The sale of a special Swatch watch collection, created in collaboration with Swiss luxury watchmaker Audemars Piguet, led to chaotic scenes this Saturday. This happened in several European cities and also in New York.
The sale of the ‘Royal Pop’ watches, a fruit of the collaboration between the two Swiss companies, attracted large crowds. Outside the Swatch store in New York’s Times Square, people were “pushing and rushing” to get into the store when it opened. John McIntosh, a 44-year-old New Yorker who had been queuing since Wednesday, reported this to the AFP news agency. The interested parties’ goal was to buy the watches for $400 to $420 and immediately resell them for a significant profit.
In France, long queues with hundreds of people formed in numerous cities overnight. There were tense moments with security teams at some stores. According to a French police source, around 300 people were dispersed by officers using tear gas. They had gathered before the opening of a Swatch store in a shopping center in the Paris region. According to the same source, a metal roller gate and two security gates were damaged. In addition, police officers and security forces were attacked. The sale was canceled without announcing a new date because “the organizers underestimated the safety precautions.”
When contacted by AFP, Swatch declined to comment. On its Instagram account, Swatch France only stated that its stores in Lyon, Deauville, Rennes, Lille, Saint Tropez and Montpellier would remain closed all day for “public safety reasons.”
The campaign also went wrong in Italy. According to media reports, there was a fight in front of a Swatch store during the opening in Milan. There were also tensions outside another branch of the brand. There the sellers announced that the stock was exhausted. In the United Kingdom, the Swiss group closed its stores in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Glasgow and Cardiff for the whole day for “safety reasons” for customers and employees.
This article was created using digital tools translated.
FashionUnited uses artificial intelligence to speed up the translation of articles and improve the end result. They help us to make FashionUnited’s international reporting quickly and comprehensively accessible to a German-speaking readership. Articles translated using AI-based tools are proofread and carefully edited by our editors before they are published. If you have any questions or comments, please email [email protected]
