FSL for those of you who don’t know stands for Fossil Sport Line and was marketed as a new generation of sports watches that offered extreme performance with an unusual combination of materials and unconventional looks! Fossil did use the terms unusual & unconventional in their marketing materials and it’s something we won’t see again.
Read MoreHappy 2018! Let's celebrate by posting a 16 page guide of the Fossil Defender DE series from 1995. We have scanned all 16 pages and listed them out below individually and then uploaded the entire guide as a PDF. If you aren't from Germany, we apologize in advance -- found this in a lot of Fossil documentation found (and rescued) from Germany.
Occasionally we run across some internal documentation that sheds some light into the world of Fossil in the 90's. The below scans are one such item circa 1996 called Fossil Facts. This 4 page document was used for employees for quick hit talking points around the brand and some knowledge about the watches.
My favorite piece in this whole thing is when asked about the Fossil Image, the response is "Fossil focuses on the wholesome brand image of "America in the 1950's" targeting the value-driven, back to basics consumer of the nineties.
Ironically it was nice to see that Defender was marketed as “an exciting series of watches that is “classic rugged” in styling and geared for ages twenty and up”. Looks like I missed the target demographic for that by a couple of years in 1996 – now I’m pushing 40 and that 'classic rugged style' is what I’m looking for.
Greetings all! New catalog scan available now in the Galleries section of the site. Please say hello to Fossil's 1995 Spring & Summer Catalog....oh and did I mention it's in German? Enjoy
Have you ever been excited to read an annual report? I mean really excited to drill into the numbers, forecasts and stock overviews? No you haven't? I'm not surprised, BUT let me introduce you to an annual report that will actually change your mind.
Introducing Fossil's Annual Report from the year 2000. I heartily advise you however to glaze over the financials and look at just the artwork. I've been looking for this report for years (in paper format) to scan for the site and I recently discovered that it's already posted online on www.fossilgroup.com. I've uploaded the PDF to this post just for you to review and keep in case one day it disappears from Fossil's site. If you look on Page 21 you'll see a certain gentleman that's been part of this site since the very beginning.
I've always called him Ward, but I knew I liked him back in 2010 and apparently he's been a Fossil fan since 2000. Thanks Ward!
Ward says this is amazing.
As a bonus I've included a photo of yours truly looking at the paper copy of the Fossil 2000 Annual Report on a recent trip I took to the Fossil World Headquarters near Dallas, Texas. I don't always read annual reports, but when I do it's a Fossil Annual Report from 2000 with stellar artwork and funny little graphics. More on that trip in days to come.
By clicking on the image below you'll be able to download the entire 2000 Annual Report. Enjoy the show!
If you've spent anytime on this site, you'll know all about our love here for the Fossil Defender series. Launched in the mid-90's the original DE series had 43 watches ranging from DE-1500 thru 1544, skipping a few in between including 1529 & 1530.
The next series of Defender watches were the DF series. In total there were 24 of these watches released and you can tell they were a different animal as far as design and build quality from the DE. In some of my research I've seen it mentioned that the Defender series was actually designed and assembled by Zodiac before Fossil bought them in 2001. Fossil was trying to have a higher end watch series to compete with a higher price point. I can't confirm it's true, but this could explain why some of the DF series watches retailed for $395, which is a far cry from the $150 for the DE-1527, which was the highest priced of the original DE series.
Of course we all know Fossil recently has relaunched the Defender series and we couldn't be happier. The interchangeable straps are brilliant and I'm always looking for the new straps to mix mine up....we'll call it the DEC series for now and later on we'll get them added to our guides.
Onto the scans! Recent events had made me realize how rare these booklets are that came in the DF series boxes. One of our Defender gurus, Adam has graciously scanned the booklet from one of his and I just love the writing on these scans -- it's so serious and reminds me of a certain catalog that Elaine wrote for on Seinfeld. Bonus bullet points below breaking down the series in case you're collecting them all.
Hard to believe it's been about 2 years since we last posted the first round of Fossil postcards. I wanted to send this off as a Christmas gift for 2014. 3 more cards from the archives.
Screenshots below with the URL for a Photoshop file (.psd)
Let's start the new year off with some fun. I went a little crazy with my scanner on holiday break and I scanned another catalog (Spring/Summer 1995), some brochures and a few postcards I had. The catalog is forthcoming, I have to catalog the pages and do some fancy editing to host the images, but here's 3 of the 4 postcards that came with the 1997 Fossil Collector's Club kit. Happy New Year!
Screenshots below with the URL for a Photoshop file (.psd)
I posted these on Facebook last week, but here are the high-res versions in a slideshow. I pulled these images from a Fossil Book that I have from Japan. Book is dated 1999 and these pages are last in the book in a section called, The Future. Some of these I've not seen before, but I'm on the hunt now! Below the slideshow I've posted the original scans for those of you who want more details (or can read Japanese).
Please enjoy. I find this catalog very useful in research and overall nostalgia. The images are rather large in the slideshow below and I know this -- I did it to showcase the model numbers and prices that are in Deutsche Marks. I've also posted the gallery along with a few others in the main navigation of the site under Catalog Scans.
Powered by Squarespace.
