not stop. Their use of technology launched them into the new century with the thinnest light powered watch found anywhere.

This timepiece was less than 4.5 millimeters thick and was powered by the sun. These two ideas created a new buzz in a softening watch market. Their continued interest in creating high tech, quality products gave them a new strength and even more market share. The watch industry had been struggling with the massive amount of inexpensive imports using quartz technology. There was truly a need for new and exciting technology.

Even with soft economic conditions around the world, Citizen customers seldom divert to a lower priced product. Their quality and consistent performance has established them as the top Japanese manufacture of time products. And even though most people are only familiar with their time pieces, this only makes up about 40% of their sales. Their diverse product lines encompass not only watches, but jewelry, clocks, eyeglass frames and health care products.

by: Ben Pate

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