Swatch CEO defends watch launch as tear gas used after shoppers in France turn violent

The head of the Swiss watch brand Swatch has defended the controversial launch of a new timepiece, following widespread scenes of chaos at its stores around the world including in France. 

The brand collaborated with fellow luxury watchmakers Audemars Piguet, meshing the latter’s classic ‘Royal Oak’ design with its own ‘Swatch-Pop’ watches to create eight new timepieces. Sales of these ‘Royal Pop’ watches, made of bioceramic material and highly-stylised, were limited to sales at 220 stores worldwide.

However at around twenty stores worldwide – including in France – high demand for the watch led to violent scenes, with fistfights breaking out between crowd members and with police even forced to use tear gas to disperse crowds at one store in Île-de-France.

However in an interview with the BBC yesterday (May 19), Swatch CEO Nick Hayek Jr said that despite there being "overcrowding like hell" at some of its stores the company had "clearly communicated that this is not a one-day event" and production of the device was ongoing.

CEO calls overcrowding 'good news'

"Having crowds at the beginning of the launch of [a] product should not be bad news, it should be something that is good news," Mr Hayek Jr told the BBC Radio 4 Today morning news programme.

"Most of the authorities, they co-operated with us from the beginning and also most of the shopping malls. And there, where they co-operated with us from the beginning, it went well," said Mr Hayek Jr.

He said "there can be certain situations that are tense and everybody did their best, but sometimes you cannot control everything", adding that he believed the launch overall had been "extraordinary".

The weekend launch saw aficionados queueing for several hours outside stores to ensure they got their hands on one of the models.

The manufacturer confirmed to Agence France Presse that “On launch day [May 16], there were problems in approximately twenty Swatch stores.”

“The queues of interested customers were extremely long and the organisation in place at some shopping centers was insufficient to manage this rush,” it added. 

“The global reaction to the Royal Pop collection has been phenomenal, and demand is immensely high… [but] things have somewhat 'normalised' since launch day,” it said.

However, certain stores, including in Lyon (Rhône) are already out of stock of the new designs, leading to customer frustration.

Fights and tear gas

Queues of several hours were reported in cities, with hundreds of people waiting in line for stores to open.

Initial sales of the watches were limited to 220 of Swatch’s more than 3,330 total stores and franchises, with a ‘one watch per customer per day’ rule further increasing the number of clients in line.

This led to frustration in several cities, including Lille where at least four people told local officials they had been punched during brawls while waiting in line.

Scenes were perhaps most dramatic at Chesnay-Rocquencourt (Yvelines), the site of a Swatch outlet in the Westfield Parly 2 shopping centre. Around 300 people had arrived well before opening time to begin queuing, and had to be dispersed by police using tear gas.

Brawls were also reported in Milan, and crowd trouble recorded in Thailand and the United States.