Alright, listen up Pandora, Diamonds International, Tiffany & Co., and other brands of fancy upscale jewelry that I can’t be bothered to recall at this time because I’m a guy. I’m about to talk about an idea that could help you dodge a bullet and get ahead of the next big thing.
Let’s face it, jewelry is seen as feminine. This is true to a place where guys feel out of place in a jewelry store; not just lost, but in many cases subtly unwelcome. This is a problem for you, because, as businesses, you want to be able to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. And perhaps more to the point, you don’t want to be marked as being too much part of traditional gender roles in the minds of the younger generation.
To your credit, you’re clearly trying, with your displays of cuff links, tie clips, and other implements of haberdashery. There’s just one problem- I have only the vaguest idea what a cuff link or a tie clip is supposed to do for me. As far as I know for sure, cuff links are the little pieces that hold the two wrist parts in handcuffs together, and tie clips are part of a wardrobe organizational system that prevent ties from becoming creased in a way that’s noticeable. And I’ll wager a lot that I’m far from the only guy for whom this holds true.
So you need something more obvious in its application. Something that I can walk up to the display and immediately surmise and articulate precisely why it is I need to own that thing, instead of needing a sales representative to explain to me how back in the olden days, fancy shirts didn’t used to come with buttons on their cuffs, and why I should care to replace mine with something more expensive and less practical.
Like, say, a wristwatch. It’s obvious why I would want to have a watch to tell me the time, and if I’m going to be wearing one anyways, a convincing argument can be made that I ought to treat myself to the finest and shiniest, which, I will be told, has been perfectly painstakingly custom engineered by the best in alpine watchmaking tradition. I may not have any use for such a watch today, but at least it’s a defensible reason for me to indulge myself to peruse shiny and expensive objects.
Except wristwatches are dying. Not just fancy and expensive models that use gratuitous amounts of valuable metals and stones, which have been slowly getting replaced by smaller, lighter, digital models that can also tell me the date, weather, set alarms, and act as a stopwatch since the calculator watches of the 1970s, but even these are being edged out. In some cases by smart watches, which can do everything listed previously, and then also take over several functions of a phone. But in most cases, watches are simply disappearing and being replaced by… nothing.
That’s because the need for a watch has been steadily eroded as young people have decided that they can just use their phone to tell the time. The smartphone didn’t kill the wristwatch, but the cultural shift towards having the action of glancing at one’s phone as casually acceptable as looking at one’s watch will. The more accepted having phones out becomes in polite company, the faster watches will disappear.
So, how do watches compete? It is still marginally easier to glance at a watch than to take a phone out from a pocket and look at it. But when a phone can also do so much more, to the point that pulling out a phone is a routine action anyways (to check texts, news alerts, and the like), the watch is still going to lose. The watch has to be able to take over some tasks from the phone in the same way that the phone can from the watch.
Modern smart watches already meet this threshold. On my own pebble smartwatch, I can receive text messages and other notifications, and decided whether I need to respond without ever having to touch my phone. I can screen incoming calls, and route them through my headphones. I can play and adjust my music, all without ever having to unlock my phone. It does exactly what I need it to, which is why it is an essential part of my essential kit.
There’s just one problem. My smartwatch is made of clunky looking, albeit durable and relatively cheap, plastic components. It stands out like a sore thumb in a formal outfit. Moreover, smart watches aren’t accepted in the same way that smartphones are.
So, jewelry companies: you need a trend you can cash in on with young men? Try smart watches. Cast them in silver and gold, with sparkling diamonds on the menu buttons, and custom engravings. Or heck, cut out watches entirely and go straight to phone cases. The important part is embracing this paradigm shift rather than stubbornly insisting that I still need a miniature grandfather clock on my wrist because my wearable computer isn’t fancy enough.