On cue, a post from Swatch
I’ve underlined the language I think is key here.
First, lots of hedging about “doing best” and “hoping.” Remembering these story posts are carefully crafted and vetted marketing posts (unlike perhaps comment replies), and this language viewed as politics (and as reviewed by legal) suggests to me they
know they don’t plan to produce a lot of these.
Im further biased in this conclusion based on what exactly they say they are “hoping” for: that people can “lay their hands on” the watches - not “buy,” not “take home,” etc. They’ve used this “lay hands on” phrasing now in 3+ different iterations of these marketing notices.
In the next capture, Swatch has also consistently for many of these notices said these are not “limited
editions.” Anyone paying attention to the NEW321, Snoopy, etc., releases knows that Swatch group views limited
editions to be different from limited
production. Call me when one of these Swatch notices say these will not be limited “
production.”
Finally, Swatch has now also clarified that subsequent releases would again be “select” stores. This could be more or less than the initial release, of course, but those initial stores were not selected on accident.
Remember that Swatch picked only a few stores per country, then sent those stores only a few examples of each watch. That, also, was not on accident. They didn’t do that because they hadn’t had time before roll-out to produce and ship enough.
That did that because these hype releases are 95% marketing, and the marketing really only works if these sell out, fast.
I would not hold any breath expecting them to change the behavior they’ve already demonstrated in the first release and these subsequent marketing notices.
