Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by msoad | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

msoad

Welcome to the world of brands. Where Adidas and Burberry are owned by the same company:

https://www.fossilgroup.com/who-we-are/brands/

View on HN

the license the name from the brand owner to make watches

you'll be shocked to find out every single pair of sunglasses at Sunglass Hut is made from the same company.

It's not so surprising when you realize that Sunglass Hut is owned by that company.

Speaking of watches, these are the brands that make up the Swatch Group:

    Balmain
    Blancpain
    Breguet
    Calvin Klein
    Certina
    Flik Flak
    Glashütte Original
    Hamilton
    Harry Winston
    Jaquet Droz
    Léon Hatot
    Longines
    Mido
    Omega
    Rado
    Swatch (of course)
    Tissot
    Union Glashütte

Swatch movements (ETA) are also used in Hublot, IWC, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Panerai, Piaget, Tag Heuer, Vacheron Constantin, and others.

Just like all of the jewlery stores in the mall are owned by the same company - Sterling

    JB Robinson
    Sales
    Jared
    Kay
    Ostermans
    Leroys

There are enough real luxury brand conglomerates (LVMH, Luxottica, Richemont, etc.) to be aware of without making things up.

Adidas is not owned by Fossil: https://www.adidas-group.com/en/investors/share/shareholder-....

Adidas Group own the Adidas brandmark, and they license it to anyone willing to pay enough. Seeing "Adidas" on an item is not an indication that the thing was made by Adidas, designed by Adidas or has anything to do with Adidas beyond a fee to use the logo.

You need to really dig in to the background of where something comes from to understand what you're actually paying for. This is why paying more for brand name goods is often a bit silly.

I think Fossil only makes watches under these brands, They don't own the brands themselves.

Adidas and Burberry are separate companies. Burberry is registered on the London Stock Exchange. Adidas is based in Germany. The page you're looking at refers to watches manufactured by Fossil under those brand names.

Thanks! I didn't know that!

Owning a brand and licensing the brand name for a specific product line (in this case watches) is an important distinction. Fossil Group does neither own Burberry nor Adidas as a brand, but rather licensed it to use their name to produce watches. This is prevalent in fragrance/cosmetics where a branded perfume is rarely produced 'in-house'.

I kind of feel like this is deception, and shouldn't be allowed (though I agree it'd be very difficult to outlaw)....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com