How Swatch and Audemars Piguet pulled off the ultimate high-low watch collab
Audemars Piguet and Swatch have teamed up to create a plastic pocket watch that riffs on the Royal Oak, turning an untouchable status symbol into something playful, divisive and irresistibly collectible. Sam Kessler asks: ‘What’s going on?’
On 16 May every Swatch Store in London closed for the day as hundreds of people queued outside, some having been in line since the day before. Fights broke out, police were called and crowds of angry punters went home watchless. This was, of course, the launch of the Swatch x Audemars Piguet Royal Pop.
It’s hard to overstate just how outlandish this idea would have seemed just months ago. Ultra-accessible Swatch working with Audemars Piguet, one of the three most important watchmakers in the world – alongside Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin – sounded like a fun ‘what if’, not something that could conceivably happen. The idea that they would work together on a pocket watch seemed laughable. And yet, here we are.
The series of eight 40mm pocket watches arrived in a whirlwind of summer-ready colour, from monochrome green and blue to poolside pastels. It came in two layouts based on vintage pocket watches – Lépine, with a twelve o’clock crown and Savonette, with a three o’clock crown and a small seconds subdial – and in a pop-out frame that widens the diameter to 44.2mm.
Swatch’s colourful series is catnip for collectors
They’re equipped with Swatch’s Sistem51 automatic movement and honestly, offer a lot of value at £355.
After the dust settled on the launch, this strange creation has grown on me. It feels fresher than just “A Royal Oak… but cheap!” and, for longtime AP fans, it references the maison’s own historic pocket watches. It feels accessible and fun rather than some unobtainable symbol of prestige while at the same time being carefully designed not to diminish Audemars Piguet’s brand. Sure, it has the same octagonal bezel with visible screws, but it isn’t trying to be a bargain basement Royal Oak.
But there are downsides, too. It’s non-limited, made of plastic (sorry, “Bioceramic”) and, thanks to the quirks of Swatch’s sealed Sistem51 movement, unserviceable. That doesn’t obviously place it in the rarefied company of other collectible timepieces. So, how did we get to the point where people are brawling in the streets to buy it?
The answer goes back to the first time Swatch attempted this kind of accessible collaboration: the MoonSwatch.
Launched in March 2022, the MoonSwatch really did come out of nowhere. Omega has always been very protective of its designs, especially when it came to their NASA-equipping Speedmaster chronograph. So, when Swatch suddenly launched an accessible, colourful series riffing off the same aesthetic cues, it was catnip for collectors. This caused queues outside the brand’s stores but, more importantly, a frenzy on the secondary market.
A Lamborghini you can wear on your wrist
Early adopters were reselling the £207 chronograph for between £1,500 to £3,100. It’s hard to tell how many were flippers and how many simply realised the return on their investment, but it created an unhealthy grey market trade, unprecedented for a non-limited watch.
Now the MoonSwatch is readily available and the hype has died down. Swatch tried to make lightning strike twice with Swatch Group stablemate Blancpain and the Fifty Fathoms styled Scuba but it didn’t hit the same sweet spot. So Swatch looked outside of its own group towards a true icon of horology: The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak.
I won’t delve too much into the history of the Royal Oak here; suffice to say it’s one of the defining watches of the 1970s, designed by the legendary Gerald Genta. It single-handedly made steel sports watches luxury items. A new one will set you back somewhere in the region of £25,000 – but good luck getting one at retail. Preowned will cost you considerably more.
All of this is a recipe for tracksuited Hatton Garden dealers slogging it out in Battersea Power Station. But while the fallout from the launch will doubtless use up all the oxygen in the room for a while yet, the basic question remains: was the Swatch x Audemars Piguet Royal Pop a success?
Undoubtedly yes. Swatch hasn’t said how many it has sold so far (we won’t know until we see its financial reports next year) but watch selling platform Chrono24 has plenty of data. The Royal Pop has been selling for almost three times the MoonSwatch at its peak, with an average resale around £1,250.
Even better, most people buying it are new to Chrono24, which means they signed up specifically to buy the Royal Pop. The launch has broken containment well beyond the watch world.
That makes a lot of sense, even if you take away the would-be flippers investing in a shiny new asset. The Omega Speedmaster is iconic among watch lovers; the Royal Oak is a streetwear giant, a hip-hop mainstay and aspirational symbol of wealth. It’s a Lamborghini you can wear on your wrist. You need to know why the Speedmaster is cool; the Royal Oak just is.
And with the classic steel version being unobtainable, the Royal Pop is the next best thing.
So what’s in it for Audemars Piguet? While I’m sure it makes money on each watch, it’s not building the Royal Pop and ‘accessibility’ does nothing for the brand. If the idea is to drive even more hype behind the already famous Royal Oak, then it seems to have worked: Chrono24 says demand for the integrated bracelet sports watch has surged 40 per cent.
There’s a ceiling: Audemars Piguet can’t just build more stainless-steel Royal Oaks to suit demand, so all of this will simply make the ones they do produce even harder to get. Still, given the brand leverages that consumer draw to sell its Code 11:59 models and complications, there’s still a tangible benefit.
Yet I can’t shake the feeling this launch may have slightly sullied the perception of Audemars Piguet. However well thought-out the Royal Pop, the circus surrounding the launch is not a good look for a brand as highly regarded as Audemars Piguet.
As James Schaaf, co-founder of collector community CollectorSphere, puts it: “Among most seasoned collectors, the reaction is almost universally: ‘Yeah, that’s fun for £350, maybe I’ll enjoy it for a week and then give it to my kid.’
These are people that could probably find £5,000 down the back of the sofa, so the desperation surrounding the Royal Pop queues feels completely alien to them, something they genuinely struggle to reconcile.”
Once the hype has finally died down around the Royal Pop and it’s available in-store, Swatch will still be on a high. Audemars Piguet, however, might have some goodwill to claw back.