Horological Meandering

A collection. This passion would then evolve into collecting mechanical watches when these collectors began working and earning more. His vision was radical. While often named the "Quartz" crisis, Hayek saw that the real underlying problem was the " Swiss Watch Inefficient Manufacturing" crisis ... what I refer to as SWIM. It was disjointed and supply-chain management was archaic in Switzerland. Quartz technology didn't cause the crisis, the inability to scale manufacturing did. So, the Swiss watch industry was sinking and it would need to swim. 

 Today, we again see a crisis for the Swiss watch industry. And some progressive brands are taking the initiative to take steps to preempt its effects. For too long, the Swiss watch industry has disintermediated itself from collectors. And we are talking about existing customers here. Authorized Dealers were assigned the task (yes, looked at as a task or burden) of building a relationship with customers. So what more for the 16 year-old gen Z/Alpha today? Totally forgotten ... and in 10 years, the potential future customer for the brand? Many Authorized Dealers today are entirely focused on sales and often less interested in brand protection and building lasting relationships with customers. "Relationship" to many an Authorized Dealer translates to "Buy more and I'll look after you". Life doesn't work that way. 

It takes time to build relationships that last and this is what the Audemars Piguet collaboration with Swatch is about. It's risky but it's necessary and urgent. For this, I salute AP. Perhaps it's telling that AP no longer sells watches via any Authorized Dealers. They have gone direct to the customer. Today, the biggest risk to the Swiss watch industry is inaction. Marc Naidu GP Laureato Fanclub FB Group (Please credit if sharing) Image credit Swatch

Forum Notes:The AP x Swatch collaboration has a name: the Royal Pop. It is not a wristwatch. The Royal Pop takes the form of a pocket watch on a lanyard — a design that references the Swatch Pop and Clac product lines rather than anything in Audemars Piguet's catalogue. The tamagotchi comparisons from members here are not entirely unfair, and they get to the heart of what this collaboration actually is: a fashion object that borrows AP's octagonal Royal Oak DNA and places it in a format designed for a younger, style-led audience.

The strategic logic behind this is more interesting than the product itself. AP's marketing team does not make casual decisions. The Royal Oak turned 50 in 2022 and spent the following years crossing over into streetwear and pop culture in ways that divided the traditional collector base. The Royal Pop is an extension of that positioning — a way of keeping AP relevant to an audience that admires the brand but cannot participate in it at the level of a £20,000 Royal Oak. Whether that audience eventually converts into watch buyers is the long-term bet AP is making.

For existing collectors, the consensus here is that the Royal Pop is easy to ignore. It occupies a product category entirely separate from mechanical horology, and the secondary market for Royal Oak references appears unmoved by the collaboration. The more interesting question is whether AP's willingness to take this kind of risk — as David Allen notes above — reflects confidence in the brand's core equity, or signals a softening of the exclusivity that made the Royal Oak desirable in the first place.

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