Fossil Harlow Three-Hand Stainless Steel Ladies Watch

Tom Kartsotis founded Fossil in Texas in 1984 after noticing that fashion watches manufactured in Hong Kong could be produced far more cheaply than the market assumed. The name came from his brother's nickname.

The company's insight was presentation. Fossil watches were designed with a deliberately retro American aesthetic and sold in collectable tin boxes, which made an inexpensive quartz watch feel like an object worth keeping. It worked at scale, and Fossil became one of the largest watch companies in the world by unit volume.

The business then grew primarily by acquisition and licensing. Fossil owns Zodiac, Misfit, and the leather goods brand Skagen, and manufactures watches under licence for a long list of fashion houses — Michael Kors, Armani Exchange, Diesel, Kate Spade, and others. For much of the 2010s Fossil produced a substantial share of all branded fashion watches sold globally.

It was also an early and significant player in smartwatches, launching Android Wear devices from 2015 and becoming the largest maker of Google-powered watches, before that market consolidated around Apple, Samsung, and Google itself.

Fossil remains a public company headquartered in Richardson, Texas, and continues to produce its own mechanical and automatic lines alongside the quartz and connected ranges.