MZ Berger Acquires Renato

BETTERSKILLS has learned that the Renato brand has been acquired by MZ Berger, better known as the design, marketing and manufacturer of watch brands that include Elgin, XOSkeleton and Sharp as well as the licensed manufacturer of several trademarks including Disney and Paul Frank. They also own the name Gruen.

Koi of watchlords.com was the first to announce that MZ Berger was the new owner on the watchlords website.

APPARENTLY the official announcement of the acquisition was supposed to take place yesterday but has, for some reason, been delayed. Here’s what we do know:

All but 65 people have received refunds for the long delayed Tourbillon and 61 are waiting for a new tourbillon due out later this year.

There actually was an issue with the Seagull made movements that delayed delivery an not meddling by Invicta Watch Company

Financial issues due to the week economy and the federal bankruptcy case involving Scott Rothstein who owned a portion of Renato tied up cash flow resulting in problems meeting financial obligations for a period of time.

Renato will return to ShopNBC some time around April 1st, 2012 as well as other venues due to the market share the new owners have.

After the announcement on WL, One of the first results for “renato and MZ Berger” is a long sold out Renato at ShopNBC. Interestingly enough, the warranty is provided by MZ Berger.

More information as this story develops.

BREAKING: Wow To Launch TV Shopping Network

On February 19th I am launching my own WorldofWatches.TV shopping show, it will be broadcasting live every Saturday and Sunday from 6pm to 9pm Eastern Time on Direct TV channel 227. I hope you and your friends and family will watch me.

Thanks,

Lior Ben-Shmuel
President & CEO
The SWI Group

BETTERSKILLS can confirm that Swiss Watch International is indeed launching it’s own televised watch program as well as a streaming version on the Internet.

THIS move comes on the heals of the FCC approval of the NBC Universal/Comcast merger and weeks after a proposed ShopNBC stock offerings. One wonders how this new televised shopping outlet affect Invicta and the distant third home shopping network sales. World of Watches is the premier “Deal of the Day” site and moves quite a few high end brands, like Wyler, as well as their own house brands, like Swiss Legend, Jaques Lemans and Triumph. WoW routinely moves quite a bit of Invicta merchandise typically way below ShopNBC pricing on even current Shop stock.

IT’S no secret that a lot of people are tired of the constant Invicta cavalcade on ShopNBC which is starting to look as ridiculous as the “Shopping Is A Feeling ” scene in the movie True Stories.

I’d long thought that this would be an Invicta move. Looks like SWI flanked them.