Jewelry & Watches

Giving it the Old College Try

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How College Watch Company Scored a Win with America’s Most Enthusiastic Demographic.

Enthusiasm among American sports fans is as diverse as the population and national landscape. Professional sports leagues like the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL have loyal fan bases in regions surrounding the home cities of their respective teams and there is no shortage of licensed products — everything from t-shirts to toothpicks — to sell to these fans. While these leagues do well in their regional markets, America is a big country some professional teams simply fail to appeal to large sections of the country, at least not with the same excitement level.

Enter college sports. There’s almost no part of the U.S. where college sports is not followed with either equal of greater interest than their professional counterparts. Many Americans simply hold more interest in the BCS (college football) or March Madness (college basketball) than they do the NFL or NBA playoffs. Any way you look at it, merchandising to the college sports market, may be obvious, though it’s also perhaps significantly underserved.

Breaking from the standard offerings of jerseys, hats and apparel is College Watch Company. “College sports has a rabid fan base,” says Marc Bell, who started the company earlier this year along with partner Joe Roos. “In a short period of time, we’ve signed on 56 schools already and the word is spreading fast.”

College Watch Company makes its own watches and incorporates school logos, mascots and colors directly into the designs. “It’s a colorful accessory with a stamped tag and who’s DNA screams fan loyalty,” adds Joe Roos. “This wasn’t just a good idea. It was a great idea.”

On line sales and college bookstores are the most obvious retail outlets for the watches, but additional venues will invariably be added to the mix ahead of the company’s major launch just prior to next years College Football season.

Of course, the power of word-of-mouth awareness cannot be understated. Richard “Big Daddy” Salgado, a frequent guest and analyst for Fox Sports and Fox News. “Rich has been a major brand ambassador for us,” says Bell. Rich Salgado, has worn the watches on air, and has been instrumental in having a variety of other sports personalities do the same.

Bell and Roos are excited for what 2019 has in store for the company, and given what they do and who they sell to, that excitement is clearly well warranted.

For more information about College Watch Company, visit: collegewatch.com

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Jack Raplee is a Queens native with over 20 years of journalistic experience covering industries as varied as entertainment, manufacturing, engineering and consumer electronics as well as hard news. Apart from writing, he has enjoyed additional exposure in radio work, standup comedy and modeling. While his career trajectory has brought him far and wide, living in places like Nassau, Bahamas; Sungnam, Korea; and Jackson, Mississippi he always seems to end up in his native NYC. Jack is currently working on a yet-to-be-titled book providing his unique perspective on his native Queens as seen from the table of a local diner.

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