That it would be a success was clear the moment the watches were shown. Beautiful, colourful, brazen and... damn near resembling the real Omega Moonwatch. The frenzy to grab one first was predictable. And here's the first thing that went wrong.
The Swatch Group in its communication deliberately emphasised that the MoonSwatches would only be sold in physical shops and omitted that they would later also be available online. I can understand that they wanted to raise expectations, but looking at what normally happens in the fashion world, where the online sale of special collections opens simultaneously with the sale in shops, it was not necessary to increase the difficulty of purchase to achieve the same result.
Moreover, this generated a misunderstanding and rumours started to circulate that the production was limited. Even in a national newspaper I read the phrase 'limited edition'. Nothing could be more false.
Second mistake: entrusting the management of the operation to individual boutiques was like putting a grenade in the hands of a kid. Not everyone was able to make the best decisions, such as handing out numbered tickets, and was faced with very different situations. The image of the orderly queue at a safe distance outside the boutiques in Geneva and Frankfurt clashes with that of the crowds in Rome storming the Swatch shop, while in Milan the police issued the order that forbade the Corso Vercelli shop from opening its doors.
Third mistake: too few pieces. In Italy, less than 200 watches were delivered to each boutique. Why? The most probable hypothesis is that they wanted to anticipate the operation in order to beat Watches & Wonders to the punch, without having yet produced enough watches. This would also explain the delay in online sales. A decision paid dearly by the enthusiast public.
Dody Giussani
