Latest news with #CitizenWatch
Nikkei Asia
2 days ago
- Business
- Nikkei Asia
Citizen Watch to market high-end products in North America
Citizen Watch plans to step up its marketing of high-end brands in North America, said Yoshitaka Oji, the company's president and CEO, in a recent interview with Nikkei. (Photo by Shohei Kanaya) SHOHEI KANAYA TOKYO -- Citizen Watch will step up its marketing in North America, President and CEO Yoshitaka Oji told Nikkei in an interview. The Japanese watchmaker over the next couple of years will introduce Attesa and The Citizen, high-priced brands sold mostly in Japan, to the North American market on a full-scale basis. The company announced in March a medium-term management plan from this fiscal year, which ends in March 2026, through fiscal 2027. The plan aims to boost sales in its mainstay watch business from 177.1 billion yen ($1.21 billion) in fiscal 2024 to 190 billion yen, and places priority on bolstering its business in the North American market.
Forbes
01-05-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
Citizen Unveils Super Titanium Duratect Amber Yellow Ultra-Hard Material
Citizen recalls 55 years of titanium innovation with Super Titanium traveling exhibit. Fifty-five years ago, Citizen Watch made its first foray into titanium. In 1970, the brand introduced the world's first titanium watch, the X-8 Chronometer—lightweight, strong, and decades ahead of its time. This year, Citizen is celebrating that groundbreaking spirit, not just by looking back, but by pushing titanium into bold new territory with an Amber Yellow Duratect™ Super Titanium™ color. From the start, working with titanium wasn't easy. It was tough, stubborn, and notoriously tricky to polish. But Citizen spent decades perfecting its approach to the corrosion resistant, light-weight material. And in 2000, Citizen unveiled what it calls Super Titanium™ -- an advanced-grade titanium that is coated with another proprietary invention called Duratect™. Duratect™ is a surface-hardening technology that strengthens metals like titanium and stainless steel while enhancing their appearance. Citizen Zenshin Three-Hand Super Titanium(TM) watch. Over the past 25 years, Duratect™ has allowed the brand to create titanium watches with all of their positive attributes (light weight, hypo-allergenic, scratch resistant and more) in a variety of colors beyond the typical silver or gray—including black, metallic pink, silver, gold, Sakura (a light pink tone) and blue. In fact, it was just a few years ago, in 2022, that the brand expanded its Duratect™ line-up with DLC Blue, a shimmering deep blue inspired by light interference patterns that gives it a multi-tone almost crystalline texture and look. The big news, now, though, in celebration of 55 years of Super Titanium, is the launch of Duratect™ Amber Yellow Super Titanium™, a brand-new surface-treatment color that's as warm and versatile as it is tough. Unlike standard gold tones, Amber Yellow offers a soft, natural glow that feels modern, not flashy, and has a soft hue perfect for any skin tone – but retains all of the Duratect™ Super Titanium™ attributes. Citizen's newest Hikari watch in Duratect Amber Yellow Super Titanium. This color is the hardest ... More on the Vickers scale of any of the brand's Duratect Super Titanium watches. Since joining Citizen Japan in 2017, engineer Kazuma Sato, whose background is in physics, has solely focused on Duratect™ research and development. Amber Yellow is his creation. 'We decided to go with Amber Yellow to offer an alternative to gold plating because gold can cause metal allergies in some people. Also, the color of gold can be very bright and we wanted a more toned down, classic color to go with many skin types. And regular gold plating scratches easily and we needed to work on offering something harder,' said Sato. 'So, the biggest challenge was to overcome these three issues .' He said the color and process was a long time in the research and development stages and that while developing the color they liked seemed pretty easy, challenges came into play when they tried to mass produce the watch components. 'When we moved to the machine for the mass production we couldn't quite get the right color consistently. The solution we found was to skip one of the processes that the machine goes through that impacts the color. A side benefit to skipping that machine step was added hardness for this color.' In fact, the Duratect™ Amber yellow is crafted from a proprietary alloy of nickel-free niobium-titanium, it is hypoallergenic and delivers a Vickers hardness between 1,700 and 2,300—about 10 to 20 times tougher than conventional gold plating. The material is not just hard and hypo-allergenic, it is designed to last for decades without scratching. Currently, the newest Duratect™ Amber Yellow color is being offered only in Japan for a Hikari collection women's watch powered by an Eco-Drive movement and retailing for approximately $750. When/if it will be sold in America is currently under discussion. Citizen Attesa Hakuto-R Super Titanium(TM) Satellite Timekeeping watch. Meanwhile, to showcase the full story of its rich history in Super Titanium™ with Duratect™ surface treatment, Citizen has launched a global traveling exhibition called "Super Titanium™: Beauty of Time. The exhibit is an immersive installation that showcases the processes of turning raw titanium into finished Super Titanium™ watches, the exhibition also boasts a centerpiece room with nine freestanding structures made from nearly 1,000 titanium plates. As visitors move through the space, shifting light and shadows bring the material's strength and beauty to life. Some plates even feature experimental surface treatments, offering a rare behind-the-scenes look at Citizen's cutting-edge research. It is interesting to note that Citizen is also offering Duratect ™ to outside companies that are using the super-hard coating for things like scissors, smart rings, cutlery, and some industrial components. Also notable: Citizen provided Super Titanium™ as a component of the landing legs in the Hakuto R lunar lander that successfully completed a flyby of the Moon in February of this year and is scheduled to land on the moon in June. Naturally, Citizen offers several Super Titanium™ Attesa watches, as well. So, what color may come next in the Duratect™ line up for watches? Sato says his personal preference would be to increase the offering of cool tones, like variation of blues.' The Citizen Super Titanium exhibit features watches atop Super Titanium posts and surrounded by ... More videos that give a glimpse inside the R&D for Duratect and Super Titanium.
