this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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$400 is really high for a Swatch.
Growing up, their watches were $40-$50. And they were popular. You wore them for a year or two, and when they were too beat up, you bought another one. Anyone could buy them.
Today, they’re $80-$110.
So they drop the Moonswatch. $250 is high, but the economy was better, the watch was a novelty, many people know the Speedmaster was the first watch on the Moon. Omega has marketed the Speedy for 50+ years. Billions of billboards, bus shelters, and magazine ads. Also, the moonswatch had cool models related to our solar system. People could identify with those models.
Sold like wild fire.
$400 for a plastic Blancpain?
Who, outside of serious watch collectors, knows anything about a 50 Fathoms or any Blancpain watches? If you surveyed 50 people on the street about 50 Fathoms, 50 of them would give you a blank look.
Even the average Swatch customer, when entering the store, will google Blancpain 50 Fathoms to see what the original watch looked like and then figure out the association. And it’s still $400.
Exactly. The Moonswatch didn’t just have the timing and the novelty factor going for it—both of which were huge—but also the fact that pretty much everyone who has even a passing familiarity with watches knows what a Speedmaster is. Probably second only to various Rolex models on the “oh yeah, I’ve heard of that before” familiarity scale. You have to be relatively deep into watches already to know or care what the Fifty Fathoms is — and most of those people probably aren’t the types who will buy a $400 plastic Swatch.