Why Fendi Timpieces Are Some Of The Most Innovative Watches In The World

Diana Bell-Heather   |   05-05-2018

 

Fun, futuristic, fashionable, fearless, functional and free. these are just some of the words to describe the Fendi timepieces family.

 

Renowned for its distinctive look, daring colour and material combinations, Fendi Timepieces celebrates the Fendi DNA with a perfect blend of Italian design and Swiss watchmaking expertise.

 

Since 1988, the Italian Maison has brought together passion for innovation and love for using precious materials in a unique way. Fendi Timepieces offers three iconic collections, Policromia, Fendi IShine and Selleria, and four signature collections, Fendi My Way, Run Away, Chameleon and Momento Fendi. From elegant and sophisticated models for women to sporty and masculine watches for men, each piece is highly recognizable with a strong identity and unique design features delivering the wow factor that today’s customer looks for.

 

We speak to Domenico Oliveri, the CEO of Fendi Timepieces, about his mission to make the Italian house one of the leading names in watch innovation.

 

Who is a Fendi customer?

We have a younger audience as a brand and the millennial audience is becoming more important. We want to appeal to those customers in a sophisticated way. We look at what our customer may want, but we always stay faithful to the brand DNA.

 

Is Run Away collection an answer to the logomania?

There is a trend of logo in the market that we recognise and the answer for us was this new logo called F is Fendi. Karl Lagerfeld described it as a surprising F because it’s upside down, very different from the previous logo which is a rectangle. We have taken this concept and transported it onto new watches for women and for men. It’s very sophisticated, we worked a lot on the shape of the watch and the details. For the first time in more than five years, we have a watch with a strong appearance both for men and women, which was not the case in the past.

 

 

What do today’s customers want in a watch?

I believe the customer today doesn’t want to just buy a piece. They need to buy something more, with a story, a bond with a brand and that’s what we have to create.

 

What do you feel is important for the Middle East customer?

Middle Eastern customers love design and precious material, so a mix of those with newness and innovation is very important.

 

Tell us more about the personalisation service.

The customer is becoming more sensitive and more knowledgeable and also they want to express their personality through the accessories and in this case, a watch. Having a possibility to personalise the watch is a way to express personality so it’s a trend that we are following in many different ways. With iShine you can personalise the dial, but Fendi Policromia is really unique. It can be assembled with many materials—stone, diamond, gold or emerald. We can create more than 100,000 combinations of the same watch. You can buy Policromia in a boutique, but then we organize events where we invite our most affluent customers to sit with our designer at a computer and build their own watch. It becomes unique to them. We are the only ones doing this and I think we have been successful so far.

 

 

How important is innovation?

Innovation is a soul of this company. Our motto is “nothing is impossible.” In our mind we never stop, if a good idea arrives we go through and see and then we do it.

We are a watch business inside a luxury business which is a peculiar point of view. We are not in watchmaking, we don’t compete with those. Customers are becoming for educated and a customer today can have anything so you need to offer something special and it’s not easy. We want to be  unpredictable and surprising so they can say ‘this is something worth buying’ because it’s different.

 

What challenges do you face?

One of the challenges the watch business has, especially when it’s part of a Maison, is to mix fashion with watchmaking. It’s something that we try to do and we do it in an interesting way. We like to surprise our customer and overcome their expectations.

 

What are your goals for Fendi Timpieces?

We are in a process of being recognised as one of most innovative brands in the market and we have love for innovation and quality and craftsmanship. Our main aim is to be creative, push the boundaries so we will keep surprising the customer and give them innovative chic products that are unique.

 

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