FOSL Company Profile

We are a global design, marketing and distribution company that specializes in consumer fashion accessories. Our principal offerings include an extensive line of mens and womens fashion watches and jewelry, handbags, small leather goods, belts, sunglasses, soft accessories and clothing. In the watch and jewelry product categories, we have a diverse portfolio of globally recognized owned and licensed brand names under which our products are marketed. Our products are distributed globally through various distribution channels, including wholesale in countries where we have a physical presence, direct to the consumer through our retail stores and commercial websites and through third-party distributors in countries where we do not maintain a physical presence. Our products are offered at varying price points to meet the needs of our customers, whether they are value-conscious or luxury oriented. Based on our extensive range of accessory products, brands, distribution channels and price points, we are able to target style-conscious consumers across a wide age spectrum on a global basis.

Domestically, we sell our products through a diversified distribution network that includes department stores, specialty retail locations, specialty watch and jewelry stores, Company-owned retail and outlet stores, mass market stores and through our FOSSIL® catalogs and website. Our wholesale customer base includes, among others, Dillards, JCPenney, Kohls, Macys, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Target and Wal-Mart. In the United States ("U.S."). In addition, we offer an extensive collection of our FOSSIL brand products through our catalogs and at www.fossil.com, as well as proprietary and licensed watch and jewelry brands through other managed and affiliate websites.

Internationally, our products are sold to department stores, specialty retail stores, and specialty watch and jewelry stores in approximately 130 countries worldwide through 23 Company-owned foreign sales subsidiaries and through a network of over 60 independent distributors. Our products are offered on airlines and cruise ships and in international Company-owned retail stores. Our products are also sold through licensed and franchised FOSSIL retail stores, retail concessions operated by us and kiosks in certain international markets, as well as our websites in certain countries.

We are a Delaware corporation formed in 1991 and are the successor to a Texas corporation formed in 1984. In 1993, we completed an initial public offering of 13,972,500 shares of our common stock. Domestically, we conduct a majority of our operations through Fossil Partners, L.P., a Texas limited partnership formed in 1994 of which we are the sole general partner. We also conduct operations domestically and in certain international markets through various owned subsidiaries. Our principal executive offices are located at 901 S. Central Expressway, Richardson, Texas 75080, and our telephone number at that address is (972) 234-2525. Our European headquarters is located in Basel, Switzerland, and our Asia headquarters is located in Hong Kong.

Our operations and financial reporting are primarily divided into four distinct segments: (i) the North America wholesale segment; (ii) the Europe wholesale segment; (iii) the Asia Pacific wholesale segment; and (iv) the Direct to consumer segment, which includes our Company-owned retail stores, our catalogs and e-commerce activities. Within the wholesale segments of our business, we generally sell to retailers in those countries in which we have a physical presence as well as to third-party distributors in countries where we do not have a physical presence. Except to the extent that differences between operating segments are material to an understanding of our business taken as a whole, the description of our business in this report is presented on a consolidated basis. Corporate expenses include certain administrative, legal, accounting, technology support costs, equity compensation costs, payroll costs attributable to executive management and amounts related to intercompany eliminations that are not allocated to the various segments.

Brand strength. We believe a brands image, individuality, consistency and connection with its customers is paramount in building and sustaining the brand. We believe that our FOSSIL brand name is recognized on a global basis as a vintage-inspired aspirational lifestyle brand with a focus on fashion accessories. The FOSSIL brand has developed from its origin as a watch brand to encompass other accessory categories, including handbags, belts, small leather goods, jewelry, soft accessories, sunglasses and clothing. We believe the FOSSIL brand is one of our most valuable assets, serves as a foundational piece of our business and remains very marketable across product lines, geographic areas and distribution channels. Since our inception in 1984, we have continued to develop, acquire or license other nationally or internationally recognized brand names, such as ADIDAS®, ARMANI EXCHANGE®, BURBERRY®, DIESEL®, DKNY®, EMPORIO ARMANI®, KARL LAGERFELD®, MARC BY MARC JACOBS™, MICHAEL KORS®, MICHELE®, RELIC®, SKAGEN®, and ZODIAC®, in order to appeal to a wide range of consumers. Our industry is highly competitive and subject to changing preferences in style, taste and price points. The success of our business model depends upon offering a wide range of branded products that appeal to the various tastes and fashion preferences of our customers. We must also maintain the relevance of these products by continually anticipating customer needs and desires as they relate to both the brands and categories of products we offer. We have teams of designers and brand specialists assigned to each of our brands. The objectives of these designers and brand specialists are to immerse themselves in their assigned brand and product area, identify their customers preferences, interpret global fashion trends and develop style-right offerings to generate volume purchasing. By owning the vast majority of our global distribution, we are also able to create and execute consistent pricing strategies and brand image presentations that protect and enhance our proprietary brands and those of our licensors.

