The Catastrophic Swatch x Audemars Piguet Launch Was Entirely Predictable and Utterly Avoidable | WIRED

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At 9 am, as stores opened, London’s Carnaby Street location lasted half an hour before police were called. In New York, fights broke out amid rumors of a stabbing in the line. At locations around the world, police had to assist staff as the vast majority of customers left empty-handed, since most of the shops had fewer than 200 watches available. Deals were done within queues as scalpers flipped watches for profit. Within minutes of the first sales, the plastic watches were hitting eBay for thousands of dollars.

This is not a description of what happened during Saturday's Swatch x Audemars Piguet Royal Pop launch; this is an account of the 2022 MoonSwatch launch. But a carbon copy of this chaos and mayhem ensued as Swatch stores opened worldwide on May 16 to sell their extremely limited numbers of Royal Pop pocket watches.

Responding to widespread criticism of how Swatch handled the 2022 MoonSwatch launch, Nick Hayek Jr., chief executive of Swatch Group, told WIRED at the time: “We knew for sure this would be a success, because the product is beautiful, provocative, high quality, and the price is fantastic ... But what happened … I think nobody in the world could have expected that. It was really crazy.”

Hayek's defense was essentially that Swatch could not be held accountable for disturbances so severe that some stores were forced to shut for 10 days to let the pandemonium play out, simply because the group could never have predicted the ferocious public reaction to an affordable version of an iconic luxury timepiece coming on sale. No such excuse can be offered this time for the calamitous Royal Pop launch that took place this weekend.

Chaos Foreshadowed

Even before the first stores opened in Singapore on Saturday, 12 hours ahead of New York, the clear pattern of what was to follow was established. The VivoCity branch was shuttered ahead of the much-anticipated launch, with Swatch issuing a statement that it was "due to the overwhelming crowd” and that this decision was taken with local authorities to ensure the health and safety of staff and customers.

The Swatch X AP Royal Pop that’s caused such a furor at launch, just like the MoonSwatch did in 2022.

Courtesy of Swatch

Then it was Dubai. “In view of safety considerations, we have decided not to proceed with the sale of the [Swatch x Audemars Piguet Royal Pop] at Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates and the event has been cancelled,” a statement said. Authorities in New Delhi and Mumbai closed Swatch Store openings citing a lack of crowd control threatening safety. “We are not animals,” crowd members were caught shouting on Instagram clips.

London stores shut, and police dogs were deployed. Elsewhere in the UK, in Birmingham, news reports spoke of “fights and knives” and drug-taking before police were called. A “mosh pit” developed outside stores in the Netherlands. Clashes in Dusseldorf. Officers fired teargas to control a 300-strong crowd outside a Swatch shop in Paris. Open brawling occurred in Milan. Then arrests and shutdown in Miami. Houston's store closed, as well as Chicago’s. In Long Island, New York, amazingly, pepper spray was used for crowd control. In store-front interviews, customers made clear their anger towards Swatch on how poorly the release was handled.

Eventually, around 2 pm ET, a staggering 17 hours after the first clear warning signs in Singapore, Swatch finally issued a statement on its Instagram page: “To all our dear fans worldwide of our AP x Swatch collab, launched on May 16. To ensure the safety of both our customers and our staff in Swatch stores, we kindly ask you not to rush to our stores in large numbers to acquire this product. The Royal Pop Collection will remain available for several months. In some countries, queues of more than 50 people cannot be accepted, and sales may need to be paused.”

Looking at almost any of the 45,000 comments on the post, the response to the brand from fans is crystal clear: Swatch had done far too little, far too late. “You intentionally put people in danger causing a frenzy knowing how many watches you sent to each location but allowing thousands of people to line up was negligent.” “Shame on you Swatch.” “Swatch did bad—they should have gotten ahead of this knowing the depth of inventory and allocation rather than putting stores and customers at risk”, and on the replies go.

AP Wanted a Safe, Positive Experience

WIRED contacted Swatch asking why, considering the wealth of evidence from the ill-received MoonSwatch launch, did it repeat the rollout strategy with the AP collaboration. We got this response from their communications team in Switzerland blaming shopping mall security, despite incidents at Swatch's own stores outside of malls.

“The Royal Pop Collection has been phenomenal worldwide, and demand is extremely high. In around 20 Swatch stores out of a total of 220