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Swiss Watchmakers Target Shoppers Online

The Tag Heuerr watch maker factory is pictured in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Photo: Reuters
The Tag Heuerr watch maker factory is pictured in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Photo: Reuters
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Swiss Watchmakers Target Shoppers Online

The Tag Heuerr watch maker factory is pictured in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Photo: Reuters
The Tag Heuerr watch maker factory is pictured in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Photo: Reuters

In order to lure younger shoppers, brands large and small are joining an online push sweeping the luxury goods world, where web sales are already major growth drivers for fashion labels.

Swiss watchmakers were finally convinced that customers would pay thousands to buy intricate timepieces on the web, after a boom in online luxury goods sales.

In an interview at the Baselworld watch trade fair, Jean-Claude Biver, head of Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton-LVMH’s watch business, said: “We didn’t realize the speed at which millennials would take to buying cars or watches online.”

LVMH’s Tag Heuer, a label long associated with motor racing, is looking to fully build out its own shoppable sites over the next 18 months, Biver added.

Tag already operates online stores in five countries including the United States and Britain, and has a partnership in China with JD.com, the company said. According to Reuters, LVMH sister brands Hublot and Zenith are yet to follow suit.

Many watchmakers have flirted with web sales, though often through one-off collaborations with multi-brand web retailers.

Watchmakers have reasons to take control of their online image, as websites run by unofficial resellers proliferate.

Jerome Biard, chief executive of Corum, owned by China’s Citychamp, said: “We want to reassure people, while taking into account that today clients also might like to buy their watch at home.”

The Swiss brand’s first e-commerce site will be fully operational in about two months, Biard added.

Consultancy Bain & Co projects says that web sales are expected to make up a quarter of all global luxury goods sales by 2025, up from around 9 percent last year.

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Danish Archaeologists Unearth 50 Viking Skeletons

Massacred 10th century Vikings found in a mass grave at St John’s College, Oxford. Photograph: Thames Valley Archaeological Services/PA
Massacred 10th century Vikings found in a mass grave at St John’s College, Oxford. Photograph: Thames Valley Archaeological Services/PA
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Danish Archaeologists Unearth 50 Viking Skeletons

Massacred 10th century Vikings found in a mass grave at St John’s College, Oxford. Photograph: Thames Valley Archaeological Services/PA
Massacred 10th century Vikings found in a mass grave at St John’s College, Oxford. Photograph: Thames Valley Archaeological Services/PA

The excavation of a large Viking-era burial site in Denmark has unearthed 50 unusually well-preserved skeletons that archaeologists expect will help shed light on the lives of the Nordic people best known for their seafaring exploits in the Middle Ages.

The skeletons, discovered near Denmark's third-largest city Odense, were kept intact by high water levels and favorable soil conditions that prevented them from decomposing, according to Michael Borre Lundoe, the excavation leader from Museum Odense, Reuters reported.

"Normally when we excavate Viking graves, we'd be lucky if there were two teeth left in the grave besides the grave goods. But here we have the skeletons fully preserved," said Lundoe.

"The skeletons are so amazing. They are so well preserved. There are five fingers, five toes. And that opens up a whole new set of possibilities for discoveries," he said.

Rare artifacts such as knives, glass pearls and brooches dated between year 850 to 970 were also found at the excavation, which began six months ago.

Lundoe said the grave gifts indicate most of the people were part of a small community of farmers, although a woman of higher status was buried with a silver-ornamented knife and a piece of glass which was rare in the Viking Age.

Archaeologists took soil samples to search for pollen to determine which season the person was buried in and what textiles they wore.

An x-ray of a soil block from the site revealed an oval brooch, an iconic Viking Age jewelry piece associated with women's garments, covered with wood and human remains.

On the back of another brooch with period-specific ornaments, mineralized woven textile fragments provided evidence of the type of dress worn in the Viking Age, the archaeologists said.

Most of the skeletons have been removed from the graves and packed in cardboard boxes at the museum to dry out before the examination and final cleaning.