Fashion orientation and design innovation. We are able to market our products to consumers with differing tastes and lifestyles by offering a wide range of brands and product categories at varying price points. We attempt to stay abreast of emerging fashion and lifestyle trends affecting accessories and clothing, and we respond to these trends by making adjustments in our product lines several times each year. We differentiate our products from those of our competitors principally through innovations in fashion details, including variations in both the materials and treatments used for dials, crystals, cases, straps and bracelets for our watches, and innovative treatments and details in our other accessories.

Coordinated product promotion. We coordinate in-house product design, packaging, advertising, our website and catalogs and in-store presentations to more effectively and cohesively communicate to our target markets the themes and images associated with our brands. For example, many of our watch products and certain of our accessory products are packaged in metal tins decorated with designs consistent with our marketing strategy and product image. In certain parts of the world, we market our non-watch fashion accessory lines through the same distribution channels as our watch lines, using similar in-store presentations, graphics and packaging.

Captive suppliers. The two entities that assemble the majority of our Asia watch production volume are majority owned by us. In addition, although we do not have long-term contracts with our unrelated accessory manufacturers, we maintain long-term relationships with several manufacturers. These relationships have developed due to the number of years that we have been conducting business with and visiting the same manufacturers and because of the small amount of turnover in the employees of our manufacturers. We believe that we are able to exert significant operational control with regard to our principal watch assemblers because of our level of ownership and long standing relationships. In addition, we believe that the relative size of our business with non-owned watch manufacturers gives us priority within their production schedules. Furthermore, the manufacturers understand our quality standards, which allows us to produce quality products and reduce the delivery time to market, improving overall operating margins.

Competition

The businesses in which we compete are highly competitive and fragmented. We believe that the current market for watches can be divided into four segments, ranging from lower price point watches that are typically distributed through mass market channels to luxury watches at higher price points that are typically distributed through fine watch departments of upscale department stores or upscale specialty watch and fine jewelry stores. Our watch business generally competes in these segments with a number of established manufacturers, importers and distributors, including Armitron, Citizen, Gucci, Guess', Kenneth Cole, LVMH Group, Movado, Raymond Weil, Seiko, Swatch, Swiss Army, TAG Heuer and Timex. In addition, our leather goods, sunglasses, jewelry and clothing businesses compete with a large number of established companies that have significantly greater experience than us in designing, developing, marketing and distributing such products. In all of our businesses, we compete with numerous manufacturers, importers and distributors who may have significantly greater financial, distribution, advertising and marketing resources than us. Our competitors include distributors that import watches, accessories and clothing from abroad, U.S. companies that have established foreign manufacturing relationships and companies that produce accessories and clothing domestically.

Although the level and nature of competition varies among our product categories and geographic regions, we believe that we compete on the basis of style, price, value, quality, brand name, advertising, marketing, distribution and customer service. We believe that our ability to identify and respond to changing fashion trends and consumer preferences, to maintain existing relationships and develop new relationships with manufacturing sources, to deliver quality merchandise in a timely manner and to manage the retail sales process are important factors in our ability to compete. We also believe that our distinctive business model of owning the distribution in many key markets and offering a globally recognized portfolio of proprietary and licensed-branded products allows for many competitive advantages over smaller, regional or local competitors. This "ownership of the market" allows us in certain countries to bypass the local distributors cost structure resulting in more competitively priced products while also generating higher product and operating margins.

We believe the risk of significant new competitors is mitigated to some extent by barriers to entry such as high startup costs and the development of long-term relationships with customers and manufacturing sources. During the past few years, it has been our experience that better department stores and other major retailers have been increasingly unwilling to purchase products from suppliers who are not well capitalized or do not have a demonstrated ability to deliver quality merchandise in a timely manner. There can be no assurance, however, that significant new competitors will not emerge in the future.