This client is a cycling brand with a broad range: bicycles, cycling apparel and accessories, and more. Its range grows every year with new products and new ideas. Like most cycling brands, it had plenty of ways to extend that range, including bottles, caps, socks, gloves and bags. The question was which of them riders actually needed.
The answer came from the ride itself.
Why a watch, for a cycling brand
On the bike, riders need to check the time: how long they’ve been out, whether they’ll be back when they said. Reaching for a phone in a jersey pocket mid-ride is awkward and unsafe. A glance at the wrist isn’t.
That simple need is why a watch made sense for this brand. It’s something riders use on every ride, not just something they own, and it’s the one piece of kit they keep wearing after they get off the bike.
What riders need from that watch
Riders who want ride data already use a bike computer. What they need from a watch is simpler: easy to read at a glance, comfortable over a long ride, and part of their kit.
That shaped the brief. Keep the functions simple, and put the effort into design.
Carrying the kit onto the wrist
Cycling kit is recognised by colour and marks. Riders can spot a brand’s jerseys from across a group ride. So the brand’s kit colours and marks were carried onto three parts of the watch: the dial, the case and the strap.
On the dial, the kit colours are used as accents and the brand’s mark sits where it’s seen without crowding the time, so the dial stays clean enough to read at a glance while riding. The case picks up the brand’s palette in its finish, and the strap, in a sports material that handles sweat and weather, takes its colour from the kit.
Keeping the changes to these three parts meant the watch could be developed around a sound, proven base while still looking unmistakably like the brand’s own.
What held the design together was restraint. The watch doesn’t try to show every part of the brand’s identity. It takes the kit colours and the brand’s marks and carries them cleanly, which is the approach we see work across most brand collections, whatever the category.
The outcome
The brand now has a watch that sits in the same collection as its jerseys and accessories, and a rider can buy it alongside their kit.
Because the brand brings new products and ideas every year, the watch isn’t a one-off. It has become part of that yearly rhythm, a category the brand can keep developing alongside the rest of its range.
Related reading: Should Your Brand Launch a Watch Collection?
Questions brands ask about projects like this
Why would a cycling brand add a watch to its range?
Riders need to check the time during a ride, and reaching for a phone mid-ride is awkward and unsafe, while a glance at the wrist isn’t. A watch is used on every ride and worn after it, unlike most cycling merchandise. Because riders already track ride data with a bike computer, a cycling brand’s watch can stay simple and focus on legibility, comfort and matching the brand’s kit.
Which design elements work best for a cycling brand watch?
The most effective changes are usually made on three parts: the dial, carrying the brand’s kit colours as accents and its logo; the case, finished in the brand’s palette; and a sports strap in a kit colour, suited to sweat and weather. Well-known cycling watch collaborations tend to pick one or two signature elements rather than using everything, so the watch stays clean and readable while riding.
How do you make a watch feel like part of a sportswear collection?
Start from what customers already recognise in the collection, usually its colours and marks, and carry them into the watch in a restrained way. When the watch uses the same palette as the kit and is launched alongside it, customers see it as part of the same collection rather than a separate accessory.
Related reading: Full Custom vs Semi-Custom vs Full Development: Which Model Fits Your Brand?
If your riders already wear a watch on every ride, it could be yours. We’d be glad to look at your kit with you and talk through how it might carry onto the wrist. Start a conversation →