Get a CUSTOM-MADE Garmin Fenix, Venu or Vivoactive

Garmin has an interesting service that lets you customise your watch before you buy it.

You can choose a band and watch body before placing your order directly from Garmin.

Some Details

This service is available for the Fenix 6 series, the Vivoactive 4 series, Venu Sq and Vivomove Series.

For some of the models, there is a nice choice of the number of watch faces, like the 5 you can see here from the Vivomove series. Whereas some of the Fenix customisations are essentially only giving you a choice of strap. At least that’s how it is today, Garmin may well expand this service if it becomes more popular.

In detail, you can customise these models

• Applies to all Fenix Solar models (6s Solar, 6 Solar, 6X Solar, 6s Pro Solar, 6 Pro Solar)
• Venu Sq and Sq Music
• Vivomove 3, Vivomove 3s, Vivomove Luxe and Vivomove Style
• Vivoactive 4 and 4s

There are typically between 1 and 5 case variants offered and many bands…usually, over 10 bands to choose from. Some of the metal bands can add several hundred dollars to the price.

Nice! But Why?

Responding to precise customer needs is always a good thing but comes with some downsides.

Offering a customisation service or mass customisation service adds cost and complexity to Garmin’s order fulfilment processes as well as, perhaps, making the task of choosing a Garmin watch even more difficult than before for customers – remember that there is considerable confusion between Garmin’s models and now there are even more choices within the models.

Suunto has offered a similar service for several years albeit subtly different. Both Garmin and Suunto offer this service on established models until we get the Fenix 7 so, to some degree, this will be a way of extending the life and sales of the product at rrp. It’s a way to make more money whilst responding to a customer need. Suunto has previously offered even more scope for customisation than Garmin is offering here with more choices of which parts of the watch body can be swapped out including Case, Bezel, Glass, Strap, Buttons, Buckle, and even Charging Cable colour (!)

It’s kinda also nice that you can buy your favourite strap straight away rather than having to buy an expensive watch with a strap you don’t especially like and then having to spend even more money getting the strap you really want. That always seemed a bit galling to me sometimes.

Will this make Garmin more money?

A: Probably, yes.

Although the internal cost of sale will be increased for Garmin, Garmin is offering a service that retailers will find difficult to offer. Thus Garmin is capturing more sales on Garmin.com and wholly eliminating the retailer margin for them. ie it’s MUCH more profitable…in theory.

I know some Garmin retailers are already daunted by what models to take when a new series of Garmin watches are announced. There could easily be 5 or 6 watch SKUs plus bundles and then if you want to take 10 or 20 or 30 stock SKUs that soon add up to hundreds of watches you have to order and that’s for a new product to the market that’s totally unproven. What would you do! #Tricky.

Summary: Good financial move for Garmin, a good move for some customers too. Retailers won’t be too upset.

More: Garmin.com