There exist a number of firms whose primary business is making watches that also offer jewelry and other non-horological accessories. Rolex has a line of cufflinks: three styles, each available in three colors of gold, and each will set you back a cool $6,050 a pair (EU price: 5 900 €). Patek Philippe offers cufflinks, rings, earrings, and pocket watch chains.

OMEGA, though, may be unique in the breadth of their accessories: six different categories of fine jewelry, leather wallets and belts, sunglasses, cufflinks, and the reason we’re here today: bracelets. Or, to be more accurate, sailing bracelets, as OMEGA terms them, to distinguish them from watch bracelets. As I write this, they offer over 40 models in a variety of materials (nylon, rubber), diameters, and colorways. Technically, their sailing bracelets are unisex, and come in sizes small enough to work for many women—though it seems I only see men modeling them on OMEGA’s website.

What I find interesting about OMEGA’s sailing bracelets is what a great—and underappreciated—strategic tool they are. Rolex’s cufflinks are just $150 cheaper (100 € in the EU) than their least expensive watch, the Oyster Perpetual 28, at $6,200 (EU price: 6 000 €). If you have to ask about Patek Philippe’s pricing for their accessories, you can’t afford them. In other words, neither Rolex and Patek Philippe appear to think of accessories as approachable luxury.

In the case of OMEGA, though, except for fine jewelry, their accessories seem to represent an approachable luxury entry point to their brand. Leaving aside one model of bracelet with 18K red gold hardware, their line of sailing bracelets ranges in price from a high of $650 to a low of $360 (EU prices: 640 € down to 360 €). Considering that their least expensive watches start at $3,300 (EU price: 3 300 €), a sailing bracelet seems like a good introduction to the brand.

The basics are that OMEGA’s sailing bracelets come in various combinations of bracelet material (nylon or rubber) and two diameters (6 mm and 7.9 mm). After that, it’s down to colorways.

In my opinion, their strongest expression of the sailing bracelet is when it’s in nylon (the texture provides tactile interest) and at the 7.9 mm diameter (which feels well proportioned to the wrist). OMEGA offers nine such models; of these, two have their stainless steel hardware coated. Both are color-on-color, in blue and black colorways, with the blue using chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and the black using diamond-like carbon (DLC).

These two bracelets feel like the most intentional and fully-realized models in the sailing bracelet lineup. Again, the texture is interesting, the diameter well-proportioned, and the color-on-color effect brings it all together—especially in blue, where it’s obvious at a glance that the color of the hardware was a deliberate design choice.

Given how attractive these two models are, what I don’t understand is why OMEGA doesn’t offer them in other colorways. Green would be an obvious choice; OMEGA currently offers over 50 watches with green dials; it’s their fifth most-common dial color, after white, silver, black, and blue. Another obvious choice would be orange, which has a longstanding historical association with their Planet Ocean lineup of watches.

The other thing I don’t understand is why most OMEGA boutiques barely show off their accessories. Think about luxury brands like Louis Vuitton or Hermès. I’ve written before about how they use lower-cost products like cosmetics and fragrance, respectively, as approachable entry points into their brands. And in many of their boutiques, those are some of the first displays one sees. That’s valuable floor space, and the fact that they use it for approachable luxury tells us how they think about those product lines. Yet with the sailing bracelets and other accessories, I’d say that OMEGA boutiques either have a small number on display, have a few available but not on display, or don’t carry them at all—in more-or-less equal numbers, at least in my experience.

I suspect their thinking runs, “A watch and a bracelet (or wallet, or sunglasses) take the same amount of display space, but one of them brings in at least five times the revenue of the other, and often much more.” That’s logical but lacks vision. If I were talking to the product marketing and merchandising people at OMEGA, I’d say, “I get it: watches are more lucrative. But putting a bit more emphasis on your accessories means that virtually anyone who walks in one of your stores is a prospect to walk out with something. And in many cases, that person will be buying from you for the first time. How valuable is that to you?”

OMEGA has stumbled (or walked with deliberation; your guess is as good as mine) onto a strong formula for luxury accessories, and their sailing bracelets are perhaps better than they need to be. In particular, their bracelets in 7.9 mm nylon with color-on-color hardware are the all-too-rare fashion accessories that seem better designed and executed the more one wears them. Their logo is the basis for the clasp, and yet it’s rendered subtly enough that it’s quiet, not shouting for attention. My only question is why they don’t extend the design to additional colorways. In any case, if you’ve considered an OMEGA watch, but don’t feel like you’re familiar enough with them, this is a low-risk way to get to know the brand better.

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